Evidence of free hours’ benefits is lacking

A new rigorous analysis of the impact of the free entitlement from the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex and the University of Surrey has found disappointing results for educational outcomes, with no measurable benefit of access to free part-time nursery by Key Stage 1.

The free entitlement for three- and four-year-olds was announced in 1998 and became effectively universal in England by 2005. The choice was made to expand free early years education by funding private providers to provide places, rather than provision in schools and local authority nursery schools.

The gold standard of research design is an experiment where some children are randomly assigned free part-time nursery care while others serve as controls. However, the gradual expansion enables us to think of the policy as a ‘natural experiment’. If the free entitlement has an impact on educational attainment, one would expect to be able to link an increase in the number of free part-time early education places available in a particular year in a local authority with an improvement in educational outcomes as the affected children age. This is more robust than looking at how overall trends in school performance change as the policy was introduced, or comparing children whose parents chose to send them to nursery with those who did not attend.