Competent Children, Competent Learners

Technical report 2 from the age 16 phase of the longitudinal Competent Children, Competent Learners study. This report covers any impact still discernible at age 16, and provides the technical details of the analysis. The main findings of this analysis are included in the companion summary report.

This summary reports the key findings about the associations between early childhood education experience and young people’s competency levels at age 16

The Competent Children, Competent Learners project is a longitudinal study which began in 1993. It follows the progress of around 500 young people from early childhood education through into secondary school. The project is funded by the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER).

The Competent Children, Competent Learners study is a longitudinal study of a sample of New Zealand young people, who have been followed from their final early childhood education centres in the Wellington region.

The Competent Children, Competent Learners project is funded by the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER). It is a longitudinal study which focuses on a group of about 500 students from the greater Wellington region (Wellington, Hutt, Kapiti, Wairarapa).

This report focuses on the competency levels and development of competencies for 475 14-year-olds, as part of the Competent Children, Competent Learners project, which is a longitudinal study of a sample of New Zealand young people who have been followed from their final early childhood education centres in the Wellington region.

This report adds to the research literature on the effects of early childhood education (ECE) by providing findings that show how differences in ECE experience are reflected in differences in performance at age 14, for the Competent Children, Competent Learners sample. In general, the difference between those who had the highest or most level of a particular aspect of ECE experience and others was around 9 percentage points (out of 100), which is a reasonable size difference.

This technical report has been written to stand alongside the fourth report on the Competent Children, Competent Learners study at 14, Growing Independence (Wylie & Hipkins, 2006). The report tells the story carried in the data, and this technical report provides the basis of the story: it describes the methodology used to analyse the data (and the software used to do so), and provides more detail of the results (more numbers to ponder over).

This report is one of four that describes the cohort at age 14, with analysis of the experiences and resources that are linked to differences in performance and engagement in school and learning in mid-adolescence in New Zealand.

Most of the Competent Children, Competent Learners study sample changed school when they went on to secondary level. This transition often involved some marked change in the characteristics of the school they attended—moving to a much larger school, or to a single-sex school. Friends were often lost in the process—but they were also gained. But secondary school offered students a wider range of experiences, rather than a totally new world.

This is the fifth report from the Competent Children longitudinal study, which is following a sample of Wellington region children as they grow from young children who attended an early childhood education centre, through their school attendance.

This is the forth report from the Competent Children longitudinal study, which is following a sample of Wellington region children as they grow from young children who attended an early childhood education centre, through their school attendance.

This is the third report from the Competent Children longitudinal study, which is following a sample of Wellington region children as they grow from young children who attended an early childhood education centre, through their school attendance.

This is the second report from the Competent Children longitudinal study, which is following a sample of Wellington region children as they grow from young children who attended an early childhood education centre, through their school attendance.

This is the first report from the Competent Children longitudinal study, which is following a sample of Wellington region children as they grow from young children who attended an early childhood education centre, through their school attendance.

This report outlines an early part of the Competent Children project: an action research study of six months in the lives of 10 children aged between 4 and 5 years. Using recent advances in theory about how children learn to think, researchers worked with the children's parents and early childhood education teachers to help them observe the children and plan ways to enhance their learning.

In January 1992, the Ministry of Education began funding the Competent Children longitudinal study, to look at the effects of early childhood contexts on children. The first-stage funding allowed the research team to undertake a pilot study for the main longitudinal project, and to conduct an action research study of a small number of children to examine the effects of intervening in their curriculum for learning at home and in early childhood settings.