This article comparatively examines expertise and policy-making related to school maturity in postwar Czechoslovakia and Poland. Through an analysis of published sources and archival material, it traces the intensive development of pedagogical and psychological expertise about school maturity from the early 1960s onward and examines how that development influenced the policies introduced in both countries in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Using the concept of the expertise as a network as our analytical lens, we show that despite considerable differences in education systems and particular features of expertise in the two countries, pedagogical expertise affected policies in a very similar way through intensive networking, leading to the introduction of measures such as preparatory departments and compensatory classes in Czechoslovakia and early enrollment in Poland. We argue that educational policy-making in post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia and Poland was largely expert-driven. Nevertheless, there were limitations on the experts’ influence, as not all the proposed changes were introduced.

Northern Ireland has been without a Childcare Strategy for more than a decade – the only region in the United Kingdom (UK) that does not have one. As a devolved responsibility, progress in childcare has been significantly limited, and there is currently no government-funded childcare provision available. This is compared to England, Scotland, and Wales, where investment to expand provision has been introduced to help parents meet the cost of childcare by providing funded entitlement. This article examines and discusses policy developments in early education and childcare in Northern Ireland and the other UK nations. It is argued that the lack of progress by the Northern Ireland Executive to develop a Childcare Strategy overlooks it’s economic and social importance and reflects how childcare continues to be underfunded and undervalued.

While state government spending on early education has grown in recent years, accessibility of preschool programs for rural children remains a problem. Using census-tract data from a nationally-representative data set on U.S. children, multinomial logit estimation reveals significant differences in early education experiences between rural and nonrural children. Both rural children and children of less-educated mothers are less likely to participate in preschool. This paper concludes by discussing the appropriate role of local, state, or federal governments in funding rural preschool programs. While early educational investments are being touted as effective economic development tools, the nature of the positive externalities associated with preschool makes it unlikely that any single rural community would invest in high-quality programs without state or federal assistance.

There is a body of evidence that shows that early education improves cognitive and social development for children while they are still attending, but the longer-term impacts depend on the quality of early education. Much of this evidence in England relates to a period when attendance rates at early education were around 60 per cent. Since then, early education has expanded through the guarantee of free provision for three- and four-year-olds, such that attendance at early education is now almost universal. This paper uses data from the Millennium Cohort Study to consider whether, in an era of near universal provision, early education is still associated with detectable improvements in outcomes for children. The analysis focuses on attainment in Key Stage 1 assessments when children were aged seven and finds that the overall impact of early education on Key Stage 1 attainment is modest, but that the impact is generally greater for those children who experienced poverty when they entered early education.