When the children's minister, Beverley Hughes, spoke at an early childhood conference in New York at the beginning of the year, her audience marvelled at the British Government's achievements for children under five. Free early education and care for all three- and four-year-olds, child trust funds and half a million fewer children in poverty all seem a remote prospect in the United States.
For the Brits in the audience, more accustomed to being unfavourably compared with Scandinavia, it was a moment to enjoy. In many respects the UK is well ahead of the US when it comes to early years policy. But a small, often overlooked, difference in research findings from the two countries provides us with an important reminder.
According to the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) project, the major UK study of the impacts of early education and care, pre-school does not narrow the developmental gap between disadvantaged children and their more affluent peers. The gap remains but, critically, pre-school gives children from deprived backgrounds enough of a boost to be able to participate fully when they start school. Without pre-school, these children fall far behind what is expected and far behind their better-off peers.
In contrast, much of the US research finds that pre-school does narrow the socio-economic gap, because children from disadvantaged families benefit more than those from middle-class homes. For example, an evaluation of Oklahoma's pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programme found that on average, children made a seven-month gain in letter-word identification, a six-month gain in spelling and a three-month gain for applied problems. But pre-school had no effect on the development of children who were not eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.
The evaluation team at the University of Georgia reached very similar findings for Georgia's pre-K programme. Children from very poor and low-income families made substantially greater gains compared with other four-year-olds. Larger national programmes, such as the Infant Health and Development Program, echo what the individual states report.
Without further research we cannot be certain what accounts for this difference in the impact of pre-school in the US and UK. But many speculate that it comes down to a difference in quality and, specifically, a difference in staff qualifications. The US programmes that have been evaluated tend to be ones that employ qualified teachers. EPPE, on the other hand, included children in all types of settings, including many with less well-qualified staff.
The US 'landscape'
Before you conclude that, contrary to what you have heard, early education and care in America resembles Sweden, it is worth describing the landscape in the US in a bit more detail. The US is reminiscent of the UK prior to the introduction of the National Childcare Strategy in 1998.
Early education and care is a patchwork of legislation, policies and investment in 50 different states and the District of Columbia (Washington DC). Without federal legislation there is no requirement to provide childcare, and the level of commitment varies tremendously by state. Head Start, the main federal programme, fills in some of the gaps for children in poverty, but it serves only 12 per cent of four-year-olds nationally.
Only three states in the US have universal access to early education and care for four-year-olds, known as pre-kindergarten or pre-K: Georgia, Oklahoma and Florida. No states fund universal access for three-year-olds and none are currently discussing the possibility of doing so.
Two more states, New York and West Virginia, have plans in place to achieve universal access for four-year-olds over the coming years. This summer, California held a state-wide referendum on whether or not to introduce universal access to pre-K, but it was not passed.
Some long-time advocates of early childhood education voted against it, afraid to hand over four-year-olds to California's poorly performing school system. Others resisted because they felt that pre-K for all, poor and middle class alike, would do little to reduce the attainment gap associated with race and disadvantage.
In the remaining states, government investment in pre-K is targeted at children from disadvantaged backgrounds and ten states continue to provide no public funding for pre-K. Overall, 65 per cent of four-year-olds and 42 per cent of three-year-olds are in the pre-K system, compared with over 95 per cent of three- and four-year-olds who receive the free early education offer in the UK. Families that do not have access to pre-K rely on private childcare to meet their needs, but this does not necessarily have an educational focus and standards are minimal.
Quality staff In much of the early years sector, the US, like the UK, is struggling to improve quality, particularly staff qualifications. Twenty per cent of staff in private daycare in the US are graduates, and around 30 per cent in Head Start. Pre-K is the exception. Seventeen states require staff in pre-K to have at least a BA, more often than not in early childhood education, and a teaching certificate.
Salaries that match those of primary school teachers help keep well-qualified staff in pre-K. This is the case in Oklahoma. In Georgia, teachers must have the equivalent of a foundation degree and specialist training in early childhood education, although more than 50 per cent have a four-year graduate degree.
The importance of highly qualified staff cannot be overstated. Experts on both sides of the Atlantic agree that children make far greater progress in settings where the staff are highly qualified.
In her recent report, The Economic Benefits of High-Quality Early Childhood Programs: What makes the difference?, Ellen Galinksy at the Families and Work Institute in New York re-examined three of the early years programmes that have provided much of the impetus for current policy development for the under-fives: the High/Scope Perry Pre-school project, the Abecedarian project and the Chicago Child-Parent Center. She interviewed the researchers who led the original evaluations to find out which elements of the three programmes accounted for their phenomenal success.
Galinsky concludes that having well-educated, well-trained and well-compensated teachers, resulting in low staff turnover, was fundamental to the success of all three programmes. For example, High/Scope had one teacher with an education degree for every four or five children.
High/Scope teachers were paid the same as other state school teachers and received a 10 per cent bonus for participating in the programme.
Only ten teachers filled the programme's four teaching posts during its five-year existence. In addition, the three programmes all had a strong focus on providing teachers with time and resources to reflect on what the children were learning and on their own teaching, so that practice could be continuously developed.
Improving the life chances of disadvantaged children is a pressing issue in both the US and the UK. Despite its ongoing belief in the American dream, the US is the least socially mobile country in the developed world, with the UK following close behind. Early education and care can make an important contribution to the life chances of all children, and especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. But, as Ellen Galinsky cautions, in the move to universal provision we cannot omit the all-important ingredient: high-quality staff.
The UK Government recognises the importance of well-qualified staff, and its commitment to raising the skills of the early years workforce through the Transformation Fund should be applauded. But the current goal of having one graduate in every full daycare setting by 2015 will fall short of the kind of quality that the most disadvantaged children need to thrive.
If we want to give them a fighting chance at the start of school, the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review needs to emulate the pre-K quality standards of states like Oklahoma. Early education and care in the US is fragmented. There is much that we would not want to follow. But in the patchwork, there are pockets of excellence that we would do well not to ignore.
Vidhya Alakeson is a research associate at the Social Market Foundation.
She currently lives in Washington DC alakesonvidhya@yahoo.co.uk