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In this article, I investigate preschool children’s participation in organised activities. Current political and academic debates consider informal education as a prime vehicle for potentially diminishing social class inequalities in educational outcomes before school entry. However, studies point to unequal participation rates between social classes, which means the activities might actually aggravate existing disparities. Various explanations have been offered for this social class gap. Some scholars argue that material resources play a pivotal role, while others say that culture is the decisive factor. This study uses the kindergarten cohort of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) to test how far these two dimensions contribute to social class differences in preschool children’s participation in organised activities. My analysis shows that both dimensions are important determinants of children’s participation in organized activities. However, occupational characteristics also have a considerable effect, which suggests shortcomings in the current scholarly discussion.

Following on from successful early intervention programs abroad, the Netherlands also introduced a number of different programs to tackle educational disadvantage in preschool and early years education. Studies that investigate the effects of Dutch early childhood interventions have been published since 2000. This meta-analytic review study summarizes the findings from 21 experimental comparisons which study some 50,000 children in the period between 2000–2015, with a total of 165 outcome measures. The aggregate effect of early childhood interventions compared with standard preschool and early years groups is not statistically significant. The disappointing results indicate that special early childhood education programs currently offer no added value for the development of young children in the Dutch context over and above regular preschool and early years groups. A focus for Dutch policy is to improve future practice based on scientific evidence around effective approaches to ECEC. Further, the implementation of study designs with more experimental control would strengthen the current knowledge base.

This article is based on work undertaken for the European Commission (EC) as part of a wider project on what is termed ‘social services of general interest’. The EC is currently engaged in considering what kind of legislative and quality assurance mechanisms might be promoted for those social services, which have been opened up to competition. The EC work reported here mapped the extent to which early education and childcare (ECEC) is provided by private organizations in the member states of the European Union, and what regulatory frameworks exist for such services. This article foregrounds the situation in the UK, and England in particular. England is exceptional in Europe in the degree to which it has conceptualized and promoted childcare as a business or for-profit enterprise; and it has developed a regulatory framework with a narrow scope which excludes or limits such issues as financial regulation, access, pay and conditions of work for staff, and accountability measures.