Pupil Mental Health, Well-being and Development

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Thursday 22nd February 2024

(1 month ago)

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Moved by
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
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That this House takes note of the role of schools in caring for the mental health and well-being of pupils, and assisting in their development as community and family members.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, I begin by thanking the Library for the excellent briefing setting out the problem. A standout statistic in that briefing about the truly terrible state of the mental health of school pupils was that in November 2023 NHS Digital estimated that 20% of eight to 16 year-olds had a probable mental health disorder.

I thank the significant number of NGOs and campaign groups that sent briefings for the debate. I pick out particularly Square Peg, an organisation established by and for those with lived experience of school attendance difficulties. It works in partnership with Not Fine in School. Its existence since 2018 demonstrates how the issue we are discussing pre-dates the Covid pandemic, while acknowledging that it has undoubtedly magnified issues for pupils, parents and schools. Absence rates were rising by 15% to 20% per annum pre pandemic, while exclusion and suspension rates, off-rolling and de-registrations were also increasing.

I thank very much the noble Lords who signed up for this last item of business on a Thursday. This is an acknowledgement of the concern about this issue and the desire to examine not just treatment but causes. I look forward to all noble Lords’ contributions.

The origins of this debate lie in alarm following the report, in November 2023, by the Children’s Commissioner for England. The report found that pupil absence had become endemic at key stage 4, with over one-third of pupils either persistently or severely absent for at least one year. But from both the largest parties in our politics, discussion and debate about those figures has, I am afraid, focused on what is wrong with pupils or parents. The Government have launched a national communications campaign called Moments Matter, Attendance Counts, which targets parents and carers, trying to get through to them the importance of attendance for attainment, well-being and development.

That seems to ignore the fact that a survey by the youth mental health charity stem4 found that 28% of 12 to 18 year-olds had not attended school over the last year due to anxiety about the experience of attendance. Experts comment that many of them are unable to cope with the school experience, and the “prosecuting parents” report reflects that threatening legal action against parents, as often happens, is both pointless and damaging. But, all too often, that continues to be the response. What does it do to a parent-child relationship if the parent or carer is being pressured by the Government to force the child to go to school, even when school is making the child ill? The top Labour response was that it would legislate for a compulsory national register of home-schooled children, who are not, of course, the source of the attendance issue.

Rather than focusing on pupils or parents, the Green Party and I want to focus on what is happening in our schools. What are they doing to push away pupils—particularly, but far from only, those from disadvantaged backgrounds and with special educational needs, disabilities and chronic illnesses, including long Covid—and discourage their attendance? Why are they failing to be attracted to school?

There is a whole other issue about the rising levels of poverty and child poverty, which were addressed in the powerful earlier debate today. That is obviously a major contributor. Our society is dysfunctional and is failing many, particularly the young. But I will keep the focus today within schools. There is also a big issue of underfunding, but I will not focus on that today because it descends so easily into a pointless duel of statistics.

I stress that I am not blaming hard-working heads, teachers and other staff, who operate within a system forced on them, one that has been ideologically driven, over the course of Governments of different hues, to focus on discipline, rigid frameworks, teaching to the test, regimented and tightly controlled behaviour, and so-called preparation for work. Of course, I have to mention dealing with the impacts of austerity, which saw the most deprived one-fifth of secondary schools’ spending per pupil fall by 12% in real terms between 2010 and 2021. As a former school governor, I saw the pressure that heads and teachers were under to conform, to test and to push square pegs into round holes.

The spread of multi-academy trust schools, independent of local democratic control—with schools not infrequently forced, rather than choosing, to join—has been associated with models of rigid discipline and heavy penalties for the slightest infraction: not having a pen, speaking in a corridor or having the wrong hairdo. A former teacher described it as “institutional bullying”. These schools are concentrated in more economically deprived, often so-called levelling-up, areas. A mother shared with me on social media her child’s response to the suggestion that school was preparing them for society. The child said, “But the only place in society that is like school is a prison”. Out of the mouths of babes come some terribly clear truths.

One of the things that I want to reflect on goes back in history, and how little schools have changed in the past century. If you set aside the technology of whiteboards and personal tablets then the structure, system and perceived purpose of schools is essentially unchanged. The subjects taught and favoured, the external exams and classes, with dozens of pupils of the same age all proceeding together, the idea that this is to prepare pupils for the workplace and the focus on discipline, uniform and conformity—all this would be entirely familiar to a Victorian student, and to what use is the technology put? In initiating discussions about this debate, I learned that in many schools an app records a pupil’s demerits—how many black marks they have earned that day—which are also conveyed electronically to parents, to show how much time pupils are supposed to spend in detention. What does it do to your mental health to know that when your phone vibrates, you have another black mark, another perceived failure, another punishment?

