Short-term academic benefits from early childhood programs

A new article in Early Childhood Research Quarterly has analyzed the academic benefits of different types of formal early childhood programs for children ages 4 and 5 in Australia. This included pre-year 1 (the first year of full-time formal schooling), school-based preschool, stand-alone preschool, and center-based child care.

Children who did not attend any early childhood programming lagged behind their peers in school readiness skills. However, by middle childhood all the early skill advantages had disappeared, showing rapid fadeout of academic benefits acquired from these specific types of early childhood programs.

Of those who did attend programs, the authors found that children who attended pre-year 1 held an initial, significant advantage in early academic skills, which they consider unsurprising as pre-year 1 is full-time formal schooling. The authors found little difference in terms of early academic skills between either type of preschool programming and center child care, but there are difficulties in direct comparison. Although teachers in preschools have higher average qualifications compared to child care centers, preschool children spend far fewer hours in their programs.

The data used in the research came from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). LSAC follows two cohorts of children, an infant cohort of children born between March 2003 and February 2004, and a child cohort who were between 4- and 5-years-old in 2004. Only the child cohort was used in this analysis, a nationally representative sample of 4,983 children.

Johns Hopkins University 

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