Pre-school contributions to future achievements

Abstract: This paper provides recent evidence about the benefits of attending preschool on future performance. A non-parametric matching procedure is used over two outcomes: math and verbal scores at a national mandatory test (Saber11) in Colombia. It is found that students who had the chance of attending preschool obtain higher scores in math (6.7%) and verbal (5.4%) than those who did not. A considerable fraction of these gaps comes from the upper quintiles of student's performance, suggesting that preschool matters when is done at high quality institutions. When we include the number of years at the preschool, the gap rises up to 12% in verbal and 17% in math.