The Autistic Girls Network shared with me research from 2023, showing that 94% of school attendance cases were underpinned by significant emotional distress. Some 92% of those children were neurodivergent and 83% were autistic. However, as the network pointed out, 80% of autistic girls remain unrecognised at the age of 18, so the numbers will be even higher than that. There is no doubt that children with special educational needs and disabilities are being severely failed by the current system. That issue, I am pleased to say, is often raised in your Lordships’ House, and I am confident when I look at the speakers’ list that others in this debate will focus on it. I shall focus on the fact that many pupils, particularly those who start with advantages in family background, health and well-being, may survive the experience of school—they may not show up in the absence statistics or with mental health states sufficient to appear in the medical figures—but we should want and expect much more from schools than being something to survive and endure.

I focus on the rise in discipline, rules and controls over every aspect of pupils’ bodies within the school gates, but there is also the question of what has disappeared from schools, particularly over recent years. I discussed this debate with Rick Page, ex-head teacher of Wordsworth Primary School in Southampton, a large inner-city school of 630 children. Over a number of years, when he was head, he developed a five-strand creative child programme; a music department that sent an orchestra to play at the Royal Albert Hall with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; a sports coach team with an office on site and an extensive curriculum, plus after-school and holiday clubs; an environmental studies and forest schoolteacher, teaching in a nature zone; a dance teacher for tackling ballet and to lead the Rock Challenge; and an arts focus, which included a talented artists scheme with a neighbouring public school, the King Edward VI School. Mr Page told me that attendance, attitude and behaviour were all improved by fostering a real connection with children’s lives and the local community. Since he retired, continual real-terms budget cuts and the straitjacket of conformity imposed on schools by Ofsted have seen many significant parts of that lost. That is one school example, but the reality of many.

I want to introduce a final theme: the content of education offered in schools, which, as I said earlier, has changed little since Victorian times. This comment was inspired by hearing Nehaal Bajwa, the vice-president for liberation and equality at the National Union of Students, speaking last night and reflecting on how the system provides education throughout in how our economy, society and environment are broken, but fails to provide solutions on how to fix it. We really ought to think about how we provide pupils with the ability to deal with the many challenges that they face in our society—challenges that our generation has bequeathed to them. I would add that we have schools that are preparing pupils to be cogs in the existing economic system, a fate against which many pupils are rebelling. There is an idea that education is for exams and jobs, when it needs to be a complete preparation for life in a fast-changing world, living as citizens, neighbours and family and household members, and as consumers in and contributors to society in multiple ways.

How will we tackle the climate emergency and nature crisis, the poverty and inequality of the world and the geopolitical turmoil? The climate strikers showed us that school pupils are fully engaged with those things, but how are schools helping them to do that? What I heard from being out with and talking to those climate strikers was that they felt that schools were failing them. Indeed, a number said to me that they had teachers ask them to explain the climate emergency, because the teachers themselves did not feel that they had the framework to understand it.

What does the rigid behavioural indoctrination prepare pupils for? Perhaps behaving with the efficiency of a robot in an Amazon warehouse, or following the script in a call centre. WB Yeats said that education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. Yet, all too often, what we have in the current system is filling school pupils with anxiety and fear; with test answers and rigid routines, rather than a love of learning and the capacity to discover and innovate; with the problems of the adult world, but not the sense that they can take control and join with others to solve them.

I like to provide solutions, so I will finish with a final stream of thought that may be the most radical part of this speech. How do we fix all this? One part of my answer is that it starts with democracy. We need to restore democratic control over schools and remove the dead centralising hand of Westminster; more than that, we need to make schools more democratic. Psychologists tell us that to be empowered and be in control of your own life and your own body is crucial to well-being. It is a central part of good mental health. That is as true for children as it is for adults.

So, what do we need? We are talking about health and well-being, helping pupils to step out into a difficult world with so many challenges, equipped to live good, healthy, productive lives. We need schools that are more democratic and more compassionate, caring and forgiving. If a child forgot a pen or did not get exactly the right uniform on that morning, how much should that child pay for that? What is the cost of penalising that child heavily? They need to be more accepting of difference, more embedded in and reflective of their communities, not reflective of the will of Westminster. They need to be far richer in art, culture, physical activity and play. That is the sort of schools that we need to care for the mental health and well-being of our future generations, to send them out into the world for a healthy, fulfilling and productive life.

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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, I thank the Minister and everyone who has taken part in what has been a rich and deeply informative debate—I might even say your Lordships’ House at its best. I think I have a couple of minutes, so I want to respond and highlight some things that particularly deserve to be highlighted.

I commend the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on his courage in raising the issue of child suicide. It is very difficult to talk about and very disturbing, but it is important that it was raised in the debate. I thank him for that.

Slightly more lightly, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey: no detention, I do not think. I am delighted to hear from the Benches opposite such a radical idea of how we need to get away from Victorian schooling.

I want particularly to address the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, to accept his invitation—I believe I should be at the front of the queue, given it is clearly a long one—and perhaps to apologise. Maybe my speech did not make it clear enough that I was talking about what is happening in a significant number of schools but by no means all of them, and about the direction of policy and ideology that is being pushed towards schools. I mention, for example, Space Studio West London, which I visited with Learn with the Lords. It struck me, from my two-hour visit, as a very inclusive, welcoming and caring school that has really strong approaches. I have no doubt that they exist, but I feel that they are having to run against the tide, rather than being supported in the way that they should be.

