Mcguinness 2013

British Educational Research Journal
Vol. 40, No. 5, October 2014, pp. 772–795

DOI: 10.1002/berj.3117
Impact of a play-based curriculum in the

first two years of primary school: literacy
and numeracy outcomes over seven years
Carol McGuinnessa, Liz Sproulea*, Chris Bojkeb, Karen Trewa
and Glenda Walshc
a
Queen’s University Belfast, UK; bUniversity of York, UK; cStranmillis University
College, UK
In 2000–2002 an innovative early years curriculum, the Enriched Curriculum (EC), was introduced
into 120 volunteer schools across Northern Ireland, replacing a traditional curriculum similar to
others across the UK at that time. It was intended by the designers to be developmentally appropri-
ate and play-based with the primary goal of preventing the experience of persistent early failure in
children. The EC was not intended to be a literacy and numeracy intervention, yet it did consider-
ably alter pedagogy in these domains, particularly the age at which formal reading and mathematics
instruction began. As part of a multi-method evaluation running from 2000–2008, the research
team followed the primary school careers of the first two successive cohorts of EC children, compar-
ing them with year-ahead controls attending the same 24 schools. Compared to the year-ahead con-
trol group, the findings show that the EC children’s reading and mathematics scores fell behind in
the first two years but the majority of EC children caught up by the end of their fourth year. There-
after, the performance of the first EC cohort fell away slightly, while that of the second continued to
match that of controls. Overall, the play-based curriculum had no statistically significant positive
effects on reading and mathematics in the medium term. At best, the EC children’s scores matched
those of controls.
Introduction
Despite a vast literature on the benefits of play-based, developmentally sensitive ped-
agogy in the early years and its spreading influence on early years education in the
UK, the US and elsewhere, previous research has failed to investigate the effect of this
pedagogy in primary school, as distinct from pre-school, on medium-term reading
and mathematics outcomes. The opportunity to conduct such research arose when
the Enriched Curriculum (EC) was introduced into Northern Ireland in September
2000. This pilot project pre-dated the introduction of the statutory Foundation Stage
into the Northern Ireland curriculum in 2007. The research team was not involved in
the initial design or implementation of the EC. It was commissioned as the evaluation
team and provided formative feedback through annual reports from 2001 onwards
(e.g., Sproule et al., 2001, 2002, 2003) and through substantial summative reports at
the end of different phases in 2005 (Sproule et al., 2005) and 2009 (McGuinness
et al., 2009a, b; Sproule et al., 2009; Trew et al., 2009).
*Corresponding author. School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast, 18–30 Malone Road,
Belfast, BT9 5BN, UK. Email: L.Sproule@qub.ac.uk
© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Play-based curriculums in primary school 773
Previous research in developmentally appropriate practice

The term ‘developmentally appropriate practice’ (DAP) began to gain currency in
the US in the 1980s. It is an approach to early years pedagogy with three core tenets;
sensitivity to the developmental stage of children both individually and collectively,
an emphasis on ‘appropriate process’ in the curriculum rather than on curriculum
content, and a recognition that all aspects of child development are important and
interdependent. Bredekamp (1987), in a paper published in the US by the National
Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), which accredits pro-
grammes for children of different ages, set out a vision for DAP for children in several
age groups up to age eight. This research-based paper highlighted the importance of
learning through play, adult/child conversation in which children have an equal part,
child choice of activity, a wide range of experience for children and the teacher’s role
as a facilitator of learning. It downplayed rote learning, teacher direction and highly
structured lessons, all features characteristic of more formal curricula (Wood & Ben-
nett, 1997). The NAEYC guidance has been revised twice in response to criticisms
and to emerging research evidence (NAEYC, 1997, 2009). Bredekamp’s vision had a
big impact on early years education in the US and the English-speaking world beyond
(e.g., Siraj-Blatchford, 1999) and re-ignited debates about best practice in the early
years. This debate was informed by the experience of other early years programmes
from around the world, such as Experiential Education in the Netherlands (Laevers,
1994, 2000), Reggio Emilia in Italy (Edwards et al., 1998; Rinaldi, 2005) and Te
Whariki in New Zealand (May & Carr, 1997; Carr & May 2000), all of which
emphasised major roles for play and story sessions. At the same time, in the context
of government pressure to improve scholastic outcomes and high-stakes testing of
children’s progress, there was concern to ensure that children were adequately pre-
pared for later learning, especially in literacy and numeracy (Woodhead, 1999;
McNess et al., 2001). This concern created tension between developmentally sensi-
tive approaches and the pressure to introduce formal approaches to ever-younger
children in order to fulfil government targets (Blenkin & Kelly, 1994). Subsequent
debate has centred on the nature of play and its use in education (Siraj-Blatchford
et al., 2002; Wood, 2007; Stephen, 2010), the rationale for high levels of child choice
(Siraj-Blatchford & Sylva, 2004) and the extent of structure desirable in lessons
(Siraj-Blatchford, 2004).
The evaluation of DAP curricula has mostly been informed by evidence (qualitative
and quantitative) from classroom observation. While the short- and long-term effects
of many aspects of pre-school and early primary school have been investigated by
large-scale quantitative studies (e.g., the EPPE, EPPNI and EPPSE studies, detailed
at http://eppe.ioe.ac.uk/eppe/eppeintro.htm, Tymms et al., 2009), these have not spe-
cifically related DAP to educational outcomes. Quantitative research that does do so
is sparse and has tended to focus on behavioural and social outcomes (Burts et al.,
1992; Jambunathan et al., 1999; Schmidt et al., 2007), with most research being con-
centrated in the US. In relation to academic progress, Van Horn et al. (2005) drew
attention in their review to the lack of good quality research on scholastic outcomes
for DAP curricula experienced by 4- to 7-year-olds. They re-examined comparison
studies of DAP with other pedagogies and concluded that many had statistical defects

