Master Theses

Master Thesis Chair:
Daniel Münich

Abstract:

Pre-school education improves cognitive and non-cognitive skills of children, and the positive effects persist to adulthood. The literature provides rich evidence of beneficial effects of pre-school, some of them even causal. However, most studies come from the US, and the research lacks a comprehensive picture of European countries concerning pre-school education. I contribute to the research by providing a comparison of European countries regarding pre-school attendance, pre-school skills, and test scores in fourth grade. In Section 3, I focus on the Czech Republic. The results show that more educated mothers are more likely to send children to pre-school. In most countries, children with stronger pre-school skills achieve higher results on standardized tests in fourth grade, which supports the idea of the existence of the Matthew effect. In the Czech Republic, pre-school attendance may increase fourth-grade test scores by 0.3 SD. The most important pre-school skill is the ability to read, which is associated with an increase in fourth-grade math achievement of 0.2 SD. The results contribute to the literature on pre-school education in Europe; however, they should not be interpreted causally, as they are essentially a description of the pre-school context in Europe.

Full Text: “Pre-school Abilities: European Comparative Study” by Monika Neufussová.