The effective provision of pre-school education (EPPE) project is a longitudinal study that investigates the care and development of young children from age three to seven years. It focuses on the effects of children in different types of preschool provision and concentrates on their intellectual, social and behavioural characteristics. It also focuses on factors affecting the child’s development such as interaction between child, family and their preschool environment (Melhuish, E. And Petrogiannis, K, 2006).
In order to investigate the characteristics of pre school the EPPE team collected a wide range of information on more than 3000 children from 141pre school centres. They collected information on the characteristics and quality of these pre-school settings, and also on the children’s parents and family and home environments (Department for Education, 2012). The children who were selected to participate started the study at age 3 an upward until age 7 (Authority of the House of Commons, 2010). Data was collected based upon a child’s cognitive language and social development in each stage of their life. The sample was selected from six types of pre-schools in England attended by the children: private day nurseries, nursery schools, nursery classes, integrated centres and local authority day nurseries. A sample of children who had no or minimum pre school experience, were selected to participate in comparison with children in pre school groups to see if there were any differences between both groups intellectual and social/behavioural development (EPPE Project: Final Report, pdf).
Findings showed that disadvantage children benefit from high quality pre-school experiences, especially if they attended a setting with children from a wide range of social backgrounds rather than a setting only consisting of other disadvantaged children. Advantaged children did equally well whether they were in a pre