774 C. McGuinness et al.
and/or small sample sizes. In addition, all but one of these studies used DAP ratings
to assign classrooms to DAP or non-DAP groups rather than comparing explicitly
DAP curricula with more traditional programmes. Furthermore, studies have shown
that teachers’ stated beliefs in DAP are not necessarily reflected in their practice (Bur-
ts et al., 1992; Buchanan et al., 1998; McGovern, 2003), which remains open to pres-
sure from outside stakeholders to follow a formal approach. Finally, most studies
looked at short-term outcomes. Across the studies covered in the above review, the
findings on cognitive and academic outcomes were mixed and inconsistent. Van
Horn and Ramey (2003), tracking a large national sample over the first three years of
school in the US, concluded that ‘the effects of DAP as observed in classrooms
accounts for little or no variation in children’s academic performance’ (p. 961). How-
ever, the question of the longer term effects of a DAP curriculum on traditional
school-related outcomes remains open. Addressing these issues, the present study has
a large sample size, compares a DAP curriculum with a traditional curriculum using a
quasi-experimental method, and is the first to look at medium-term scholastic out-
comes.
The policy context—national and local

All nations in the UK have now moved their educational policies in the direction of a
more play-based and developmentally appropriate approach to teaching and learning
in the early school years. Each nation has adopted slightly different policies and prac-
tices to ease the transition between pre-school and statutory schooling (e.g., the
Foundation Stage in Wales, 3- to 7-year-olds; the Early Years Foundation Stage in
England, 0- to 5-year-olds; the Foundation Stage in the Northern Ireland Curricu-
lum, 4- to 6-year-olds; the Curriculum for Excellence, 3- to 18-years-old in Scot-
land). Research findings with regard to the longer-term effects of these curricula
shifts are particularly crucial at this point in time.
The pre-existing curriculum in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s was very similar
to the contemporaneous English National Curriculum. As in other parts of the UK,
there was a growing feeling amongst stakeholders that the increasing formality of the
curriculum meant that it was not meeting the needs of many children, particularly in
the light of the early start to statutory schooling in Northern Ireland, which at 4 years
2 months is the youngest in Europe.1 In addition, an evaluation of a pre-school pro-
ject in a socially disadvantaged area, the Greater Shankill Early Years Project (Quiery
et al., 2003), had drawn attention to the difficulties faced by disadvantaged children
as they progressed through the traditional first year curriculum. Against this back-
ground, the Enriched Curriculum began as a local initiative in the Belfast Education
and Library Board,2 one of five similar authorities administering education in North-
ern Ireland. In September 2000, it was introduced by six primary schools in a disad-
vantaged area of Belfast. For this first group of schools piloting the curriculum, the
transition-into-primary-school issue was heightened: their school-entry children
tended to have poor oral language skills and were not always well prepared for school
routines (Sproule et al., 2001, p. 59). Eventually, over 120 schools joined the project
in September 2001 or 2002 and continued to use the EC until the introduction of the
Revised Northern Ireland Curriculum in 2007. From these schools, the research team

selected a further 18 schools to join the evaluation, such that the sample of 24 schools
(original six schools plus additional 18) came to better reflect the population of
schools in Northern Ireland.
The nature of the Enriched Curriculum (EC)

The general expectation by those who designed the new curriculum was that the EC
would have positive effects, not only on the immediate learning experiences of the
children in the first years of primary school, but also in creating positive learning
foundations to sustain the children’s progress in school over the longer term.
The curriculum was conceived broadly as more play-based, more developmentally
sensitive and more informal than the pre-existing curriculum. Using structured class-
room observation, the research team had confirmed that the pre-existing curriculum
had indeed fitted the more traditional formal style involving frequent worksheets and
a preponderance of teacher-led and didactic activities, thus setting up an appropriate
control group (Walsh et al., 2006). In the same study, Walsh et al. (2006) confirmed
that EC classrooms had a better balance between play and other activities and
between teacher-led and child-led activity. Thus, play, activity-based learning and
short, story-based sessions rather than desk-work preponderated, in order to stimu-
late children’s curiosity, creativity, social development and engagement with learning.
There was a short task-time each day with more focussed learning intentions. The
EC also stressed outdoor play and activities to promote physical development, high-
lighting to teachers the order of development of motor skills and the value of physical
activity for health.
Although not primarily a literacy and numeracy intervention, the EC had an imme-
diate impact on pedagogy in these areas that led to knock-on effects in the child’s sec-
ond and third years (McGuinness et al., 2009a, b). Essentially it altered the age at
which formal reading and mathematics instruction began. In Year 1, the focus was on
emergent literacy activities such as phonological awareness, activities to promote gen-
eral listening and concentration skills, oral sequencing of events and oral comprehen-
sion of stories. The use of formal reading schemes was postponed. Instead, children
were immersed in a literacy-rich environment and took books home as part of the
shared reading programme in which parents were encouraged to participate. Whenever
children had achieved certain milestones, such as the ability to recognise several let-
ters and a few common words, they were ready to move on to guided reading, where
teachers worked with small groups of children at a similar stage of development. Dur-
ing guided reading, the letter-sound correspondences were addressed in a more struc-
tured way, and other strategies for decoding words were taught. However, the
systematic phonics that has become such a significant feature of the early years literacy
strategy in England was not a feature of the EC at the beginning (in subsequent years,
it became more prominent). In mathematics, the use of formal recording methods
was postponed in order to concentrate on secure development of fundamental
concepts.
In the first year of implementation, it became evident that the majority of children
were not considered ready to move on to guided reading at any time during their first
school year, especially in schools in disadvantaged areas (Sproule et al., 2003, p. 4).

Later, it transpired that some children continued to be unprepared to move on

throughout their second school year. Formative feedback from the research team and
teachers on this issue resulted in increased guidance for teachers about actively mov-
ing the second cohort of EC children on to guided reading more quickly, although it
continued to be accepted that some children would not be ready in their first school
year. Thus, the experience in the second EC cohort was somewhat different from that
of the first. In mathematics, the curriculum stressed early concept development
through sorting, matching, and counting activities before introducing formal arithme-
tic recording. Formal arithmetic could also be considerably delayed but there was less
anxiety evident in teacher interviews here (Sproule et al., 2003, p. 30), largely
because teachers were, and remained, impressed by the conceptual understanding
shown under the new regime, particularly by slower developing children.
Teacher training, teacher support and implementation. Curriculum development work

was influenced by the experiences of principals, teachers and Curriculum Advisory
Support Service officers. Teacher training was conducted by Curriculum and Advi-
sory Support officers from each of the five Education and Library Boards, leading to
some issues of curriculum fidelity across the five areas. It is also important to note that
although school principals ‘volunteered’ into the EC, usually with the enthusiastic
support of early years teachers, there was less within-school support in some larger
schools where the enthusiasm was not universal, raising questions about the extent of
implementation in some classes. Lack of a single written curriculum specification in
the early days allowed further discretion. Nevertheless, other strands of the evalua-
tion, particularly the structured classroom observation study, confirmed a basic level
of consistency in the curriculum as it was delivered, sufficient to justify considering it
as one intervention (Walsh et al., 2006; McGuinness et al., 2009b). As will be seen,
the outcomes at Year 1 and Year 2 also tend to validate this decision. The issue of
fidelity has parallels with intention-to-treat paradigms in medicine, in which the treat-
ment as originally envisaged by professionals is not followed exactly by patients. Simi-
larly, appreciable variation can be expected in the implementation of any national
curriculum that is process oriented, given that such curricula are likely to be more dif-
ficult to specify closely than a content-oriented curriculum and depend to a greater
extent on professional interpretation.
The wider evaluation and the specific research question

