Researchers were asked by the Department of Education to look at the factors affecting the development of five-year-old children across England as part of IELS (sometimes known as Baby PISA), organised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
They found that low birthweight is associated with ‘statistically significantly’ lower levels of emergent literacy, emergent numeracy, working memory and physical development at age five.
The largest development gap was found in physical development, which was equivalent to approximately nine months, while these children were also three months behind in emergent literacy, and four months behind in emergent numeracy and working memory. Children’s social-emotional development was not affected.
Eleven percent of the sample of 2,577 children from 191 schools in England weighed 2.5 kg or less at birth, which is the national definition of low birth weight. As a representational sample, this is slightly more than the national average of just under seven per cent.
Low birthweight is associated with a variety of factors ranging from being a young mother; to pregnancy complications; premature birth and maternal health issues involving nutrition, smoking and alcohol intake.
Caroline Sharp, research director at NFER, whose team analysed the study that was carried out between 2017 and 2020, told Nursery World, ‘In our sample, there were more children who had low birthweight than premature birth alone, the latter which is widely associated with low birthweight. Health visitors are concerned about premature birthweight but it’s not something that’s usually highlighted past the early months of development.
‘This research, however, demonstrates the impact that low birthweight can have on young children’s development across a number of measures. It is not the intention to give parents another thing to worry about. But this new information shows that we must raise awareness of this issue, monitor the development of children with low birthweight for longer, and provide additional support for their development in these areas.’
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
The report, published today (1 December) also found that children’s physical development is significantly related to deprivation and gender.
It states that children who were eligible for free school meals were ‘on average eight months’ behind’ their more affluent peers for physical development. And five-year-old girls were on average nine months ahead of boys.
Ms Sharp said, ‘This correlates with the 2018 EYFS profile results, which showed that children eligible for free school meals scored an average of nine percentage points lower in moving and handling than children who were not eligible for school meals.
‘Some people might assume that boys will have done better in physical development than girls, and this could be simply because of the way in which the measure was taken. For example, it includes fine and gross motor development. And some of it is about their ability to do things with control – for example, jump off an object and land in controlled way; or how quickly they adjust to speed and changing direction.’
Persistent children, however, were rated more than 12 months’ ahead in their physical development than five year-olds classified as ‘rarely or never’ persistent.
Ms Sharp said, ‘We were surprised to find how much persistence correlated with other areas. For example, teachers who rated children as ‘often or always’ persistent at the age of five were also approximately 11 months ahead of their peers in emergent literacy, and eight months ahead in emergent numeracy.’
Another surprising finding was that girls were two months ahead of boys in emergent literacy but the same as boys in emergent numeracy. The report says, ‘The lack of gender difference in emergent numeracy was unexpected given the higher performance of girls in mathematics in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) results (DfE, 2018).’
ART ACTIVITES
The research also showed that children who drew or painted at home three or four times a week showed evidence of better physical development than those that did not, equivalent to five months’ difference.
Physical development covers gross motor skills, such as the ability to run and jump, as well as fine motor skills, such as using scissors to cut around a shape or putting on a coat without help.
The report provides evidence of other simple activities parents can do to aid their children’s development at age five; including reading to them every day; making sure they have access to children’s books at home; having regular conversations about their feelings, and being involved with their school.
Ms Sharp concluded, ‘As we count the cost of the pandemic on children’s development and wellbeing, these findings feel particularly important. We know that too many pupils, particularly the most deprived, have been so adversely affected over the past year, and this research gives new insight into how we can best support those most at risk.’
BACKGROUND
OECD’s International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study was published earlier this year. Modelled on the cross-national Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of 15-year-olds, IELS was quickly labelled the ‘Baby PISA’ when it was introduced in 2017. It received criticism from some for being another mass testing approach.
Details of the follow-on to the report, National Summary Report, published on 1 December can be found at National Foundation for Educational Research (nfer.ac.uk)