I will now pick up some points from the Minister. She said that the department is operating on the basis of evidence of what works. But today, when we are talking about mental health, the figures cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about children’s experience of schools and how they feel about them were deeply shocking. That is evidence and it really needs to be taken into account.

On schools being forced into trusts, Ofsted is a whole other debate. Very importantly, after what the Minister said about the tone of dealing with parents, we heard testimony from all around your Lordships’ House, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Wei. He said there needs to be an approach of collaboration rather than confrontation, and that targets for school attendance often mean being pushed to not act in children’s best interests. Those important testimonies from experience really need to be listened to.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, joined the right reverend Prelate and others in talking about the importance of the arts and music. The noble Baroness gave her classic virtuoso performance; I particularly liked the reference to how that is related to civic behaviours —voting and volunteering et cetera, and the relationship of that to cultural education. On food—one of my favourite things—we did not actually get the word microbiome in there, but I thank all noble Lords who brought that up. It is a crucial issue.

I want to finish by referencing two speeches. The first is that of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. It was an important and obviously very well-informed speech. The word I kept hearing again and again was “pressure”—the pressure coming from exams. I think that feeling has been reflected right around your Lordships’ House; that is how schools are suffering. There is also the way in which schools are not embedded in communities in the same way they used to be, while having to compete against each other. I think the noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about co-operation and the importance of schools working as a network—not being set against each other in league tables, but working together.

Finally, I go to the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, who of course brings no party axe to grind to your Lordships’ House; she brings absolutely expert experience. She summed up a lot of the debate, from all sides of the House, in saying that children need to feel safe in school, that ignoring well-being does not lead to better outcomes and that we need to address the things that really matter. That is the message to finish this debate with; it really needs to be listened to by all sides of your Lordships’ House.

Motion agreed.

Children’s Care Homes: Private Equity

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Tuesday 30th January 2024

(1 month, 4 weeks ago)

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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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The noble Lord will be aware that the Competition and Markets Authority has already done a great deal of work in this area and has made recommendations which are behind our commitment to a much clearer market oversight regime. We will bring forward legislative changes to enact that when parliamentary time allows.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, I will follow on from the question of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, about value for money. The Minister said that the Government are against profiteering but not against profit. What actual value is added by having private sector companies involved in this sector, when we should see all the public money that is being spent going into the care of children, and not into profits?

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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The first thing—whether the noble Baroness agrees or not—is that it provides an enormous amount of capacity, and in her zeal to address the profitability of the sector we need to consider also the stability of those placements for children.

Childcare

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Monday 22nd January 2024

(2 months, 1 week ago)

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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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The noble Lord raises an important point, and he will be aware that, at the end of November 2023, we published the local authority-level hourly funding rates. Of course, it is up to local authorities to parse that information and to decide the funding rates for their local providers. We are aware that some local authorities have not yet done that, and we are working closely with them and stressing to them exactly the points that the noble Lord made.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, we have been talking in general terms and overall figures, but the BBC reported the words of Sarah McCormick, of Little Owl Childcare, which manages three centres in Staffordshire. She says simply that they are full, with no space for more children and not enough staff to offer those places. That seems to reflect what the chief executive of the Early Years Alliance told the Independent; namely, that very many parents are turning up but being turned away and told there is a 12- to 18-month wait at least. That seems to be what the reports all say, so can the Minister comment on them? On one specific point, we are talking about something that is supposed to start in April, and one of the ways the Government say they will get the staff is through a new accelerated apprenticeship route, which will be introduced for staff. Given that this is starting in April, when is the apprenticeship route likely to begin?

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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I hear the concerns of the noble Baroness about space and staff, although I would point out that we believe the growth in demand for places will be at its greatest towards the introduction in September 2025. So there is quite a lot of time for us to be working with the sector and building capacity. I absolutely reassure the noble Baroness that colleagues in the department and my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families work very closely with those in the sector and listen carefully to their demands.

Early Years Education

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Thursday 30th November 2023

(4 months ago)

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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, and to share her passionate concern about the level of inequality that affects children’s start in life and therefore affects people throughout their lives.

I have been enjoying taking part in this debate and am particularly glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, brought her expertise to this afternoon’s session. I was particularly interested in her focus on advertising built into apps, built into systems where parents feel as if they are doing the right thing by exposing their children to them. It is the Green Party’s policy to ban all advertising targeted at children of primary school age or under, because there is psychological evidence that shows that children are unable to distinguish between editorial content and advertising content—where, indeed, there is a difference between those two. I understand that it may not be in her brief, but I ask the Minister later, if possible, to say what actions the Government plan to crack down on advertising aimed at a vulnerable population with no way of understanding that what has been targeted at it is advertising.

