ABSTRACT
Ethnic group sex interaction is important for maths, as well as for reading and writing, is reinforced by the attainment data at top infants, which showed black boys, black girls, and white girls all at the same level. There were no statistically significant ethnic group and sex differences for middle infants, and no ethnic group difference for top infants. The correlations between reading and maths at the end of middle and top infants were both about 0.6. The correlation between reading and writing at the end of top infants was 0.77. Looking in more detail at the correlation between oral vocabulary and the writing test at the end of infants, it is found that there were associations with independent vocabulary with the quality of the stories. Vocabulary was associated with the reading test, the writing test and the maths test, at the end of infant school, and again these are lower than the correlations between the tests themselves over time.
