Study finds little lasting impact from free hours

However, there was a significant improvement among those three- and four-year-olds who only took up the early education because it was free, according to researchers from the universities of Essex and Surrey.

The children given the free 15 hours who would otherwise have had no pre-school experience (one in four), upped their scores by six percentage points in the Foundation Stage Profile, measured at age five.

The small overall benefits did not continue through to the ages of seven and 11, found the study, called ‘Universal Pre-school Education: The Case for Public Funding with Private Provision’, published in the May 2016 issue of the Economic Journal of the Royal Economic Society.

Ahead of the September pilot of the expansion to 30 hours, the researchers warned that unless high quality settings expand capacity, the impact would continue to be limited and children from the most disadvantaged families would not be reached.

Previous evidence suggests that settings in the public sector, such as children’s centres and maintained nursery schools, are better quality.

Researcher Dr Jo Blanden, said, ‘On the face of it, our results cast some doubt over the value for money of universal early education.

‘More than 70 per cent of the children taking up free places would probably have gone to nursery anyway, and children’s test scores do not seem to be any higher in the longer term as a result of the policy.

‘In fact the main benefit of the policy seems to have been to make childcare cheaper for families with three-year-olds.

‘In September, children in some areas will begin to receive 30 hours of free care if their parents are in work.

‘As before, this will save parents money. But unless high quality settings expand capacity, it may not lead to the best educational outcomes for children.’

The researchers, led by by Dr Birgitta Rabe, added that the expansion was achieved through an ‘increase in private provision, where quality is lower on average than in the public sector’.

Dr Blanden continued, ‘It is tempting to say that the money should be targeted on the poorest children.

‘But universalism has its benefits in terms of mixing children from different backgrounds and promoting take up’.

In 1998, the then Labour government announced that all three- and four-year-olds in England would be entitled to a free part-time nursery place.

The availability of free places expanded relatively slowly for three-year-olds, becoming effectively universal across England by 2005.

The free entitlement to early education was initially for 12.5 hours a week for 33 weeks a year, and has increased to 15 hours a week for 38 weeks.

Summary research findings:

• Between 1999 and 2007, the percentage of three-year-olds in England benefitting from a free early education place rose by about 50 percentage points – from 37 per cent to 88 per cent.

• The number of children benefitting from any kind of formal early education increased by much less: for every four children given a free place, one additional child began to use early education; for the other three children, the policy effectively gave parents a discount on the early education they would have paid to use anyway.

• Overall, the increase in free places improved the outcomes of English children at age five by under two percentage points on average: from a score of 87.5 on the Foundation Stage Profile (FSP) to a score of 89.2.

• Children who took up a free place, who would otherwise have had no pre-school experience, achieved an additional six points in the FSP (assuming that all the benefits of the policy were felt by children who only took up a place because it was free).

• Although there is modest evidence that the policy had a greater impact on poorer children and those learning English as a second language, there is no evidence that the policy helped disadvantaged children to catch up in the longer term. Indeed, there is no evidence of any educational benefits of the policy at the ages of seven and eleven.