Pre-School Education and School Performance The Case of Public Schools in Montevideo

Abstract

In this paper we try to explain the academic performance of a sample of children starting their first year at public schools in 1999 in Montevideo, Uruguay. We are mainly interested in the effect of pre-school education on the children’s academic results. We found fairly strong empirical evidence to suggest that having pre-school education has a short term positive effect on these children’s results in the first year at school, and the long-term effect, after six years, seems to be somewhat weaker but is still positive. We also estimated several other factors connected with schools and with households that might lie behind children’s short-term and long-term performance. It is important to note that the results for boys are clearly differentiated from those for girls.