I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for giving us the opportunity for this debate and for introducing it so powerfully. I have crossed out quite a number of things in my speech in an attempt not to repeat but rather to add to what has been said in this debate. I note that for the second debate in a row, there are no Tory Back-Bench speakers. I have to draw the contrast between this debate and yesterday’s debate on the Autumn Statement, where we saw a large number of speakers with a very different gender balance. I urge those who participated in yesterday’s debate, if they read the Hansard of this debate, to think about the fact that if they will not think or care about early childhood education for other reasons, they should at least acknowledge this is the foundation of our economy. In yesterday’s debate, we were—as we are practically every day in the House—lamenting the terrible level of productivity in the UK. Where is the foundation of that? With our inadequate early years provision. If you will not care about it for other reasons, please think about caring about it for that great god of the economy.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, in setting up this debate, focused on the impact of Covid, and we have already heard very powerful testimony about that, but it has exacerbated problems right through our education system from early years onwards. Of course, when children leave the early years system, they go immediately to baseline testing. Then, in primary schools they have SATs and all the pressure, worry and concern that they raise. Our whole education system is focused on teaching to the test, treating children like an empty vessel into which a whole lot of information is poured. They are shaped into a work-ready form. I go back to 2013 and the then Childcare Minister, Liz Truss—you might remember her. Liz Truss, having, in her position as Minister, toured a number of early years settings, said:

“I have seen too many chaotic settings, where children are running around. There’s no sense of purpose”.


I ask the Minister if that still reflects the philosophy and approach of the Government.

As an alternative approach that I think the Government should be taking, I will point her towards the work of Paul Ramchandani, the world’s first Professor of Play in Education, Development and Learning, who is based at the University of Cambridge. I encourage the department to look at the professor’s work, which very much focuses in the early years setting on the fact that that play is fundamental for children to learn and develop. For younger children, that is where they learn to communicate, to share, to interact with other children and to manage their emotions when things do not work out. There is an excellent article in the Times Education Supplement covering this much more broadly than I have time to today. Does the Minister agree that early years education has to be focused on the development of the whole child, rather than making them school-ready in the narrow Liz Truss sense?

In addressing this debate, I have three sections: philosophy, staff and some inequality points, building on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie.

One of the things to think about in the Green Party philosophy is that early years education should go on for longer. In many countries, academic learning is not introduced until the age of seven. These early years should be regarded as a unique educational stage in their own right, not just as preparation for school. Here is one of the practical realities that we see: I am sure that many of the noble Lords taking part in this debate are regularly contacted by parents who are concerned about their child being the youngest in the year and struggling developmentally to keep up with children who are almost a year older than them. We need to recognise the variance in children’s development and give them the chance to develop in that early years setting, which should—indeed, can—be much more flexible and adaptable than a school setting could ever possibly be.

We think that we should see a movement towards the early years going on for longer. One thing that is really important, but which much of our early years provision does not currently enable, is regular access to outdoor green spaces and nature. We are very much aware of the fact that this has both educational and health benefits. We now understand that the human microbiome is crucial to our well-being. Being in natural environments, for example playing in the mud, has all kinds of health benefits to which, sadly, many of our young children simply do not have access either in their early years setting or in their home environment. The science shows us that the benefits are huge. I do not know whether the Minister can offer me any hope that the Government acknowledge the importance of that exposure to the natural world—that is, physically being in the natural world. Can she say whether the Government have any plans to increase that opportunity?

I come to staffing, which the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, has already covered quite a bit; I will lean heavily here on the Early Education and Childcare Coalition’s report, prepared with the Women’s Budget Group. The Government are talking; I welcome them saying, “We need to expand early years provision and improve the quality”. However, the coalition’s figures show that 57% of nursery staff are planning to leave their jobs in the next year, while two-thirds of nurseries are already reporting an average waiting time of six months for a place. We have a long-term situation where car mechanics are generally paid far more than childcare workers. This is an old feminist commentary on the gendered nature of those two roles, of course, but we have to acknowledge that this issue is crucial for all our futures. We need to value our workers.

Some of the practical recommendations from the coalition are really worth focusing on; they are not necessarily enormously expensive. They include having a career development hub at the Department for Education, because one thing that this study and others have very much focused on is the fact that there is not really any way for people to develop their skills practically. Nurseries are often understaffed and struggle to keep up with the legislative requirements on staffing levels. Their ability to have time for staff to go away for training and further development just is not there. What is also crucial—I will come back to this—is the need for more special educational needs training so that we can meet the increasing demands for special educational needs provision in early years education.

Further to that point about allowing staff to go away for training, the report recommends a system of having bank staff at the local authority level to enable staff to take time out for training. This would mean that staff could do so without any negative implications for their employer. There is also the experts and mentoring scheme for childminders. Do the Government plan for that to become a permanent programme?

I will finish with a point that I have raised before with the Minister and cannot avoid raising in this context, as we are focusing so broadly on the early years sector—the rising number of hedge funds and those in the financial sector investing in it. These people are not running nurseries because they are passionate about children’s development or because they really want to make a difference. By definition, they are there to make a profit. There are now 81,500 childcare places in England owned by investment funds and similar organisations. That is almost double the total in 2018.

