Educ Res Policy Prac DOI 10.1007/s10671-017-9218-y ORIGINAL ARTICLE The effects of preschool participation on mathematics achievement of Grade 6 pupils in Uganda Njora Hungi 1 · Moses Ngware 2 Received: 31 October 2016 / Accepted: 25 April 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract The objective of this article is to investigate the effects of preschool participation on learning achievement and to estimate the optimal duration of preschool participation needed for pupils to perform their best in mathematics at the Grade 6 level in Uganda. The sample consisted of 2649 Grade 6 pupils, attending 82 schools across two rural districts of Iganga and Mayuge in Uganda. Understanding the relationship between duration of preschool participation and pupils’ future learning achievement is important to policies on preschool education in Uganda. Results from multilevel analyses show that preschool participation has positive impact on mathematics achievement of Grade 6 pupils. Results further showed that the positive impact of preschool on achievement seemed to level out after 2years of preschool participation—meaning that 2 years was the optimal duration of preschool participation that was most helpful in boosting achievement. The implications of the finding to preschool education policy and practices are discussed. Keywords Preschool participation · Learning achievement · Uganda education · Mother education · Rural education 1 Introduction and literature review The first objective for this research is to examine the effects of preschool participation on mathematics achievement of primary school pupils in Uganda. The second and main objective is to estimate the optimal duration of preschool participation needed for Ugandan pupils to perform their best in mathematics at the Grade 6 level. We hope that findings from this study will inform preschool education policies and practices in Uganda. Data used in this study were collected as part of a bigger study that sought to identify the critical barriers that have B Njora Hungi hungi05@yahoo.com; nhungi@aphrc.org Moses Ngware mngware@aphrc.org 1 African Population and Health Research Center, P.O. Box 12987-20100, Nakuru, Kenya 2 African Population and Health Research Center, P.O. Box 10787-00100, Nairobi, Kenya 123