Preparing for Life at Age 9

Resource type: Evaluation

UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy | January 8, 2020

Preparing for Life (PFL) is a prevention and early intervention programme designed to promote children’s school readiness by working with families from pregnancy until their children start school. Results from an extensive randomised controlled trial evaluation showed that PFL was effective at improving the children’s school readiness when they were 5 years old.

This follow-up study examines the impact of the programme on those children at age 9. It shows that children who received the PFL programme are still performing signiﬁcantly better than the children who did not in terms of their cognitive development and school performance.

These sizable cognitive advantages are likely to have positive impacts on their success and progression from primary to secondary school, as well as their future life outcomes.