Kindergarten readiness predicts Ontario pupils' math through Grade 9

The University of Toronto said research from its Ontario Institute for Studies in Education found kindergarten readiness can predict math achievement as late as Grade 9. The question was how far readiness reaches, and which kind matters most.

Ontario kindergarten teachers fill out the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a measure of school readiness, for each child roughly every three years. Researchers linked those results for more than 25,000 children to math assessments in Grades 3, 6 and 9.

The strongest and most consistent predictor was language and cognitive readiness. Less ready children tended to score lower from Grade 3, and the gaps largely persisted into Grade 9. Lead author Fatemeh Ameli said, though, that early readiness predicts later achievement but does not determine a child’s future.

Yahoo Canada reported that most variation in math achievement lies among individual students, not schools or boards. Ontario’s full-day kindergarten, introduced more than a decade ago, was designed partly to give all children more time to build early skills; the authors say their results support universal early investment.

Sources: University of Toronto · Yahoo Canada · McMaster University · OISE, University of Toronto