”Long-Run Benefits from Universal High-Quality Pre-Schooling”.

The purpose of this study is to determine the causal effect the quality of daycare centres has on children’s cognitive and linguistic development at the end of public basic school. Five structural preconditions for quality at daycare centres are generated and compared with exam results at the final exam in written Danish in the 9th year of public basic school. These structural preconditions are: 1) staff-to-children-ratio (number of child carers and childcare assistants per child), 2) the percentage of male child carers and child carer assistants at the daycare centre, 3) the percentage of qualified child carers at the daycare centre, 4) the percentage of staff with a non-Danish ethnic background and 5) the stability of staff at the daycare centre.

The study shows that a higher number of pedagogical employees per child, a greater percentage of male employees, a greater percentage of staff with pedagogical qualifications as well as a greater percentage of staff with a non-Danish ethnic background are associated with significantly - although moderately - better exam results for children in the 9th year of public basic school. Furthermore, the authors find that boys benefit more from daycare centres which score high on the five quality indicators than girls, whereas the effects are relatively smaller for children from low-income families. Moreover, children with a non-Danish background benefit from less staff turnover.

The analysis is built on a dataset based on administrative registers from Statistics Denmark with information about daycare centres in 95% of the Danish municipalities as well as on information about the pupils’ leaving examination marks. The study uses two statistical methods; the least squares method and instrumental variables estimation, to measure the effects of daycare-facility quality on exam results.

Bauchmüller, R., Gørtz, M. & Rasmussen, A.W. (2011). ”Long-Run Benefits from Universal High-Quality Pre-Schooling”. København: AKF, Danish Institute of Governmental Research.