Private providers, many of them big chains, deliver most childcare in England. But Helen Penn, co-director of the University of East London's International Centre for a Mixed Economy of Childcare, said international research did not show any quality benefit of using the private sector to provide childcare.
Citing recent research into mixed market childcare carried out in the United States, Australia and Canada, she said: "Quality was lowest in for-profit corporate chain creches. The point is, for all the government's insistence on evidence-based policy, childcare is an area where there is very little evidence to back up government policy."
But Penn said the unique approach to regulating childcare in England, through Ofsted, could make a difference to quality of private provision. "We don't know if for-profit care makes a difference to quality," she said. "It may be that the regulatory system makes a difference. This government has adopted a ferociously pro-market approach but in many European countries there is no commercial sector to speak of."
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