The multi-method evaluation ran for eight years and followed the primary school
careers of the first two cohorts of EC children, comparing them with year-ahead con-
trols attending the same 24 schools. There were four main strands; (1) longitudinal
comparison with controls of EC children’s scholastic outcomes and learning disposi-
tions; (2) structured classroom observation examining the quality of the children’s early
experience compared with control classrooms; (3) examination, through interview and
survey, of the experience and views of teachers and school principals on the curriculum
and its impact; and (4), a yearly survey assessing the changing views of parents. The
design is fully described in McGuinness et al. (2009a). A more complete description of
the characteristics of the curriculum and how it was organised can also be found there.

The focus of this paper comes from the first strand of the evaluation, directed to
reading and mathematics progress only. Although it is important to judge the EC
against its wider aims, the role of literacy and numeracy as significant gateways to
learning-across-the-curriculum will always draw attention to these outcomes. With its
longitudinal design and inclusion of more than one cohort of EC children, this paper
allows rich exploration of the far-reaching effects of the transition to a play-based
early years curriculum on progress in literacy and numeracy and uncovers important
issues pertinent to national play-based curricula.
The main research question was:
• Compared to the year-ahead controls, what are the effects of the EC on the chil-
dren’s mathematics and reading achievement (test scores) as they progress through
the primary school years?
More specifically:
• What are the effects of the EC in the short-term—during the first two years while
the children are experiencing the curriculum, and during the next two years while
they transition into more formal teaching?
• What are the effects of the EC in the medium-term as they children progress
through their upper primary school years?
• Are there any differences between the progress of the first EC cohort compared to
that of the second EC cohort?
Method
Design
The study employed a quasi-experimental design investigating outcomes compared
with matched controls over time. Appropriate multilevel statistical techniques esti-
mated the incremental differences attributable to the EC over time. Two successive
cohorts of children who experienced the EC curriculum in the first and second years
of implementation in each school were studied, allowing the stability or change in EC
practices and outcomes over time to be investigated. The study was not initially
planned as a full longitudinal study over eight years. However, as the early and
interim findings were reported to the stakeholders and the funders, additional groups
of schools joined the study at different times leading to a complex sample structure
(see below).
Instrument
Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS), run by the CEM centre at
Durham University, was chosen as a psychometrically robust measure with a substantial
history in the study of attainment (e.g., Tymms et al., 2004, 2009). The instrument
had not previously been in widespread use in Northern Ireland. PIPS was designed to
match the English National curriculum, which was very similar to the traditional pre-
existing curriculum in Northern Ireland followed by the controls. The PIPS baseline
and end of Year 1 tests yield picture vocabulary, reading and mathematics scores and

are highly predictive of later outcomes (Tymms, 1999). Thereafter, the yearly tests
include a non-verbal section. The yearly picture vocabulary and non-verbal scores
together were used to generate a ‘developed ability’ score, used here as a proxy for IQ to
demonstrate variation in the sample. Using data from several thousand English schools,
PIPS is standardised on a mean of 50 and an SD of 10. All tests were administered by
research staff.
Sample
Schools. Twenty-four schools participated, categorised into three groups, depending
on when they joined the evaluation. These groups were: the original Belfast high
deprivation group (Group 1, six schools); the first group of non-deprived schools out-
side Belfast (Group 2, six schools); and the second non-deprived group outside Bel-
fast (Group 3, 12 schools), as detailed in Table 1 (~36 classes in each year group).
The latter two groups of schools were divided between the Western (n = 2), North
Eastern (n = 7), Southern (n = 5) and South Eastern (n = 4) Education and Library
Boards. This breakdown is a reasonable reflection of the relative population distribu-
tions of the Education and Library Boards. Schools were not randomly selected to
participate in the evaluation; they volunteered. Nevertheless, Table 1 indicates that
the sample was reasonably representative of the population of schools in Northern
Ireland, in terms of type of location (urban/town/rural), social advantage/disadvan-
tage as indicated by percentage of free school meals (FSM) and by the average ability
Table 1. Sample characteristics
Range of % of
Proxy IQ FSM in school Years schools Type of locality
Mean (SD)* group started EC of schools
Group: Cohort
Joined the evaluation in 2000 (6 Belfast high deprivation schools):
Year-ahead cohort (Control) 45.5 (6.4) 50–76 All in 2000 All in 2000
EC first cohort (EC1) 44.8 (5.2)
EC second cohort (EC2) 45.6 (6.4)
Joined the evaluation in 2001:
Year-ahead cohort (Control) 52.6 (7.4) 2–27 All in 2001 1 inner city
EC first cohort (EC1) 51.8 (7.1) 3 suburban
EC second cohort (EC2) 51.1 (6.6) 1 large town
1 rural or small town
Joined the evaluation in 2004 (12 schools outside Belfast):
Year-ahead cohort (Control) 50.5 (7.0) 0–30 1 suburban
EC first cohort (EC1) 51.5 (7.0) 2001 (n = 2) 4 large town
EC second cohort (EC2) 50.7 (6.8) 2002 (n = 10) 7 rural or large town
Comparison across cohorts:
Control 49.7 (7.5) 0–76 All of the above
EC1 49.9 (7.2) 0–76 All of the above
EC2 49.3 (7.2) 0–76 All of the above
Note: *Population mean (SD) = 50 (10).

