EVENING
Impact Evaluation Study of Preschool Education: A natural experiment in Dutch municipalities.

A Multidisciplinary consortium conducts a large scale impact evaluation study of Dutch preschool education policy for disadvantaged children. The project evaluates a series of new policy measures together with a massive extra investment in preschool education. The most important measure is the expansion of preschool for disadvantaged children from 10 hours to 16 hours per week as of August 2020. For many municipalities the new measures imply a significant change of policy, which has to be effectuated in a relatively short period of time. For other municipalities the new measures match standing practice closely. Because of this variation in local practice and the staggered implementation of the reform, the policy measures create a natural experiment that can be used to make strong claims about the causal effects of the preschool expansion.
The project includes children from families with a low socio-economic status with a Dutch, Turkish, Moroccan or other non-Western background. The children will be recruited in daycare and preschool centers spread over the country. Children’s development is followed and the study also takes into account differences in the quality of the provided preschool education at the centers (measured using observations and structured interviews), and of the home environment (based on interviews with parents).