Children achieve better results if they attend integrated childcare and education centres maintained by the government than private nurseries, according to a new report, writes Amy Taylor.

The research, by a team from the Institute of Education and Birbeck College, both part of the University of London, and the University of Oxford, found that children at government early excellence centres, which offer combined education and childcare, achieved a higher level of progress than those at private nurseries.

Possible reasons highlighted in the report include private nurseries having a higher turnover of staff than other settings and their staff being significantly younger. The rarity of teachers within private nurseries was also cited as a contributory factor, with the research finding that the higher the qualifications of staff the more progress the children make.

The study, which looked at all types of pre-school childcare and covered 3,000 children aged three and four from 141 centres selected at random, found that any type of pre-school experience enhances intellectual and social development compared to none at all.

It also identified that high quality pre-school education can reduce social exclusion and that the activities which parents do with their children at home are significantly more important than the qualifications they possess. "What parents do is more important than who they are," said Edward Melhuish, one of the authors of the report.

The government is currently developing a national network of children's centres, under the Sure Start programme, which will offer a range of services to families covering health, education, childcare and parenting support to improve the provision of pre-school services.

'The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Technical Paper 8b' from www.ioe.ac.uk/projects/eppe