of its pupils as measured by PIPS. In addition, a balance was sought between schools
with the three management types in Northern Ireland; integrated3 (n = 4), state con-
trolled (n = 13) and state maintained4 (n = 7) primary schools. This is a rough
approximation of the relative population of the three management types. As seen in
Table 1, demographic statistics clearly distinguished the high deprivation group in
Belfast from the rest in terms of FSM and intake ability characteristics. Appendix B
contains a flow chart that relates this complex sample to the 10 waves of data collec-
tion.
Participants: sample composition and controls. There were 2095 children (1025 boys)
who contributed to the evaluation at some point. For various reasons―cost, the roll-
ing nature of the evaluation, and absenteeism―not all children were tested on every
occasion and schools joined the evaluation at different times (see Appendix B). For
the Group 3 schools, outcomes data were not available for the early years as the chil-
dren had already progressed further by the time these schools joined the evaluation.
In addition, there were relatively fewer Year 7 children compared to Year 6 because
EC2 children in Group 3 schools had not reached Year 7 when the evaluation ended
(see Appendix A for explanation of year group notation). The average number of
observations per child was 3.2. However, missing data almost always conformed to
missing- at-random criteria. This determined the choice of model in the analysis (see
Appendix C).
There were three successive cohorts of children in each school; controls (one year
ahead of the first intervention cohort, the first intervention cohort itself (denoted
EC1) and the succeeding cohort (denoted EC2). Actual sample sizes in each year
group are given in Table 2. Use of year-ahead control groups minimises the influence
of potential confounding effects, such as differences in school intake, differences in
teachers, and so on.
Table 2. Sample size for each year group
PIPS test N (EC) N (Controls) N (Total)
Baseline 314 278 592

Year 1 177 188 365
Year 2 447 156 603
Year 3 732 307 1039
Year 4* 738 422 1160
Year 5 778 287 1065
Year 6 635 369 1004
Year 7 340 364 704
Note: *End of Key Stage 1 in Northern Ireland
Analysis
The regression model was required to estimate the effect of the intervention sepa-
rately on reading and mathematics, while controlling for other effects such as gender,

age in class, and social background (free school meals) that are known to impact on
scholastic outcomes. It also allowed us to take into account the effects of clustering in
the data—the fact that observations are from the same individuals over time clustered
in schools and that schools are grouped into areas (inner city vs. the rest). The analy-
sis employed a repeated measures random effects difference-in-difference model, esti-
mated by the GLIMMIX command in SAS 9.2 using quasi-maximum likelihood
criteria. Full details of the model are described in Appendix C, specifically how it
deals with the absence of certain baseline data and makes maximum use of the data
that is available.
Variables used in the analysis. Gender and month-of-birth were treated as main
effects by the model.5 FSM was only available at the school level as a covariate,
as several schools did not release FSM data at the individual child level. Conse-
quently, the percentage of free school meals (FSM) at the school level was used
to characterise differences in intake. A dummy variable (inner city) denoted those
schools in the high deprivation group, in order to estimate whether there was any
extra disadvantage in belonging to this group after allowing for social deprivation
as a linear function.
Results
Two models were estimated, one for mathematics and one for reading. The full set of
parameter estimates are shown in Appendix D along with their standard errors, effect
sizes6 and hypothesis tests.
Main effects
Main effects were estimated for pupil gender, birth month (deviation away from Janu-
ary birth), percentage school-level FSM entitlement and school inner-city location
and were considered time invariant, that is, they were estimated to have an impact
that persists over time without interacting with the curriculum choice. The impact of
such variables was thus limited to vertically shifting the expected transition of scores
over time for a pupil either up or down by a fixed amount depending on the sign and
magnitude of the coefficient.
In general the estimated main effects were of the a priori hypothesised sign and in
accordance with the previous literature. However school-level variables were not
found to be statistically significant in either reading or mathematics models.
Pupil-level main effects. The gender variable was found to be negative and statistically
significant in the reading model indicating that, all other things being equal, girls out-
performed boys at each time point. The effect size (ES) was 0.23. For mathematics
the picture was reversed with boys outperforming girls with an ES of 0.03, but this
was not statistically significant.
The month of birth variable was statistically significant in both models, with coeffi-
cients being 0.32 in reading per month and –0.36 in mathematics. The estimated
expected effect sizes at each year between a pupil born at one end of the age spectrum

against another born at the other (i.e., a difference of 12 months) was thus 0.38 in
reading and 0.48 in mathematics.
School-level main effects. School level main effects were variables measured at the
school level which were applied to individual pupils in the pupil level regression
model, i.e., for any given school, each pupil in that school will have the same value of
percentage of pupils eligible for FSM in the regression model. Such variables were
thus intended to capture the systematic impact of school factors on the pupil beyond
the individual circumstances (gender, etc.) of that pupil. Therefore the estimated
parameter on the FSM variable did not capture the impact of the FSM status of the
pupil; rather it was the impact of a school having higher levels of FSM after allowing
the individual pupil characteristics.
In terms of the difference of the impact of school-level FSM between the school
with the highest level centred FSM (51%) and the lowest (–25%) on the individual
pupil, the impact was similar in magnitude to that of the maximum impact of birth
month, with effect sizes of 0.43 and 0.55 points difference between the lowest and
highest FSM schools in mathematics and reading respectively. However the differ-
ences were not statistically significant. Similarly, the inner city school dummy had a
reasonably large effect (approximately 0.4 ES in both reading and mathematics) but
was not statistically significant.
Random effects
The random effects contained in the model were intended to capture not only the
random variation in results that occurs at each time point but also the time-invariant
school and pupil effects which were not captured in the school or pupil variables used
in the regression model, i.e., each school and pupil will have an associated time-
invariant constant term, which similar to the main effects was assumed to have a
systematic impact on the pupil attainment over time. Appendix D shows the model
estimates as covariances whereas we discuss them as standard deviations in this
section. All random components were statistically significant and have broadly the
same values across both reading and mathematics models, thus the following discus-
sion applies to both models.
The school level random effect showed a modest variation between schools that
is independent of the observable characteristics, with on average an approximately
ES of 0.25 difference between the pupils of any pair of schools even after allowing
for observed pupil and school characteristics. As expected, the variation at pupil
level was higher; for any randomly selected pair of pupils, even after allowing for
differences in scores due to their observable characteristics (gender and birth
month) and differences between schools (FSM proportion and school random
effect), then on average there is a difference of approximately 0.7 ES between
pupils in PIPS scores over time. Such a figure can be compared to the coefficients
related to observable characteristics and we can conclude that the influence of fac-
tors related to the unobserved characteristics of pupils outweigh those systematic
effects related to gender or month of birth.