A report from UCL academics last year said that these are very risky financial models, heavily indebted and at real risk of collapse—as we have seen in the care home sector. I put this on the record because I suspect that many parents do not realise the role of the financial sector in their provision. We all know how desperately parents have to hunt around for a place and then grab what they can, but I wonder whether they know that Busy Bees Nurseries is owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. Kids Planet is owned by the private equity firm Fremman Capital, which has recently been on a large buying spree of expansion. The Dutch private equity firm Waterland recently acquired Partou. The London-based Oakley Capital owns what it renamed the Bright Stars Nursery Group, which is one of the fastest growing.

We are talking about something fundamental. We are talking about the future—and we are not doing very well.

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Baroness Barran Portrait The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
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My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I express my sadness at the untimely death of Lord Darling. We can have some small insight into the extraordinary pressure that he must have worked under, at a time of global financial crisis, and the calmness and judgment he brought to his role. We send our very best wishes to his family, in particular.

We have heard some powerful messages from across the Chamber today on the importance of high-quality early years education. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, very much for securing this debate and all noble Lords who have contributed to the topic. Whatever our perspectives, today’s debate has highlighted how crucial it is that we ensure all children have the best start in life. Decades of evidence, as we heard today, has shown that quality early years education has a critical positive effect on children’s outcomes, in the short and the long term. That is why the Government are committed to ensuring that every child receives high-quality education and care.

I absolutely accept that His Majesty’s Opposition are rightly there to challenge the Government’s record but, before I talk more about the Government’s policies in this area and attempt to address some of the questions raised by noble Lords, I feel it is important for the record to say that some of the remarks about how unsuccessful our education system is are very far from the truth. We have seen a significant improvement in reading and in maths. Our children aged nine and 10 are now fourth in the world and the best in the western world at reading. There has been a significant improvement in maths as well. That has been thanks to the absolute focus that this Government, and in particular my former ministerial colleague Minister Gibb, paid to this very important plank for future education. I absolutely accept the challenges posed by noble Lords, but we need to keep the record straight on the Government’s record on education.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, gently again raised the important issues of childhood obesity. I will take back his thoughts to my ministerial colleagues about the importance of a review and the work he is leading in relation to ultra-processed foods. The early years foundation stage framework requires that, where children are provided with meals, snacks or drinks in an early years setting, they need to be healthy and nutritious. We have example menus for early years settings in England and provide guidance to staff on menu planning. I hope that he takes some reassurance from the focus within early years, although I accept his concerns about the wider issues of obesity.

The quality of our early years provision was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and others. England has some of the highest-quality provision in the world, with 96% of early years settings rated good or outstanding by Ofsted as of August 2023, which is up from 74% in 2012. The early years foundation stage statutory framework sets the standards that all early years providers must follow to ensure that children have the skills and knowledge they need to thrive. In 2021, this Government reformed the early years framework more broadly to improve early years outcomes for all children, particularly disadvantaged children—noble Lords rightly raised the subject—in the critical areas that build the foundations for later success, such as mathematics, language development and literacy and, importantly, in play, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, articulated so clearly.

I am delighted to be able to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that we are making great progress in encouraging children to connect with nature. We recently launched our National Education Nature Park; I can send her the link. This is providing children in every school the chance to map their school grounds and upload those digitally, so that we can build a whole digital map. There are grants for schools with very low levels of biodiversity to be able to increase biodiversity. I visited an extremely urban school in Birmingham earlier this week to see what it was doing in relation to the nature park. It is growing vegetables; it has chickens and takes the eggs from them for the breakfast club’s scrambled eggs. I know that she is not pleased with everything the Government do, but I hope that she will accept that this is a step in the right direction.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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I do not necessarily expect an immediate answer, but can the Minister perhaps think about whether it is possible to extend such a programme to nursery settings?

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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It has already been extended to the nursery sector. We are way ahead. But this is an important point because it sets children off in the way we hope they will continue: with a love of nature but also a sense of agency within it.

I turn to concerns that noble Lords raised about the impact of Covid on children’s development. The 2022-23 early years foundation stage profile results, published by the department today, show that there has been an increase in the proportion of five year-olds achieving a good level of development compared to last year. In 2022-23, 67.2% of children had a good level of development, and 65.6% were at the expected level across all 17 early learning goals—that is up 2% on last year. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, rightly raised concerns about recovery post Covid.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for raising important issues about children and screen time. If the noble Baroness has time, I would be happy to meet her and talk about the additional security that we think the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance provides to children in education settings, although she is clearly not convinced it is achieving that. I do not think there is any difference in our aims and aspirations for the safety of children, so it would be helpful if the noble Baroness would agree to explore that in more detail. I absolutely agree with her about the importance of the privacy of children’s data.

I turn to the expansion in provision. We are determined to support as many families as possible with access to high-quality and affordable childcare. A number of noble Lords remarked on a focus on encouraging people—principally women—back into the workplace, which is an important goal for all the reasons that the House will be aware of. However, it is in no way a compromise on the quality and richness and developmental value that the noble Baroness opposite set out so clearly in her remarks.

