From child care to school: Influences on children's adjustment and achievement in the year before school and the first year of school - Findings from the Child Care Choices longitudinal extension study

This report presents the findings of the Child Care Choices Longitudinal Extension study, a study of the child care and early school experiences of children in urban and rural New South Wales. Its focus is on elements of children's child care experience and the extent to which they predict children's adjustment and achievement in the year before they start school and in Kindergarten, the first year at school. In predicting child outcomes, the study took a social ecological approach and included characteristics of the children themselves, their families, as well as their child care history in seeking to explain differences in children's socialemotional competencies and difficulties, relationships with teachers and peers, feelings about school, approaches to learning, and achievements in early literacy and numeracy across the years before and after entry to formal schooling. The report is based on information from six years of a longitudinal study of an initial 677 children and families recruited from long day care centres and family day care schemes in urban and rural New South Wales. There were approximately equal numbers of urban and rural families and girls and boys. At the time of recruitment in 2002, the age of the children ranged from 4 months to 4 years 2 months, with a mean age of 2 years 1 month.