Research published yesterday by the Department for Education and Skills has found that children aged three and four who attend state-run nursery schools and day centres are more likely to do well socially and intellectually when they start school than those who attend private nurseries or volunteer-run playgroups.

The study, conducted by the Institute of Education at the University of London, confirms the previous findings that children who attend any kind of pre-school education do better than those who stay at home full-time.

It also shows that success among children when they start school is not determined solely by social class and the educational level of parents, but also by the extent to which parents interact with their child. This includes reading to them every night, teaching them to distinguish between letters and numbers, and ensuring a regular bedtime.

Kathy Silva, who led the project, said that by the time they started school at five, children who had had no pre-school education at three and four generally had lower levels of intellectual attainment, were less sociable and less able to concentrate than those who had attended a playgroup, a nursery or a day centre. This held true, whether the pre-school setting was attended full-time or part-time.

“If a child in a reception class has not been to a pre-school and they want a toy or a pen that another child has, they won’t have learnt the rules about sharing or about how to put moral pressure on another child to give them what they want in a socially acceptable way and without grabbing,” Professor Sylva said.

The survey of 3,000 children found that while some children attending private day nurseries made good progress, they were less likely to do so than those in state-funded pre-school settings. Care and education in private day nurseries varied more widely than in the state sector. While all the integrated settings, combining state-funded education and social provision healthcare, had children who made flying progress, the same could not be said for all of the private day nurseries studied, Professor Sylva said.

Brenda Taggart, co-author of the research, said that the best settings had plenty of child-initiated activities, where adults joined children in their play, and used this for teaching. In the least effective settings, including some private day nurseries, far more of the activities were initiated by the teachers and were formal.

Professor Sylva, an educational psychologist at Oxford University, said that while children of middle-class parents did better overall, parents from less affluent, less well-educated backgrounds could make up for this by interacting with their children; reading to them, explaining things to them and taking them to museums and libraries. “The most powerful thing parents can do is to read to their child. Relative to occupational status, what you do with your child is far more important than who you are.”

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