This article studies the effect of free pre-school education on child outcomes in primary school. We exploit the staggered implementation of free part-time pre-school for three year olds across Local Education Authorities in England in the early 2000s. The policy led to small improvements in attainment at age 5, with no apparent benefits by age 11. We argue that this is because the expansion of free places largely crowded out privately paid care, with small changes in total participation, and was achieved through an increase in private provision, where quality is lower on average than in the public sector.

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1 May 2016

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The Economic Journal 126(592) , pp.682-723, 2016

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DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12374

https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/126/592/682-723/5077433

This Journal article is published under the centre's Education programme.

This publication comes under the following theme: Inequality and social mobility