Early years programme boosts young children’s maths skills by three months

Today, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published a new report that provides more evidence of the benefits on young children’s learning and development of providing structured professional development and support to staff working in early years settings.

The independent evaluation of Maths Champions, delivered by the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) and undertaken by a team from the University of York and Durham University, aimed to find out if the programme which focused on professional development for staff could improve young children’s (three – four-year-olds) maths skills.

The evaluation used a randomised controlled trial (RCT) design as a fair test to explore the effectiveness of the programme by comparing outcomes from nurseries which implemented the programme with outcomes from nurseries in a control group.

The evaluators found that children who took part in the Maths Champions programme made, on average, three months’ additional progress in both maths and language development compared to a similar group of children who didn’t take part in the programme. These findings have a high degree of security, meaning we can be confident in the results.