Children who are co-operative, socially responsible and helpful in kindergarten achieve higher scores on reading, writing and numeracy tests in primary school, compared with children with less pro-social behaviour.
This is the finding from a 5-year study of more than 52,000 kindergarten students from nearly 2800 schools. The study was led by Dr Rebecca Collie at the University of New South Wales School of Education.
Test scores from the children’s NAPLAN (Australia’s National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) in 2012 and 2014 were compared for four different social and emotional behavioural profiles observed when they were in kindergarten:
