UK government funds £5m study of early years education

The research, led by NatCen Social Research in collaboration with 4Children and Frontier Economics, aims to help the government understand what good quality early education is and how it affects children’s development and their schooling in later years.

Currently the government spends £3bn a year funding 15 hours a week of education for all children aged three and four. From September, it will also start funding places for two-year-old children from lower income families.

4Children CEO Anne Longfield said: “There is now an unprecedented political consensus about the importance of the early years and we have the opportunity – with this piece of work – to ensure that future policy and practice is strongly grounded in what works.”

The research will follow thousands of children from before they start nursery to the age of seven, when they reach the end of Key Stage 1 education. The study will run for eight years.