Performance of control and Enriched Curriculum cohorts over time

Mathematics. Figure 1 shows the graphical representation of the regression-cor-
rected expected mean mathematics scores over seven years for the three successive
cohorts in the sample, control, EC1 and EC2. The differences between EC cohorts
and controls at each time point therefore represent the incremental effect of the EC.
The first point to notice is the general shape of the early years pattern. Both cohorts
of EC children significantly underperformed compared with controls at this stage.
For the EC1 cohort, the ES was 0.18 in Year 1 and this increased to 0.57 in Year 2.
For the EC2 cohort, no data were collected in Year 1 and the difference in Year 2 was
less marked than for EC1, with an ES of 0.35. As the EC children moved on to formal
work in their third year, their rapid progress was apparent in the results for the end of
Year 3. Thereafter, the performance of the two EC cohorts differ. While the EC2
cohort showed no significant differences from controls after Year 2, the EC1 cohort
consistently underperformed compared to controls and only achieved parity in Year
6, falling back slightly again in Year 7 to show a significant deficit of 0.14 ES (equiva-
lent to 3.9 months) compared with controls.
54
Controls
EC1
52 EC2
50
PIPS mathematics
48
46
44
42
Y0 Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7
Year group
Figure 1. Regression-model-corrected mean scores for mathematics over time
Reading. Figure 2 shows the graphical representation of the regression-corrected

mean reading scores over seven years for the three successive cohorts in the sample,
control, EC1 and EC2.
Significant differences between EC cohorts and controls, similar to those seen in
mathematics but larger, occurred in the early years. For the EC1 cohort, the ES
was 0.26 in Year 1 and this increased markedly to 0.62 in Year 2. For the EC2
cohort, no data were collected in Year 1. In contrast to the case for mathematics,
the difference in Year 2 was more marked than in Year 1, with an ES of 0.67.
When the majority of EC children had moved to more formal instruction in Year

56
Controls
EC1
54 EC2
52
PIPS reading
50
48
46
44
Y0 Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7
Year group
Figure 2. Regression-model-corrected mean scores for reading over time
3, both EC1 and EC2 cohorts began to catch up with controls. In Year 4, both
cohorts achieved parity with controls. Thereafter, the performance of the two EC
cohorts diverged. In Years 5–7, EC1 children again showed significant deficits
compared with controls of ESs in the range 0.18 (5.6 months) to 0.24
(7.5 months), shadowing but exceeding the decline in the performance of controls
at the same stage. For the EC2 cohort, there was a significant deficit in Year 5 of
ES 0.17 (5.3 months) compared with controls, followed by a positive shift in Years
6 and 7 to mirror the pattern shown by controls.
Additional statistical models

It was notable that while coefficients differed slightly, the overall pattern of results
was highly robust in subgroups of schools and in subgroups of children except when
grouped by ability (a further paper to explore this effect is in preparation). Alternative
statistical models, such as fixed effect models, also gave similar results.
Discussion
Preliminary points
Before proceeding with the main discussion about the impact of the EC on the out-
comes, some preliminary methodological points will be acknowledged and some
comments on the findings from the main effects analyses will be made. This was not a
randomised control trial and schools were self-selecting, so we must be cautious
about generalising the findings. Also, because of the different times at which schools
joined the evaluation, longitudinal data were not available for the full seven years for

all schools. Nevertheless, the sample was reasonably large and representative of pri-
mary schools in Northern Ireland, and the year-ahead classes from the same schools
provided a well matched control sample. For example, picture vocabulary and non-
verbal reasoning test scores were available for all cohorts from Year 2 to Year 7, and
showed that the mean developed abilities or proxy IQ scores for the three samples
were almost identical (Control mean = 49.7; EC1 mean = 49.9; EC2 mean = 49.3,
see Table 1). Also, the robust nature of many of the findings across different sub-
groups of pupils, leads us to have confidence in the overall patterns that have been
reported. In addition, the three cohorts of classes were taught by a substantial number
of the same teachers (66%), with higher levels of stability across any two cohorts
(e.g., 88% of Year 1 teachers taught both control and EC1, 71% taught EC1 and
EC2). This level of teacher variation probably reflects what would happen in the roll-
out of any new curriculum.
Moreover, findings from the main effects analyses confirmed established patterns.
As found by Sammons et al. (2007) in the UK EPPE study, girls were better at read-
ing than boys and significantly so, while boys were marginally better, but not signifi-
cantly better, at mathematics. Being young in your class was shown to have negative
effects on attainment, a pattern that is now emerging from different investigations
(Bedard & Dhuey, 2006; Crawford et al., 2007). The effects of socio-economic
disadvantage, measured by free school meals at school level, were in the predicted
direction but were not statistically significant, revealing substantial individual varia-
tion between schools that was not captured by the variables we have included in this
analysis.
Key findings with regard to the EC

The introduction of the play-based EC had no positive effects and some negative
effects on the children’s reading and mathematics test scores as they progressed
through primary school. By the end of primary school, there were no significant
differences between the second EC and control classes while significant deficits
remained between the first EC cohort and controls. In terms of effect sizes, the
difference was larger for reading (ES = .23) than for mathematics (EC = .14).
The patterns were very different in the short-term (Years 1-4) versus the medium-
term (Years 5–7), with some additional differences emerging between the two EC
cohorts in the upper primary years. These will now be considered in more detail.
All teachers (N = 260) who had either taught EC children or who had subse-
quently received EC children into their classrooms were interviewed (McGuinness
et al., 2009b) and we will draw on that information when interpreting the
findings.
Short-term outcomes: Years 1–4

