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Reception year teachers most important for primary education

A good reception year teacher makes the biggest difference to primary school education, according to research released last week by Durham University. The figures come from an assessment of over 70,000 children from Durham University’s Curriculum, Evaluation and Management (CEM) Centre.

The research suggests that while each year of school is important, the earlier years are the most crucial. A modest boost in reception year is still detectable in the final year of primary schooling at the age of 11, equivalent to an improvement of about a fifth of a level in a child’s SAT test results. This can be added to by boosts in later years.

Professor Peter Tymms, Director of Durham’s CEM Centre said: “This work reinforces research which shows early years education is critical for children’s later cognitive development and that while attention should of course be given to every year of education, more value should be placed on the most sensitive times, the first few years.

“Currently in England the primary school league tables have prompted schools to concentrate on generating the greatest gains in children’s attainment in Year 6, to coincide with the year in which pupils sit the Government SAT tests from whose results the primary school league tables are published. This research shows that schools could well be misplacing some of their key resources and need to look carefully at their reception teaching and attainment of the children in this year group.”

The research also revealed the opposite was true, that setbacks in a child’s reception year could still be creating negative repercussions for his/her schooling six years later.Â

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .