How Does Pre-School Attendance Affect School Performance? An Application of Gini-Bma Methodology on PISA 2018 Dataset

Evidence flourishes in the literature of a direct link between asymmetries in pre-primary education and achievement test scores in the primary school. However, children tend to reap the greatest benefits if school programmes are of high quality. Premised on this commonality between pre-primary education and academic achievement in the primary school, and considering variations in quality indicators relative to students’,schools’ and families’ characteristics, this study mainly investigates the effect of universal pre-school education on the students’ academic results in 22 OECD and non-OECD countries. Data are obtained from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018. Employing a Gini Regression Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) approach to account for theory uncertainty we find that attendance of preprimary institutions has a beneficial impact on PISA test scores for 15-year-old students in most of the countries. However, there are cases where early childhood coincides with a decline in students’ outcomes in both reading and science