Short-term outcomes in the early years confirm that the Enriched Curriculum had an
immediate impact on reading and mathematics attainment, with EC children signifi-
cantly underperforming compared with controls in the first two years; effect sizes
were moderate and the ubiquity of this pattern across schools tends to validate

treating the EC as a single intervention. By Year 3, the pattern was markedly chang-
ing; a recovery for EC children was underway and by Year 4, the gap had almost
closed. This pattern is consistent with the lack of formal teaching of reading and arith-
metic in the EC classes in Years 1 and 2, at a stage when the PIPS tests were designed
to match the more formal approach in the English curriculum. As more structured
teaching was introduced in Years 3 and 4, EC children caught up quickly, as had been
expected by teachers and training staff, based on their perceptions of the performance of
children in other European countries who begin formal reading instruction only at
age six or seven. Nevertheless, problems were experienced by some Year 3 teachers
(McGuinness et al., 2009b) in terms of the mismatch between teacher expectations
and children’s actual performance on joining these classes; many felt unprepared to
teach children at such an early stage of reading development. This mismatch was
particularly acute for Year 3 teachers who taught the first EC cohort. Importantly, in
the second year of implementation, Year 3 teachers were more prepared for the devel-
opmental stage of the second cohort of EC children who arrived in their classroom
and the test scores probably reflect this. So it cannot be excluded that the process of
change itself, as well as the specifics of change, contributed to some extent to the out-
comes observed. Even highly experienced teachers can behave more like novices
when confronted with unfamiliar pedagogical situations (e.g., Rich, 1993, describing
the introduction of co-operative learning groups); certainly several teachers in the EC
sample reported feeling ‘deskilled’ in the first year. Almost all early years teachers
expressed the conviction that they would ‘do it better’ in subsequent years. Neverthe-
less, whatever the difficulties encountered, the reading test scores for both EC cohorts
matched the control cohort in Year 4.
Medium-term outcomes: Years 5–7

In Years 5–7, the pattern presents a different picture from that in the earliest years.
While the advantage in attainment almost always remained with controls, differences
were more modest and not always significant. Two other features are notable. Firstly,
in general the EC performance in mathematics was slightly better than the perfor-
mance in reading. Secondly, the EC2 cohort slightly outperformed the EC1 cohort,
with the effect more marked and statistically significant only in reading, suggesting a
bedding-down effect for the new curriculum. It is important to realise that the better
performance of the EC2 cohort in later years was not likely to be due to teachers
returning to their pre-existing pedagogy in Years 1 and 2. For example, EC2 children
had lower scores in reading in Year 2 than EC1 children, suggesting that teachers had
continued with the more informal approach to reading consistent with a play-based
pedagogy. Before examining possible reasons for the differences between the two EC
cohorts, we need first to consider the possibility that, while the variation between the
different cohorts can plausibly be linked to EC practices in the first years of school,
any variation between the cohorts in the later primary school years might be attribut-
able to random variation or to some other systematic effects, such as teacher effects
(Tymms et al., 2009). Moreover, it could be argued that, since both EC cohorts
matched the controls at Year 4, then any subsequent variation in performance is not
necessarily linked to pedagogical differences experienced in the early years. We can-

not rule this out completely. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to make the link
and to examine the differences in implementation practices between the two EC
cohorts and their possible medium-term impacts. While there was year-on-year varia-
tion even in the control classes, the advantage (when there was one) was always statis-
tically with the control group. Despite reaching parity with the control group at Year
4, the EC cohorts (particular the first cohort) were particularly challenged by the Year
5 tests where, in reading, there was a shift in difficulty towards comprehension items
that required substantial reading under timed conditions. This would suggest that the
decoding skills of the EC children were not sufficiently automatic for more challeng-
ing comprehension tests (e.g., Thurlow & van den Broek, 1997) and that again, they
needed to catch up. In Figure 2, the catching up can be seen in the EC2 cohort but
not in EC1. Interview evidence with the teachers throughout the schools confirmed
that there was greater recognition about the implications of the EC in the second year
and teachers made efforts to adjust their practices accordingly—with more or less suc-
cess as the reading test scores indicate.
Although the EC also eschewed mathematics work schemes, there were strong
indications in the interview data that mathematics presented fewer problems for
teachers. They were less anxious about mathematics because they believed that
although children were less advanced in recorded mathematics in Years 1 and 2,
their conceptual understanding and mental mathematics were superior to that of
controls. Despite this, the EC children did not significantly outperform the control
children at any point. A possible reason is that the poorer reading levels had indi-
rect and negative effects on mathematics performance. Since mathematics tests in
Key Stage 2 were taken under greater time pressure, subtle differences in reading
fluency could assume importance in the mathematics tests because lack of automa-
ticity in reading would detract from the cognitive resources available for complet-
ing the mathematics questions, thus slowing the children down (e.g., Vilenius-
Tuohimaa et al., 2008).
What are the implications of these findings for developmentally appropriate and play-based
curricula and associated pedagogies?
The implications of the findings will be considered with reference to the specific con-
text of the EC in Northern Ireland and, drawing from that, will identify the lessons to
be learned for other educational systems with regard to implementation and expecta-
tions about outcomes in the short and medium term.
In common with most developmentally appropriate and play-based curricula,
the EC in Northern Ireland had expectations for children beyond literacy and
numeracy outcomes. The research team have previously reported about the posi-
tive effects of the EC compared to the traditional curriculum on the quality of the
children’s immediate experiences, using a structured classroom observation schedule
(Walsh et al., 2005). This is the first publication to report on the literacy and
numeracy outcomes for the children and several others are in preparation examin-
ing different child outcomes (e.g., attitudes to learning, dispositions) and teachers’
experiences.

Given previous expectations about young children’s reading and mathematics

development in the early years of primary school, as defined through test norms
and teachers’ expectations, the EC curriculum did not meet those expectations in
the short term. In those first two to three years of school, the EC children’s reading
and mathematics test scores were substantially poorer than children following the
traditional curriculum where formal instruction began immediately or very close to
school entry. In contrast, by the end of primary school, there was no difference
between the EC children and the controls—for the second EC cohort, when the
curriculum was bedded down. Despite the earlier differences in test scores, the sec-
ond EC cohort caught up. In contrast, for those children who had experienced the
first year of implementation, their reading scores remained behind the controls by
7.5 months in reading and 3.9 months in mathematics, at the end of primary
school. If the difference between the EC and traditional curriculum is characterised
as a difference in the starting age of formal reading/mathematics instruction, then
comparisons can be made between these findings and other lines of research. From
international comparisons between countries with different starting school ages,
and by implication different starting ages of formal instruction, the general expecta-
tion is that those who start later catch up and recent analyses from the PISA 2006
data on students’ literacy performance at age 15 tends to confirm this (Suggate,
2009).
However, the international data are difficult to interpret directly because of
language differences (e.g., different orthographies), differences between countries in
children’s pre-school and kindergarten experiences, as well as differences in cultural
expectations about the purposes of early years education. Very recently, Suggate et al.
(2012) was able to test more specific hypotheses about the effects of beginning
reading-instruction-age, comparing English speaking New Zealand children in state
schools and Steiner schools, who begin formal reading instruction at five years and
close to seven years respectively. Although there were clear differences between the
two groups until age eight, the late starters did catch up and marginally outperformed
the early starters by age 11. These authors noted particularly the rich oral language
that was typical of the Steiner approach throughout primary school, raising again the
question that there may be several routes to achieving the same end point with regard
to reading.
The general point here is that developing pre-reading skills and teaching reading in
a developmentally appropriate way, where the shift to formal instruction is prompted
by the child’s ‘readiness’ rather than by curriculum requirements, demands high lev-
els of professional skill and knowledge about developmental pathways and the relative
contributions of decoding skills and oral language to later reading development (e.g.,
Paris, 2005). When implementing curriculum changes, curriculum planners and
schools often underestimate the new professional demands on teachers and the lead-
in time to establish the new approaches. For example, school principals from the 24
EC evaluation schools, who were interviewed towards the end of the evaluation per-
iod (McGuinness et al., 2009b,) and asked to look back on their experiences of imple-
menting the EC over a period of six or seven years, commented thus. The EC took

more than one year (and sometimes several years) to become ‘settled’ practice in their
Year 1 and Year 2 classrooms, and was subject to adjustment and refinement espe-
cially after the first year. Also, the school principals recognised that changes in the
early years classrooms could not be confined to the early years but had implications
for the whole school.
While acknowledging that the experiences of these 24 schools in Northern Ireland
who volunteered to participate in this innovative curriculum and evaluation are con-
text specific and indeed time-bound (especially in Northern Ireland, where the find-
ings have already informed the design of the Foundation Stage of new curriculum),
there are lessons here for other educational systems that are about to embark, or have
recently embarked, on similar innovations. Play-based curriculum designers need to
have clear expectations with regard to outcomes for literacy and numeracy—they
need to design the curriculum around explicit knowledge about literacy and numer-
acy developmental pathways (and even alternative pathways), to provide the class-
room teachers with extensive professional development and support, and to recognise
the consequences for the whole school.
Lastly, there is an important general message with regard to the evaluation of
educational interventions. The differences between the first and second interven-
tion cohorts, between the short- and medium-term outcomes and the emergence
of issues of intervention coherence and fidelity point to the danger of making
judgments about major interventions too quickly. By their nature, the effects of
such interventions are complex and far-reaching and their full impact cannot be
clear without a correspondingly wide-ranging and carefully designed evaluation. In
the Enriched Curriculum project, the other major strands of the evaluation pro-
vided corroborating data for many of the reports from parents and interviews with
teachers and school principals that allowed increased confidence in the quantita-
tive findings. For a more general overview of the lessons learned and new direc-
tions suggested from evaluating the Enriched Curriculum, see Walsh et al. (2010,
2011).
NOTES
1
See Appendix A for table of correspondence between the English and Northern Ireland year groups.
2
Equivalent to a Local Education Authority in England.
3
Schools specifically set up to cross the religious divide in Northern Ireland.
4
Schools managed by the Catholic Council for Maintained Schools.
5
At the time of the study, it should be noted that children of non-indigenous ethnicity were a very small propor-
tion of the population in Northern Ireland and did not tend to have English Language problems. Therefore
there was no EAL variable.
6
The effect size is the standardised mean difference between two groups and is expressed in terms of units of
standard deviation. For example, if an effect size = .20, it means that the difference between the two groups is
one fifth of a standard deviation.
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Appendix A. Comparison of year groups in England and

Northern Ireland
Age in years 4–5 5–6 6–7 7–8 8–9 9–10 10–11
NI year group Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 Year 7
English year group Reception Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

Appendix B. Flow Chart of Sampling and Data Collection
Appendix C. Model description

The model criteria were fulfilled by a repeated measures, random effects, difference-
in-difference model, estimated by the GLIMMIX command in SAS 9.2 using quasi-
maximum likelihood. The rationale is as follows.
As several observations are recorded per pupil the data may be described as
repeated measures data. Single observations (level 1 units) were clustered within indi-
viduals (level 2 units) clustered within schools (level 3 units) clustered within areas
(inner city or not, level 4 units). With such models it is especially important to
account for the clustering within pupils as typically, there will be significantly more
variation between individuals in general than between occasions within individuals.

According to Goldstein (2011) there are two types of models that may be consid-
ered for this type of data; (i) a conditional model which takes earlier measurements
and uses them as covariates on the right-hand side of any equation that explains a
later outcome measurement, or (ii), an unconditional model which recognises the
multilevel structure of the data and in which all measurements are treated as observed
responses appearing only on the left-hand side of any regression equation. In the con-
text of this particular analysis Goldstein shows that there is a clear preferred model,
the repeated measures model.
The repeated measure approach recognises the Year 0 observation as just one
more outcome which, in this case, contains information on the underlying pupil
ability without any influence of curriculum choice. For observations beyond Year
0, each observation will be a function of pupil ability and the influence of the cur-
riculum, so long as the regression design matrix is structured so that we can disen-
tangle these effects (and by interacting years by curriculum with the exception of
Year 0 it is), then the model can be used to identify the impact of curriculum tak-
ing into account differing pupil abilities without having to have a Year 0 observa-
tion.
In terms of missing data, a complete discussion of the impact of missing data in
repeated measures models is contained in Section 5.9 of Goldstein (2011). Provided
missing data conforms to missing at random (MAR) criteria, ‘balanced data are not a
requirement for efficient results’. There is thus no a priori need to impute data to fill
missing results provided the absent data is not related to any factor which might influ-
ence outcomes. If certain schools had been excluded because their Year 0 results were
especially high or low that year, we could not class the data as MAR. In this case, we
know the nature of mechanism causing the missing data—exogenous administrative
factors that are not caused by the outcomes of the trial. This knowledge then allows
us to define and understand the consequences of the missing data without having to
rely on untestable assumptions. By including school effects on the RHS of the regres-
sion equation we are explicitly conditioning on the source of any bias and thus obtain
unbiased results of the curriculum.
The full model is given by:
pipsjkl ¼ b0 þ b1 genjkl þ b2 birth monthjkl þ b3 sch fsm1 þ

