The effect of being assigned to special needs assistance depends on children's types of difficulty

This study examines the effects of being assigned to special needs assistance (SNA) and children's difficulty types ( n = 35,024; 1809 received SNA) in early childhood education and care (ECEC) on children's language and academic skills in primary school. Using the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) and data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway (MBRN), we found: 1) the SNA assignment was negatively associated with all outcomes for children with comorbid language and developmental difficulties; 2) the effects were nonsignificant on reading and arithmetic skills for most children; 3) the SNA assignment positively predicted language skills for children with only one type of difficulty. These findings suggest that current ECEC support is insufficient for children with comorbid difficulty profiles, and that strengthening the quality of interventions may enhance the effectiveness of SNA. Educational relevance statement In Norway, children in early childhood education and care who need extra help can be granted special needs assistance. Following around 35,000 children, we found that those granted this help at about age five tended to have better language skills later on if they had one kind of difficulty, but worse language, reading and arithmetic skills if they had both language and developmental difficulties. These associations cannot establish causality. Children granted this help are the ones already struggling most, so we cannot tell how they would have fared without it. However, the findings do show that one overall figure for all children receiving this help can be misleading, because some groups do better while others do worse, and that current provision may not be enough for children facing more than one kind of difficulty.