By 2027-28, we expect to be spending in excess of £8 billion each year on free childcare. The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, cited the current costs of childcare, which make the case eloquently for the changes that we are bringing in, because we understand that they are a tremendous pressure on those who have very young children and wish to go out to work. This huge expansion means that millions of children will benefit from the extraordinary efforts of the sector to give children the safest and highest-quality early education and childcare. As a first stage in growing and supporting the early years workforce to deliver these entitlements, the Government consulted on a number of further flexibilities to the early years foundation stage this year, which will be implemented from January 2024, so that providers can use their existing workforce better while protecting quality and safety.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, asked why the Government did not consult on the planned expansion. The Spring Budget announcement responded to the concerns aired and raised by parents about the cost of childcare. Since then, the noble Baroness will be aware that we have consulted on key factors of the rollout, including funding and other changes.

The quality of our early years and childcare sector is a testament to the ongoing dedication and hard work of those in the profession. Since the pandemic, the Government have committed up to £180 million of support to promote quality and best practice and provide staff with opportunities for career progression, as we heard from a number of speakers this evening. This includes a package of training, qualifications and guidance for the workforce. We have expanded the early years professional development programme to enable up to 10,000 more level 3 qualified early years practitioners to access the latest teaching in communication and language, early mathematics and personal, social and emotional development. We are also funding the national professional qualification in early years leadership, which is designed to support early years leaders to develop expertise in leading high-quality education and care, as well as effective staff and organisational management.

In addition, we are proud to say that over two-thirds of primary schools have benefited from our investment in the Nuffield early language intervention, improving the speech and language skills of over 160,000 children in reception classes so far. More than 500,000 primary school children have been screened to identify those with language development difficulties, which we know can be such a blocker for their future education.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, asked whether the department had made an estimate of the dead weight in our expansion. There will be a full evaluation of the rollout, which will also look at that issue.

To return to the workforce issues, which were raised again by the noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Twycross, and other noble Lords, to support providers to recruit the staff they need to deliver the expansion in childcare entitlements announced at the Spring Budget, we are developing a range of new workforce initiatives, including the launch of a national recruitment campaign, planned for the beginning of 2024, to boost interest in the sector and support the recruitment of talented staff. We are removing barriers to entering the workforce by ensuring that qualifications are suitable and easy to understand. This includes launching a competition to find providers of early years skills boot camps, which will include a pathway to an accelerated level 3 early years apprenticeship. We are also developing new degree apprenticeship routes so that everyone, from junior staff to senior leaders, can easily move into a career in the sector.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Goudie, challenged on whether the change in the staff-to-child ratio would make it harder to retain staff. As the House knows, we are providing flexibility to providers to move from a 4:1 to a 5:1 ratio, in line with that which exists in Scotland. However, ultimately, it is the managers of settings who know what support their children need, and they will know their staff best. The Government trust their judgment as to what ratios they believe are right for them in their settings. Supporting the workforce is obviously a priority, which is why we provided £204 million of additional funding to local authorities, so that providers can recruit and retain the staff that they need.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, raised a very troubling case, if I understood rightly, of a child on the autism spectrum who was suspended from nursery school, which slightly defies one’s imagination. We do recognise that quality early years education means meeting the needs of all children, which of course critically includes those with special educational needs and disabilities. The House knows very well the importance of those needs being identified as early as possible, as emphasised in the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan, which we published in March this year.

We are funding the training of up to 7,000 early years special educational needs co-ordinators, and there is also SEND-focused content in the package of support and guidance for the workforce which I outlined earlier. We are also reviewing the operation of SEND inclusion funds within the current early years funding system to ensure that funding arrangements are both appropriate and really well-targeted to improve outcomes for preschool children with special educational needs.

To finish, I want to touch on an important point that was raised in the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, today; that quality early years education is provided not only in nurseries, childminder settings and schools but also, of course, at home. We know that a stable and stimulating home learning environment is also crucial to children’s development. That is why we secured £28.7 million between now and 2025 for local authorities to support specifically the speech and language of young children who were worst affected by the pandemic, namely today’s three and four year-olds. That programme is being delivered through family hubs and the Start for Life programme. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised the importance of parenting and children having a routine, which clearly family hubs are part of delivering.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, mentioned the return of Sure Start. As I think she will be aware, we believe that our family hubs really build on the learnings from Sure Start and from children’s centres and are a single place where a family can access all the support they need, including support for mothers with mental health issues, which noble Lords also raised.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, invited me to meet the Early Education and Childcare Coalition and the Early Years Alliance. She may be aware that the department meets both groups very regularly and I know that the Minister for Children and Families has also met them. I would be delighted to as well, if the noble Baroness would find it useful. She also asked whether we hold data on children whose families are in receipt of universal credit. That is held by the Department for Work and Pensions, but I am happy to write if that data is available. I close by thanking your Lordships—

Access to Musical Education in School

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Wednesday 18th October 2023

(5 months, 1 week ago)

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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, I join the universal thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing this debate and introducing it so clearly. We have to note that we are holding this debate as the Guardian publishes an article noting how the £370 million government fumble in funding allocations to schools sees education in England in danger of being reduced to a “barebones, boilerplate model”. Those are the words of an Essex head teacher, James Saunders, whose school is going to receive £50,000 less than anticipated.

