Researchers also said the findings cast doubt on the value of universal early education places because they claim more than 80 per cent of children using funded places would have attended nursery anyway.
While taking up a free place led to children achieving better than average Foundation Stage Profile scores at age five, from 87.5 to 89.3, researchers found that by age seven the size of the effect declined and at age 11 it disappeared.
However, the study also found that children who took up a free place, who would otherwise have not attended a pre-school setting, achieved an extra 15 points on their Foundation Stage Profile results. Despite this, the gap in attainment between children from richer and poorer families did not close in the long term.
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