Content and Objectives

Almost every second child under the age of six in Germany now has a migration or refugee background. Various research studies show how important good quality early education and care is for the development of these children. Child day care facilities (Kita) are of particular importance here. However, these children are underrepresented in these facilities in the first four years of life, as are children from families with less education. This has not changed for many years, even with the quantitative expansion of day care. Relevant analyses also show that this has less to do with the preferences of families with a migration background, but that other factors are decisive, which can also be found on the supply side. On the one hand, the project will examine, on the basis of the latest data, to what extent the "early education gap" in the use of daycare centres has changed and which groups are particularly affected by this. Corresponding findings will provide policy-makers with indications as to which groups should be specifically addressed in order to utilise all educational potentials. Special attention will be paid to the years of the Corona pandemic to see to what extent the (partial) closures of daycare centres have contributed to further inequalities in daycare use, for example, in that children with a migration and refugee background were particularly affected by (partial) closures.

In a second part, the reasons for the lower utilisation of these groups will be further identified. It will also be examined to what extent further intervention studies, for example in day-care centres, are suitable for gaining additional insights into measures that reduce the "Early Education Gap".

In this context, measures should be considered that start on the supply side and are daycare centres could be implemented. The project makes an important contribution to the core research topics of the research group "Education and human capital" in the area of early education and care and in the area of Educational inequalities. As differences in the use of daycare centres are due to later socio-economic inequalities in the development of children and in the further course of their education, this project also makes a significant contribution to identifying political options for action in order to efficiently improve the utilisation of educational potential.