Qualified nursery teachers make little difference to attainment, study finds

A new study concludes that a child’s educational achievement at the end of their Reception year is only very slightly higher if they have been taught in a nursery with a teacher trained to graduate level.

There was also little difference between those attending a nursery rated "outstanding" by Ofsted and others.

Researchers from the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, the University of Surrey and University College London, compared data on children's results with information about the nurseries they attended in the year before starting school for around 1.8 million people born in England between September 2003 and August 2006.