Social-emotional skills

• Children in Estonia identified others’ emotions more accurately and had stronger prosocial behavior than children in England or the United States, but were more disruptive.
• Children’s social-emotional skills increased with age.
• Children with an immigrant background had lower levels of trust and prosocial behavior than other children, but were less disruptive.
• Learning and behavioral difficulties had negative correlations with social-emotional learning.
• Prior ECEC attendance was not clearly related to a child’s social-emotional development.
• Children’s social-emotional skills were associated with other areas of early learning and development (e.g., playing with other children, connecting with others, operating in groups, etc.).
• Children’s development and learning was inter-dependent and mutually reinforcing. Children with strong prosocial skills scored more highly in other learning areas than children without these skills.

Self-regulation skills

• Children in Estonia had high overall levels of self-regulation skills.
• Older children had higher self-regulation scores.
• Children from more advantaged backgrounds had stronger self-regulation than other children.
• Children’s home language was negatively associated with self-regulation.
• Learning and behavioral difficulties correlated with poorer self-regulation.
• Self-regulation skills correlated more strongly with cognitive skills than social-emotional skills.

Emergent literacy and emergent numeracy

• Children in England and Estonia showed stronger emergent literacy than children in the United States, while children in England showed stronger emergent numeracy than children in either of the other two countries.
• Children with learning or behavioral difficulties had lower level of emergent literacy and numeracy.
• Having a home language that was different from the assessment language was negatively associated with emergent literacy scores and numeracy scores in all three participating countries.
• Parents’ activities with their children were associated with their children’s learning. There were positive associations between frequency of reading to children from books and children’s emergent literacy scores, after accounting for SES.
• Children from single-parent households did as well in emergent literacy as those from two-parent households, but less well on numeracy.

Gender

• Gender differences were clearly evident in children at 5 years of age in all three countries and were most apparent in emergent literacy and social-emotional skills.
• Girls had significantly stronger skills than boys in emergent literacy, early empathy, prosocial behavior, and trust and were less disruptive.
• The direct assessment found no discernible differences between girls and boys in emergent numeracy, although girls were reported by their parents and teachers as having higher levels of emergent numeracy than boys.
• Overall, girls demonstrated slightly stronger skills than boys in the direct assessment of self-regulation, but parent and teacher reports for girls were more positive than for boys.
• Boys were two times as likely as girls to be reported by their parents as having learning difficulties, such as speech or language delays, or social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties.
• Families provided boys and girls with same early learning opportunities.
• Boys and girls were equally likely to participate in early childhood education and care programs.

Equity

• Children from high socio-economic groups had significantly stronger skills in almost all measures in the study, including emergent literacy, emergent numeracy, working memory, identifying others’ emotions, prosocial behaviors, and trust.
• Children from low socio-economic backgrounds were more likely to be reported as having learning or behavioral difficulties, especially boys.
• Children from low socio-economic backgrounds, whose parents read to them every day, had children’s books at home, and were involved in their ECEC centers/schools, achieved significantly higher outcomes than children whose parents did not undertake these activities.

Technology

• Most five-year-olds were using electronic devices regularly, yet this was not strongly associated with their learning and development.
• The use of electronic devices amongst these children was more prevalent in the United States and least prevalent in Estonia.
• The regular use of electronic devices weekly or monthly was positively associated with higher scores in some countries in emergent literacy and self-regulation.

Enablers

• Children who attended ECEC had stronger emergent literacy and emergent numeracy than children who did not attend, after accounting for socio-economic background.
• Children who had books at home and whose parents were involved in their ECEC center or school had higher scores in emergent literacy, emergent numeracy, prosocial behavior, and trust, and were less disruptive.
• Mother’s education was positively associated with a child’s social-emotional skills, self-regulation, and learning.