makes no odds I think, i would only move if move meant something very important to me, like playground/no playground for kids. tis a class, money, location thing only i think. from my localised north london experience it goes like this:
state nurseries, do early year foundation programme, are heavily oversubscribed and offer daft short hours.
private nurseries and pre-schools, offer longer/more sessions and do added flavour of educational choice eg montessori, and always have better facilities, excepting sometimes Sure start children's centres.
the main north london pre-school diffs I can see with compared to private/state nurseries is that (1) they practically never do wraparound care for office hours workers and (2) often have slightly more staff with higher childcare quals, eg degrees and older staff with more epxerience
all types seem to spend last months of child's years there practising for discipline of being at schoool, which is very helpful. not the actual 3Rs skills, but the doing as told, being friends, sitting and concentrating, tidying up.
then there is obv a class/money divide in the amount of parental involvment in each type. and when i'm being er, very dry about it, this is what i see:
pre-schools: families in upper middle class income bracket often use nannies all day with added pre-school to hone child's social skills and their own by meeting other rich and famous--/ 'parents like us'. i confess to a) having had a kick at said parents' fame and b) a quiet laugh at shock on their faces when they see our not-upper-middle-class-income-bracket house.
private nurseries: Usually full to bursting, insane waiting lists. Only a pound ot two an hour cheaper than pre-schools TBH. families with middle class incomes quivering with worry about tax/childcare vouchers/new govt both parents freelancing frantically and making my head spin trying to keep up with who is whose parent as they change pick ups and they friend/swapping childcare bedazzles me.
state nurseries: heroically hard working/chronically underemployed parents lobbing selves and offspring into peeling paint nursery with pallets used as fences and moaning there's not enough free childcare. Probably because staff spend most of their time up the road having hourly fag breaks