Privatization of preschool education: The implications for educational inequalities in cross-national perspective

Preschool education is regarded by many researchers and policymakers as a potential equalizer of educational opportunities. Yet, cross-national research shows that there exist large variations in the equalizing effects of preschool education across countries. In this paper, we study to what extent the national level of privatization of the preschool sector can explain these cross-national differences by examining its impact on the equalizing effects of preschool education. For this purpose, we use data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2016 for 24 countries. The results show that having spent more time in preschool is more strongly associated with primary school achievements for children of disadvantaged families. We find some modest support that this compensatory pattern—in which preschool compensates for a reduced set of resources in the home environment—is somewhat weaker in societies with higher levels of privatization, though not reaching conventional standards of statistical significance. The study highlights the relevance of considering the impact of national preschool settings on the distribution of preschool benefits across children with varying socioeconomic backgrounds.