Abstract
Policy makers wanting to support child development can choose to adjust the quantity
or quality of publicly funded universal pre-school. To assess the impact of such changes we
estimate the effects of an increase in free pre-school education in England of about 3.5 months
at age 3 on children's school achievement at age 5. We exploit date-of-birth discontinuities
that create variation in the length and starting age of free pre-school using administrative
school records linked to nursery characteristics. Estimated effects are small overall, but the
impact of the additional term is substantially larger in settings with the highest inspection
quality rating but not in settings with highly qualified staff. Estimated effects fade out by
age 7.