Factors Related to School Readiness in Children: A Cross-Sectional Analytic Study of Elementary School Children in Manado

Objectives School readiness is an overall condition of someone which makes him/her ready to give response or answer in a certain way to various situations. This study aims to determine the factors related to school readiness. Methods This is an analytic observational study with cross-sectional design, conducted at 4 elementary schools in Malalayang district, Manado, Indonesia between August – November 2018 (n=150). The significant value used is p <0.01. Data wasanalyzed using SPSS for Windows version 23. Results Of 150 subjects there were 109 children who were ready for school and 41 children who were not ready for school. Of the five factors studied, it was found that stunted affected school readiness (OR 21.6; 95% CI: 6.68-70.32, p<0.000), maternal education status affected school readiness (OR 4.1; 95% CI: 1.75-9.63, p<0.001), socio-economic status affects school readiness (OR 5.1; 95% CI: 2.35-11.11, p<0.000), and preschool affect school readiness (OR 6.8; 95% CI: 3.1-14.9, p<0.0001). In multivariate analysis, there were three factors that had an association with school readiness, namely height, preschool participation and socioeconomic status (OR 34.4; 95% CI: 7.19-166.6, p<0.001, OR 6.5; 95% CI: 2.28-18.55 p<0.0001, OR 4.8l; 95% CI: 1.59-14.92 respectively). Conclusion There were associations between height, maternal education status, socio-economic status and participation in preschool with school readiness. There was no association observed between the employment status of mothers and school readiness. Height of the children was strongly associated with school readiness.

Comparing the Impact of Nature, Blended, and Traditional Preschools on Children’s Resilience: Some Nature May Be Better Than None

This study examined the effect of nature preschools on the development of key protective factors associated with psychological resilience. The Deveraux Early Childhood Assessment for Preschoolers, Second Edition (DECA-P2), was used to assess the growth in the protective factors of initiative, self-regulation, and attachment in 87 children who attended nature, blended, and traditional preschool classes within the same school district. Study results suggest that nature preschool participation was important in the context of initiative. Blended classes, where some nature-based practices were incorporated into traditional preschool classes, were sufficient in the sense of being more impactful than traditional classes on self-regulation, attachment, and the total protective factors overall. Implications are discussed within the context of the limitations of the study.

Participation of Children With ASD Using an Adapted Structured Preschool Participation Observation and Comparison With Typically Developing Children

Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations. Participation of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is limited compared with their typically developing (TD) peers. This study examined the participation of children with ASD using an adapted observation in comparison with TD children. Content validity was evaluated by 21 experts, and 70 children were observed. Children with ASD scored significantly lower than TD children in most areas. More structured settings enabled higher participation scores. Further studies are needed. Primary Author and Speaker: Anat Golos Contributing Authors: Sophi Itkin, Hadas Ben-Zur

Preschool attendance and developmental outcomes at age five in Indigenous and non-Indigenous children: a population-based cohort study of 100 357 Australian children

BackgroundPolicies to increase Australian Indigenous children’s participation in preschool aim to reduce developmental inequities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. This study aims to understand the benefits of preschool participation by quantifying the association between preschool participation in the year before school and developmental outcomes at age five in Indigenous and non-Indigenous children.MethodsWe used data from perinatal, hospital, birth registration and school enrolment records, and the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), for 7384 Indigenous and 95 104 non-Indigenous children who started school in New South Wales, Australia in 2009/2012. Preschool in the year before school was recorded in the AEDC. The outcome was developmental vulnerability on ≥1 of five AEDC domains, including physical health, emotional maturity, social competence, language/cognitive skills and communication skills/general knowledge.Results5051 (71%) Indigenous and 68 998 (74%) non-Indigenous children attended preschool. Among Indigenous children, 33% of preschool attenders and 44% of the home-based care group were vulnerable on ≥1 domains, compared with 17% of preschool attenders and 33% in the home-based care group among non-Indigenous children. In the whole population model, the adjusted risk difference for developmental vulnerability among preschool attenders was −7.9 percentage points (95% CI, −9.8 to −6.1) in non-Indigenous children and −2.8 percentage points (95% CI −4.8 to −0.7) in Indigenous children, compared with Indigenous children in home-based care.ConclusionsOur findings suggest a likely beneficial effect of preschool participation on developmental outcomes, although the magnitude of the benefit was less among Indigenous compared with non-Indigenous children.

How Educational Systems Shape the Relationship between Social Origin and Educational Deprivation

This paper addresses how features of educational systems influence the association between social background and educational disadvantage up to the end of secondary school. Boudon’s ideas about the primary effects are brought together with preschool participation and the secondary effects are argued to be strongly related to the stratification of the educational system. The analyses are based on around 35,000 respondents from 29 countries provided by PIAAC. Two-step estimations combining logistic regression models within educational systems (first step) with estimated dependent variable models between educational systems (second step) are applied. The results suggest that a higher preschool participation rate is associated with a lower dependency of educational deprivation (low achievement) on social background in the early years after finishing secondary school.

Estimating the Relationship Between Preschool Attendance and Kindergarten Science Achievement: Implications for Early Science Achievement Gaps

Recent evidence demonstrates that disparities by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status in science achievement are present in the earliest grades of school. Preschool represents one potential policy solution; however, little research has explored the relationship between preschool attendance and science outcomes. This study examines whether preschool participation may improve science outcomes overall and reduce science achievement gaps by race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of 2011, this study uses school and classroom fixed effects models with a robust set of controls to estimate the relationship between preschool attendance and early science outcomes. Results suggest that attending preschool is predictive of higher teacher-rated science ability in the fall of kindergarten but that preschool is not predictive of higher science achievement in the spring of kindergarten. The relationship is not found to consistently differ by student race, socioeconomic status, or gender, though descriptive results demonstrate that subgroups have different patterns of preschool attendance. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.