b4 inner1 þ b5 yr1jkl þ b6 EC1yr1jkl þ b7 yr3jkl þ b8 EC1yr2jkl þ
b9 EC2yr2jkl þ b10 yr3jkl þ b11 EC1yr3jkl þ b12 EC2yr3jkl þ b13 yr4jkl þ
b14 EC1yr4jkl þ b15 EC2yr4jkl þ b16 yr5jkl þ b17 EC1yr5jkl
þ b18 EC2yr5jkl þ b19 yr6jkl þ b20 EC1yr6jkl þ b21 EC2yr6jkl þ
b22 yr7jkl þ b23 EC1yr7jkl þ b24 EC2yr7jkl þ 1kl þ ml þ ejkl
where:
pipsjkl refers to the PIPS score of observation j from individual k in school l,
b0 is the constant term applicable at all time points,
b1genjkl is the gender term for individual k, zero for females,
b2birth_monthjkl is the month-of-birth term for individual k, zero for January,

b3sch_fsml is the percentage of FSM term for school l,

b4innerl is the inner city term for school l, zero for non-deprived schools,
b5yr1jkl represents the impact of conventional curriculum at end of Y1
b6EC1yr1jkl represents the incremental impact of the EC in Y1 on the kth individual
in the EC1 cohort, i.e. in addition to the previous term, with similar terms continuing
for each year but including terms such as for the EC2 cohort from Y3 onwards,
m1 Nð0; r2m Þ is the random effects term for the lth school,
b12EC2yr3jkl 1kl Nð0; r21 Þ is the random effects term for the kth individual in
school l, such that the time-invariant underlying ability for pupil k in school l is given
by 1kl þ ml , and
ejkl N(0, r2) is the random error term associated with the jth observation for
individual k in school l.
Furthermore,
EðVl jXjkl Þ ¼ Eð1kl jXjkl Þ ¼ Eðejkl jXjkl Þ ¼ 0
Source: Goldstein (2011).
Appendix D. Multilevel model-estimated coefficients for

PIPS reading and mathematics outcomes
Reading Mathematics
Effect Std. Effect

Coefficient Std. error size Coefficient error size
Constant 52.94*** 0.93 50.87*** 0.98

Main effects
Gender Boy 2.27*** 0.36 0.23 + 0.32 0.34 +0.03
Month Per month 0.32*** 0.05 0.03 0.36*** 0.05 0.04
of birth ( wrt Jan)
School % Per % point 0.07 0.06 0.01 0.06 0.06 0.01
FSM
Inner city High deprivation 3.90 3.07 0.39 3.61 3.23 0.36
Control group 2-way interactions with time
Baseline 0 0
Year 1 3.20*** 0.51 0.32 1.88*** 0.50 0.19
Year 2 0.28 0.52 0.03 0.87 0.51 0.09
Year 3 +0.94* 0.45 +0.09 +1.50*** 0.43 +0.15
Year 4 -0.81* 0.38 0.08 0.23 0.37 0.02
Year 5 +0.30 0.45 +0.03 +0.56 0.44 +0.06
Year 6 1.01* 0.41 0.10 +1.92*** 0.40 +0.09
Year 7 1.66*** 0.42 0.17 +2.00*** 0.41 +0.20

Appendix D. (Continued)
Reading Mathematics
Effect Std. Effect

Coefficient Std. error size Coefficient error size
First EC cohort incremental effect (in addition to control 9 time effect): Control 9 EC1 9 time
Year 1 2.59*** 0.66 0.26 1.78** 0.64 0.18
Year 2 6.18*** 0.62 0.62 5.74*** 0.60 0.57
Year 3 1.92* 0.54 0.19 1.15* 0.52 0.12
Year 4 0.85 0.49 0.09 1.16* 0.47 0.12
Year 5 1.81*** 0.54 0.18 1.04* 0.52 0.10
Year 6 1.90*** 0.50 0.19 0.61 0.48 0.06
Year 7 2.39*** 0.55 0.23 1.42** 0.53 0.14
Second EC cohort incremental effect (in addition to control x time effect): Control x EC2 x time
Year 2 6.66*** 0.69 0.67 3.48*** 0.67 0.35
Year 3 1 .23*** 0.56 0.12 0.30 0.54 0.03
Year 4 0.17 0.52 0.02 0.53 0.50 0.05
Year 5 1.71** 0.55 0.17 0.73 0.53 0.07
Year 6 +0.35 0.57 +0.04 +0.02 0.55 +0.00
Year 7 0.41 0.73 0.04 1.38 0.70 0.14
Model variance statistics
r2m (school re) School level 6.10 2.33 7.12 2.59
r21 (pupil re) Pupil level 50.07 1.96 44.84 1.77
r2e (error term) Error variance 23.46 0.51 22.12 0.48
Notes: Significant coefficients are shown in bold type. Levels: *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

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British Educational Research Journal

Vol. 40, No. 5, October 2014, pp. 772–795

Impact of a play-based curriculum in the

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Previous research in developmentally appropriate practice

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

The policy context—national and local

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

The nature of the Enriched Curriculum (EC)

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Later, it transpired that some children continued to be unprepared to move on

Teacher training, teacher support and implementation. Curriculum development work

The wider evaluation and the specific research question

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Table 1. Sample characteristics

Note: *Population mean (SD) = 50 (10).

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Table 2. Sample size for each year group

PIPS test N (EC) N (Controls) N (Total)

Baseline 314 278 592

Note: *End of Key Stage 1 in Northern Ireland

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Performance of control and Enriched Curriculum cohorts over time

Figure 1. Regression-model-corrected mean scores for mathematics over time

Reading. Figure 2 shows the graphical representation of the regression-corrected

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Figure 2. Regression-model-corrected mean scores for reading over time

Additional statistical models

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Key findings with regard to the EC

Short-term outcomes: Years 1–4

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Medium-term outcomes: Years 5–7

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Given previous expectations about young children’s reading and mathematics

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Appendix A. Comparison of year groups in England and

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Appendix B. Flow Chart of Sampling and Data Collection

Appendix C. Model description

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

pipsjkl ¼ b0 þ b1 genjkl þ b2 birth monthjkl þ b3 sch fsm1 þ

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

b3sch_fsml is the percentage of FSM term for school l,

EðVl jXjkl Þ ¼ Eð1kl jXjkl Þ ¼ Eðejkl jXjkl Þ ¼ 0

Source: Goldstein (2011).

Appendix D. Multilevel model-estimated coefficients for

Effect Std. Effect

Constant 52.94*** 0.93 50.87*** 0.98

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

Effect Std. Effect

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

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Constant 52.94* 0.93 50.87* 0.98