Early school years are an important period for the children´s development of well-being and achievement during basic education. Assessment of the ability of primary school students can be successfully used for further education and can be used to ensure the recognition of problems at the next grade levels (Mashburn & Henry, 2004). The use of continuous assessments in the early grades and prediction accuracy of teachers' predictions of pupils' abilities and later pupils' performance helps to detect early signs of later academic problems (Begeny et al., 2008).

Longitudinal studies are especially interesting and useful. Today, longitudinal assessments are useful and even necessary in order to understand the mechanisms of the development of performance. Longitudinal data analysis is a subspecialty of statistics in which individual histories—interpreted as sample paths, or realizations, of a stochastic process—are the primary focus of interest (Singer, 2001).

Measuring Learning to learn in Europe is part of a process to establish and monitor the learning processes and outcomes needed to facilitate the development of Lifelong learning in Europe. According to  Rawson (2000), ‘Learning to learn’ can be described more as a skill or even a package of skills, which includes study skills, critical analysis, time management, planning, goal setting and so on. The Finnish learning to learn test consists of cognitive tasks measuring reading comprehension, mathematical thinking skills and reasoning skills, and questionnaires measuring learning-related attitudes (see Hautamäki et al., 2002).

Early childhood personality has recently started to attract more of researches’ attention. There is now growing evidence that early childhood individual differences share many of the defining characteristics of adult personalities, such as temporal stability (Measelle, John, Ablow, Cowan and Cowan, 2005), cross-observer consensus (Lönnqvist, Verkasalo, & Vainikainen, 2011). Previous research has shown that academic achievements are associated with pupils’ personal abilities and attitudes in learning (Hautamäki, 2002).

There is relatively little research on the role of teacher expectations in the early school years or on the importance of teacher expectations as a predictor of future academic achievements. According to Madon et al. (1998), teachers are more likely to base their expectations on students' achievements and motivation. Despite the recent increased interest in predicting student success in learning, there is still very little longitudinal study on how early personal abilities and attitudes are associated with subsequent successes in learning.

The aim is to find out to what extent can teacher's assessment of pupils' abilities in the first and fourth grade of primary school predict their later performance? The main purposes of this study is to answer the following questions:

1. What are the causal relationships between teacher's assessment of pupils' abilities and learning-related attitudes and their later performance?

2. How are relationships between teacher’s predictor and pupil’s later performance influenced by other factors?

3. Is the result from teacher's assessment available to support pupils study and play a stronger role in lower secondary school (grades 7 to 9)?

This paper reports on a longitudinal study in which development of pupils’ preparedness for learning is followed throughout the nine years of comprehensive school. It concentrates on relationships between cognitive skills and school success is measured by a learning test in the 4th 6th and 9th grade and school achievement records were measured by teacher-reports. In autumn 2007 a learning preparedness group test (Vainikainen & al., 2011b) was administered to 40 first grade classes (N=744). The 16 schools were randomly selected from the schools in Helsinki area using an equal-probability method ensuring representativeness with regard to socio-economic status. Teachers (79 %) and parents (83 %) completed questionnaires of each pupil’s learning, behaviour and social skills. Learning-to-learn skills were measured in 4th and 6th grades and 87 % of the pupils were traced in 35 schools. They completed learning-to-learn assessment booklets including cognitive tasks and belief scales, and teachers (94 %) and parents (82 %) filled out questionnaires. Teachers also evaluated pupils’ success in important school subjects on the scale they will later use when giving school marks. Furthermore, the 9th grade measurement was extended to cover all the municipal schools: 55 schools and the number of students close to 4000. The follow-up of students was done with repeated measures ANOVA. We will use also structural equation models (SEM). It was expected that the teacher's assessment of pupils' abilities in the first and fourth grade would be different depending on their later average performance level. (cf., Hinnant et al., 2009).

Accounting for teacher’s assessment of pupils’ temperament and character traits and their learning-related attitudes did play a stronger role in the early school years. The preliminary correlative results indicate that there are connections between pupil’s cognitive ability and teacher’s assessment of their learning-related attitudes in the first and fourth grade. All of the correlations shown are positive, and almost all of them are statistically significant. It is expected that teacher’s assessment of pupils' abilities and their learning-related attitudes will predict later school performance and success in external assessments. Finally, multilevel modelling will be applied to confirm that it is meaningful to see teacher’s assessment of pupils' abilities and their learning-related attitudes as relevant factor explaining pupils' performance in a learning to learn assessment in the 6th and the 9th grade.

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