Educación Preescolar y Rendimiento Escolar en las Escuelas Públicas de Montevideo

Abstract

In this paper we try to explain the academic performance of a sample of children starting their first year at public schools in 1999 in Montevideo, Uruguay. We are mainly interested in the effect of pre-school education on the children’s academic results. We found fairly strong empirical evidence suggesting that pre-school education has significant short and long-term positive effect on these children’s results. We also found that other factors connected with schools and with households lie behind children’s short-term and long-term performance. It is also important to note that the results for boys are clearly differentiated from those for girls.pre-school education, school performance, Education Production Function, Probit, Tobit, Oaxaca-Blinder, Uruguay.