Previous research on age and schooling effects is largely restricted to studies of children who begin formal schooling from the age of 6 and the measures of phoneme awareness used have typically lacked sensitivity for beginning readers. Our study addresses these issues by testing children aged 4-6 (first two years of formal schooling in the UK) on a sensitive dynamic measure of phoneme awareness and tests of early literacy. There were significant effects of both age and schooling on dynamic and static measures of phoneme awareness, word reading, spelling and letter-name knowledge but no significant age × time interactions. This indicates that older children within this age group generally outperform their younger classmates (although they do not make faster progress), and that this advantage is developed prior to the start of school
