Excerpts from the report:

This report considers the relationship between the quality of early years education and outcomes that may arise from attendance at early years education. It also briefly considers data on the costs of providing early years education. Our aim is to measure what changes or benefits are provided by early years education services and more specifically what differences these services make to those attending. There are a range of possible outcomes that result from a child's attendance at education services. These extend beyond outcomes for children to include outcomes for parents, such as gaining employment; or outcomes for society, such as when early years providers also provide services for the whole community. To make this work tractable, we have limited our focus to outcomes for children, and to outcomes that accrue within a short time period. We are considering a range of individual outcomes covering cognitive, social and physical development.