Of course we are seeing the risk of cutting teaching assistants, which is of particular importance to children with special educational needs. A number of headteachers the Guardian has spoken to focus on the fact they will have to reduce enrichment activities to balance their books. What we have been talking about up to now are not so much the enrichment activities—the added value, of which music could be such an important part—but basic education in the national curriculum.

It is worth looking back at the recent Ofsted report. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, among others, referred to inequalities. Ofsted has looked at these and said that in over a decade the situation has not improved. There has been some progress in primary schools, but secondary schools are still not giving enough time to music education to meet what is supposed to be the national curriculum requirement. The point I make in this context is that there are only so many hours in the school day. If we are forcing schools to become exam factories and to teach to the test, following on the English bacc subjects—a very narrow range of subjects —no matter how much money there is, there are not enough hours in the day. We need an education for life, not just an education for exams. That is not what we are getting. It is very easy to focus on the potential economic benefits of music; many have, and I agree with all that. But it is useful to focus on the way in which we need people in our communities who are able to contribute to community music.

I particularly want to bounce off the wonderful contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, which was delivered with such verve—“tempo” is perhaps the right word—and think about the well-being and mental health benefits of ensuring that a proper amount of music education is available to all pupils. I draw on a UK Music study, which says:

“Over half of parents whose children are learning an instrument believe it has helped their children with other skills like creative thinking … boosting their confidence … and encouraging perseverance and patience”.


Playing music, listening to music and understanding music are good for people as human beings, equipping them to cope with the modern world and the many challenges we are facing. Yet there is such inequality:

“50% of children at independent schools receive sustained music tuition”

compared with just 15% in state schools. If we look at professionals, we see that

“17% of music creators were educated at fee-paying schools, compared with 7% across the population as a whole”.

Music is something that is good for our society.

Finally, there is no proposed specific music T-level. The closest is media, broadcast and production. That demands work placements of a minimum of 315 hours, which the music sector is going to find very hard to provide. Could the Minister update us on how she sees music being included in the T-level future?

Schools: RAAC

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Tuesday 19th September 2023

(6 months, 1 week ago)

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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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We have very good information on those issues. The noble Lord is right: it is extremely important that we establish that, and the Secretary of State was extremely clear in taking this decision that our operational response to support schools, which have been presented with a difficult decision at a difficult time in the school year, should be really well supported. For every school, we have a dedicated caseworker who co-ordinates all the strands of work that are going on to mitigate the RAAC. Then every school has a project director who is a technical expert; they will visit the school and work out with it the quickest mitigation plan. We have access to specialist classrooms and temporary classrooms for science. We have worked with the utility companies to ensure that the necessary energy, water and so on can be accessed, but there are some difficult cases. I am going on Monday to see a special school for children with profound disabilities. There are very significant requirements to make sure that those children also get access to the best education possible.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, RAAC was actually a popular building material in Europe and North America, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico, yet those areas do not seem to have had the same kind of problems. The Financial Times quoted the head of engineering at the University of Alabama, who helped to bring the product to the US in the 1980s, as saying that there seemed to be

“specific issues in the UK … with design, production and construction”.

Clearly, we are going to see a large amount of new buildings coming into schools, while there have been systemic problems in the long-term past. Is the Minister confident that the buildings coming in to replace them will be adequate and reliable for the long term? What is the Government’s standard length of building life when constructing a new school?

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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As the noble Baroness says, there have been suggestions—I think they are no more than suggestions and that it is a hypothesis—that what I call the recipe, which is probably not a very technical term for its technical specifications, for the RAAC that was manufactured in this country was potentially slightly different to those in other countries or that the installation of it was. There are questions about whether the overlap at the ends of the planks has been sufficient in all cases, but I would stress that those are just hypotheses as to why we face these problems.

The other issue is, genuinely, that we have been extremely proactive. We have spent the last 18 months working with schools. We were made aware in 2018 of the first plank failing at a school. Guidance was produced at that time and it has been updated regularly since. We have engaged with every school—98.6% of responsible bodies and schools in the country—to understand whether they have RAAC in their buildings, how they are managing it and whether they were mitigating the risk. It is through that proactive work that we identified these cases. On the design and production standards, we have been working closely with our chief scientific adviser in the department, who in turn has been working across government with CSAs in other departments, to ensure that our research and understanding of this building material and others is as high quality as it can be.

Life Skills and Citizenship

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Thursday 7th September 2023

(6 months, 3 weeks ago)

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My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for her very lively introduction to this debate and for the opportunity to repeat a key Green principle—that education should be for life, not just for exams or, indeed, just for jobs. That means we need far more stress on such skills as food growing, cooking, first aid and financial management. I am going to focus particularly on the area of citizenship and begin by questioning the division that occurs, with the idea that there are life skills and there is citizenship. I see being a good citizen as an essential life skill; the two things are not separate.

