The contribution of quality early childhood education and its impacts on the beginning of fundamental education

Abstract

This article presents results from a research whose objectives were to evaluate the quality of early childhood education (ECE) in six Brazilian state capitals (quality assessment) and, then, identify differences in school performance of children at the beginning of fundamental education (FE) associate to their attending a good quality ECE school (impact assessment). The impact assessment made use of the results of the quality assessment obtained from the application of grades of quality evaluation to a sample of pre-schools situated in three Brazilian state capitals. These results indicate that the quality level has been compromised in the majority of the institutions evaluated. The sample for the impact assessment was constituted by 762 students from public schools with grades in the Provinha Brasil [National Literacy Exam], from which 605 had attended a pre-school evaluated in the quality assessment, and 157 children who had not attended ECE. The data were treated by multilevel/hierarchical analysis with cross classification, which makes it possible to take into account, simultaneously, the effect of several explicative variables (characteristics of pupils and their families; of the ECE schools and FE schools) upon the results of the response variable (second-year students' grades in the Provinha Brasil). The impact assessment reveals that attending a good quality pre-school has positive effect in the performance of students in the Provinha Brasil. The analyses also indicate that the child's age is an important factor for the results obtained in that exam, as well as mother's level of schooling, family income, and the Ideb result of the ECE attended.