Preschool Education

Abstract

Given the importance of the early stages in a child’s life, and taking into account the various initiatives underway to improve preschool programs in Germany, it is remarkable only a few microdatasets cover the field of preschool education in Germany – and even fewer of these are nationally representative datasets. The majority of the existing data provide, at a minimum, basic information on attendance in preschool programs. In principle there are two main groups of data: data comprised of information collected by official statistics and survey data. However, hardly any data is collected that allow researchers to link preschool program information with child outcome data. There is an urgent need for better data on children from age zero to three, as well as for data on children from immigrant families. There is, in particular, a need for good panel data that would permit individual data to be matched with institutional information. Given recent developments in the German data infrastructure, the potential for preschool education research will certainly improve. Nevertheless, there are a number of significant gaps that need to be explicitly addressed. This contribution recommends several key improvements within the field, including better data on the quality of preschool programs, on family context, and on the cost of preschool education. Finally, the paper stresses the need for detailed intervention studies (on a representative, or generalizable level), which can help us to learn more about the most effective and efficient parameters of preschool programs.