The effect of ECEC process quality on school performance and the mediating role of early social skills

The study investigates the correlation between process quality in kindergarten and school performance in Year 5 of primary school, and how early social skills may serve as an intermediary factor. The aim of the study is to understand how educational practices and structured activities in kindergarten can contribute to children’s development of social skills, which can further affect their school performance.

The results show that educational practices in kindergarten can have a small but noticeable impact on children’s school performance, and that this impact occurs through the development of social skills. In particular, these practices influenced performance in mathematics and reading, but not English. Structured activities in kindergarten, however, showed no significant effect on school performance through social skills. The study suggests that the quality of interactions and the educational content in kindergarten can play an important role in developing children’s social skills. In turn, it can have an impact on their later school performance, even if the effect is small.

The study includes data from 7431 Norwegian children who participated in the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). Kindergarten teachers assessed the quality of educational practices and structured activities when the children were five years old. The children were followed up until the age of eleven, where school performance was measured through national tests in mathematics, reading and English. Social skills were measured as a latent variable based on teacher assessments, and structural equation models (SEM) were used to analyse the indirect effects of process quality on school performance.

Eliassen, E., Brandlistuen, R. E., & Wang, M. V. (2024). The effect of ECEC process quality on school performance and the mediating role of early social skills. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 32(2), 325–338.

Online year: 2023

Issue year: 2024

Review year: 2023