Topic: Social background and equal opportunity in education Research question: Are early childhood education programmes capable of contributing to overcome social inequality and (in case they are) of making sure children with different social backgrounds and heterogeneous preconditions for learning will have equal opportunities in respect of their education? Objective: Major empirical findings will be outlined in order to elicit whether early childhood education can compensate for differences in the starting positions for learning. A review of the current research will be given, and key findings from the international research literature will be reconsidered. Research findings on the effect of preschool education programmes on the development of socially deprived children: In numerous Anglo-American longitudinal studies the efficacy of institutionalised preschool education programmes on the development of socially deprived children was investigated. Several studies provided evidence for positive effects in school achievement, class repetition rates, educational attainment in adulthood, health, crime rate, delinquency and employment ratio (e.g. Schweinhardt & Weikart, 1997; Barnett, 2006). An OECD-study by Kamerman et al. (2003) and a longitudinal study by Osborne and Milbank (1987) confirmed these findings: Children who had attended an early childhood education programme disposed of linguistic and mathematical capacities that were superior to the capacities of children who had not been promoted accordingly. Moreover, class repetition rates were lower and there was less need of special education. Sylva et al. (2004) found a better cognitive and social development in the fostered children compared to the development of the children in the control group. Mainly the socially deprived children were found to benefit notably from the educational programmes. This finding is in line with an OECD-analysis (2002) according to which preschool programmes can compensate for social inequality to a large extent in the long term. Furthermore several other studies pointed out a significant correlation between the attendance at kindergarten and later school achievement (e.g. Becker & Lauterbach, 2004; Bos et al., 2004). However, in some other studies only minor effects of preschool programmes on later school achievement could be found. Chances of socially disadvantaged children couldn’t be much enhanced through preschool programmes according to studies by Andersson (1992), Chin-Quee and Scarr (1994) or the English National Child Development Study by Feinstein et al. (1999). Currie and Thomas (2001) emphasised on their part that long term differences in school achievement are mostly due to differences in the quality of the education at school. This result has been confirmed in several other studies from Germany (e.g. Heinrich & Koletzko, 2005; Roßbach, 2006).

A systematic literature review was undertaken: A content analysis of the latest studies in the field of early childhood education was conducted, and the major findings of these studies were analysed, weighted and detailed.

Conclusions: The above-mentioned findings suggest that inequality due to family background and other social differences can be overcome quite effectively by early fostering of children in preschool education programmes. According to the findings from the empirical research, the programmes that can efficiently enhance the chances of socially deprived children can be characterized as follows: 1) They comprise all children (including a majority of the children from socio-economically disadvantaged families), 2) they prepare children for school and 3) they guarantee continuous and qualitatively good educational promotion during the subsequent school years.