We’ve shown before (a few times) that literacy at Key Stage 1 (KS1) has an impact on pupils’ outcomes in GCSE English at age 16. But we’ve never been able to look at its impact on longer-term outcomes, like the chances of studying for a degree or being employed. That’s what we’ll be doing today.
Specifically, following on from our previous work, where we showed the negative impact of disadvantage on outcomes like these, we ask: how far can early literacy skills mitigate the effects of long-term disadvantage?
We’ll be using an extract[1] from the DfE’s Longitudinal Education Outcomes dataset (LEO) linked to the National Pupil Database (NPD). From that, we identify a cohort of around 600,000 pupils born between 1st September 1996 and 31st August 1997. These pupils would typically have taken Key Stage 1 tests in 2004, and Key Stage 4 exams in 2013.
We start by grouping pupils into three bands by their scores in KS1 reading and writing tests: low, medium and high.
