International Journal of Advanced Education and Research 25 International Journal of Advanced Education and Research ISSN: 2455-5746, Impact Factor: RJIF 5.34 www.alleducationjournal.com Volume 2; Issue 3; May 2017; Page No. 25-32 A model for predicting academic success at lower primary school level: The significance of nursery school attendance Peter Jegrace Jehopio, Ronald Wesonga, Douglas A Candia Department of Planning and Applied Statistics, Makerere University, Uganda Abstract The aim of this study was to develop a model to predict academic success, particularly for lower primary school level. Moving descriptive statistics, cross-tabulation and ordered logistic regression, the study found that, with respect to learner (pupil) characteristics, nursery school attendance was a significant predictor, with increased odds of academic success [OR=1.79, p=0.00]. Regarding school characteristics, studying in an urban centre, Kampala Capital City [OR=1.77, p=0.00] and the rest of urban areas [OR=2.00, p=0.00] had increased odds of a pupil’s academic success. Similarly, studying in a privately owned school [OR=4.59, p=0.00] had increased odds for a pupil’s academic success. Therefore, the study recommends that all should attend nursery school before joining formal education. Accordingly, responsible authorities should develop necessary infrastructure to promote nursery school attendance. Also, parity between rural and urban educational practice should be pursued by responsible authorities. For likely academic success, publically owned schools should be run on business model, just on the same model that privately owned schools do. Keywords: academic success model, kindergarten school, ordered logit regression, Uganda 1. Introduction 1.1 Background Information This study aimed to develop a model for predicting academic success, particularly for lower primary school level. The interviewees in the study ranged from 5-23 year olds; which age range mostly fall within the pre-operational stage (approximately 2-7 year olds), the concrete operational stage (approximately 8-11 year olds) and the formal operational stage (approximately 15-20 year olds) of human development as articulated by the psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) in the theory on the nature and development of human intelligence [48-57] . At the pre-operational stage (2-7 year olds) a child begins to learn to speak, develop cognitive capabilities though does not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information [48-50] . Thinking in this stage is still egocentric, implying that the child has difficulty seeing the viewpoint of others. The pre-operational stage is usually split into two sub- stages: the symbolic function sub-stage in which a child is able to understand, represent, remember, and picture objects in his/her mind without having the object in front of him/her, and the intuitive thought sub-stage in which a child tends to pose the questions "why?" and "how come?" This is the stage in which a child wants to understand everything [51] . During concrete operational stage (8-11 year olds), a child's thought processes become more mature and "adult like". A child starts solving problems in a more logical way though abstract approach still lacks and the child can only solve problems that apply to concrete events or objects. At this stage, the child is able to incorporate inductive reasoning involving drawing inferences from observations in order to make generalization but struggles with deductive reasoning involving a generalized principle in order to try to predict the outcome of an event [52, 53] . At formal operational stage (approximately 15–20 years of age), adolescence sets in. Adolescence is a period of accelerated physical development in a person’s life though generally girls tend to develop faster than boys. At this stage, the young person also experiences cognitive, social, emotional and interpersonal changes as well and outside factors such as the environment, culture, religion, school, and media [54] . Adolescence may be sub-divided into three stages: early adolescence, in which the individual improves in speech, seeks self-identity, tends to be moody and leans towards peers [55] ; middle adolescence, in which the person, according to [56] , is characterised by unrealistically high expectations and poor self-concept, examination of inner experiences and striving to make new friends; and at late adolescence the individual gains firmer identity, capability to think ideas through and to express ideas in words, emotional control and pride in own work [57] . This study used secondary data collected in the year 2015 by the National Assessment of Progress in Education (NAPE) of the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB). The variables of interest in the dataset were age, gender, nursery school attendance, school location, region where school is found in Uganda and school ownership. 1.2 Literature Review A wealth of studies has consistently reported that a child’s early ability or inability is a strong predictor of his or her future academic success or failure [1-11] . Considering predictors of academic success, some scholars prioritize cognitive (that is, basic language, mathematics and reasoning) over non- cognitive abilities [12] ; contending that cognitive skills are more significant for predicting later learning. To this point, after controlling for an extensive set of child, family, and contextual influences, [13] found out that cognitive skills from kindergarten were strong predictors of later academic achievement while on the contrary socio-emotional abilities were not. In fact, in an