Does the Quality of Pre-primary Education Pay Off in Secondary School? An International Comparison Using PISA 2003

Attendance of pre-primary institutions is positively associated with PISA test scores inmost countries. Several indicators of structural quality of pre-primary education areidentified that can account for the variation in the estimated coefficients on pre-primaryattendance across countries, based on a cross-country student-level specification withcountry fixed effects and interactions between individual pre-primary attendance andcountry-level quality indicators. The association of pre-primary attendance with testscores at age 15 is larger in countries with higher per-pupil spending in pre-primaryeducation, larger shares of children attending privately managed pre-primaryinstitutions, and higher relative pay and higher levels of training of pre-primaryteachers.