results of the oecd programme for international student assessment pisa show that participation in ecec is strongly associated with better reading performance at age even after accounting for students socioeconomic background in on average across oecd countries of students with no preprimary education performed below the baseline proficiency level in mathematics compared to of students who had attended preprimary education for less than a year and of students who had attended preprimary education for more than a year the difference in the share of low performers between students with no preprimary education and students with more than a year of preprimary education is statistically significant in all eu countries except estonia ireland and latvia