Research and analysis

Early education and outcomes to age 4

Research into the impact of early education at ages 2 to 4 on child outcomes at age 4, and the importance of the early years home environment.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 8 September 2018
• Last updated: 18 November 2021
  Show all updates

  1. 18 November 2021

     Updated the 'Early education use and child outcomes up to age 3: main report, research brief and technical annex' to reflect that informal individual ECEC was not significantly associated with SDQ total difficulties.

  2. 8 September 2018

     First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Study on early education use and child outcomes up to age 4: main report

Ref: ISBN 978-1-78105-932-6, DFE-RR84

PDF, 1.27 MB, 107 pages

Study on early education use and child outcomes up to age 4: technical annex

Ref: ISBN 978-1-78105-934-0, DFE-TR843

PDF, 1.35 MB, 78 pages

Study on early education use and child outcomes up to age 4: research brief

Ref: ISBN 978-1-78105-933-3 , DFE-RB843

PDF, 414 KB, 23 pages

Details

This research is part of the longitudinal study of early education and development (SEED).

The report addresses 3 main objectives:

• to study the associations between the amount of differing types of early childhood education and care (ECEC) that children receive aged 2 to 4 years and child development at age 4
• to investigate the relevance of the home environment and the quality of the parent to child relationship on child development at age 4
• to study the associations between the quality of the ECEC settings that children have attended and child development at age 4