There are no compound interest benefits to learning to read early. Children who learn to read at 5 and at 7 have indistinguishable reading skills at 11. That&#x27;s why reading instruction in Finland and Germany begins in grade school, not kindergarten.<p>I regret I&#x27;ve lost the study (observational, not experimental) on students in North Rhine Westphalia on long term effects of early reading instruction but it showed children who learned to read later doing <i>better</i> at 16 or 17 than the ones who learned to read earlier. I think it was published in an economic of education journal but that&#x27;s all I remember.<p>Edit:<p>The below study shows tiny differences between performance&#x2F;school readiness of French and German children on entering primary school despite the French system being much more school like and placing a much greater emphasis on reading. Italics in abstract not in original.<p>French nursery schools and German kindergartens:
effects of individual and contextual variables
on early learning<p>Eur J Psychol Educ (2011) 26:199–213
DOI 10.1007&#x2F;s10212-010-0043-4<p>The present article investigates the effects of individual and contextual variables on children’s early learning in French nursery schools and German kindergartens. Our study
of 552 children at preschools in France (299 children from French nursery schools) and Germany (253 children from German kindergartens) measured skills that facilitate the
learning of reading, writing and arithmetic at primary school. We also evaluated educational family practices and parents’ expectations of their children’s pre-school education. In order to take into account the hierarchical structure of our data, multilevel models were used in the analysis, which was carried out using MLwiN software version 2.02 (Rasbash et al.2005). <i>Although French nursery schools emphasise academic learning, we did not find any significant differences in overall performances between the French and German samples.</i> However, significant differences were obtained for some subscale results. In addition, our results indicate that individual and contextual variables have an impact on the differences observed between children from the two countries.