In the interests of being democratic, I am going to go to the report from the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK, which was a participative democracy project run by the Constitution Unit of the University College London and Involve. One conclusion from that group of citizens was that good democracy requires an informed and active electorate, so that people understand politics, the consequences of their vote and how to hold the Government to account—boy, do we need a lot more of that.

We need to think about how people actually learn, and for this I am going to go way back in history to Confucius, who said:

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”.


The thesis I would put in this short speech is that we need to see far more democracy in schools. We need to give pupils, like the young people who have just been in our Gallery, the chance to decide what happens in their schools, what they learn, how they study and how the school operates. It is by doing that democracy, starting from the younger stages, that we will truly prepare people to be citizens who, as we must have for our future, make politics what they do, not have done to them.

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Monday 4th September 2023

(6 months, 3 weeks ago)

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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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It certainly informs the second although, as the noble Lord knows, larger academy trusts and local authorities have discretion to judge within their own school estate how they want to use that money. A number of things inform our discussions with the Treasury, of which the condition data survey is one, but it is definitely not the only thing.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, the Minister may be aware of a school that has been particularly badly affected: Myton School in Warwick, where 1,800 pupils face losing three days of school due to a delay to the start of term. This is a school with two main buildings dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, which were described as being both old and “in disrepair”. It is the first floor of the lower school building that is affected.

My question, informed by this case, is twofold. First, this school is now getting an annual budget for maintenance of £35,000, which is a quarter of what it was receiving, in pounds, in 2010. This is a school in disrepair. Will the Government look at the situation that has arisen with RAAC and see that there needs to be a much broader review and a much greater injection into funds for school maintenance?

Secondly, on a very specific point, the Education Secretary in the other place has said that each school will have a dedicated caseworker, with whom they will have contact to help them deal with any issues so that the department can liaise. The BBC reported late this afternoon that this school, which has clearly been very badly affected, has yet to hear from the department. The head teacher was expecting a phone call over the weekend and did not receive it. When will contact be made by all the caseworkers to the affected schools

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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In relation to the injection of capital, I know the noble Baroness will have heard the Chancellor say that we will be making the money available in both the short and longer term to address the issues that have arisen from this. If the noble Baroness wants to write to me separately with the name of that school—or I can look in Hansard, since I did not catch the name—I will be very happy to follow that up. We have been tracking every day since we started trying to reach schools. I have been reassured that attempts have been made to speak to every single school, and my understanding was that we had done so. I hope that BBC report might be hours out of date, but if not then I am happy to follow that up tonight if that would be helpful.

Higher Education Reform

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Thursday 20th July 2023

(8 months, 1 week ago)

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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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I am obviously disappointed that the noble Baroness did not give the same feedback as in the Statement the other day, but I am more concerned because I think that there is still a misunderstanding about how this would work in practice. I will try to go through the noble Baroness’s points in turn.

I am not equivocating about earnings: the criteria are clear. They are the new B3 quality criteria, which are continuation, completion and graduate-level or further study or employment 15 months after graduation. However, obviously, higher earnings normally correlates with graduate-level jobs—not across every sector and industry, but frequently. If I was confusing, I apologise, but we are not equivocating.

On how it will work, the regulation and the potential for recruitment limits will happen only after intervention. So the OfS will have gathered evidence—this goes to the noble Baroness’s later point about evidence—that shows concerns about whether an institution is meeting the B3 standards. It will investigate and, if it finds that those standards are not met, it will consider recruitment limits.

The noble Baroness referred to her experience at Birkbeck. On the profile of students accessing different courses, I tried in my earlier answer to give examples of how one compares some courses. Obviously the noble Baroness is right: we know that, overall, the profile of non-completion is higher among mature and disadvantaged students. However, it is when a particular course at a particular institution appears to be an outlier in that that we think it is appropriate to apply recruitment limits.

On the social sciences, let me be clear that we are reducing the foundation year funding for classroom-based subjects, among which by far the biggest growth has been in business and management—I gave the numbers earlier. There have been some other subjects where it has grown, but business and management is the outlier. We are reducing it to the same level as that at which an access to higher education course is funded. The question I put back to the noble Baroness—perhaps unfairly, because she cannot reply—is this: is it fair to ask a student to pay almost twice as much and take on almost twice as much debt for two courses that purport to get students to the same level?

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, looking round the House, I venture to ask the Minister two questions.

The Statement refers to trying to deal with students

“paying far into the future for a degree that did not offer them good value”.

That led me to look at a recent House of Commons report on student debt in general, which has some terribly telling figures. The total level of student debt is about to pass £200 billion, the maximum rate of loans that students are paying is 7.1%, and the average debt at graduation this year is £45,600. Looking back at the history, I see that 2002 was the first year of a cohort with large amounts of debt. More than 20 years later, 44% of those debts are still not paid off.

So my first question to the Minister is: paying far into the future, are the Government really taking account to the impacts—economic, social and health—of now the second generation of students having to keep paying off debts, many of which they will never pay off at all, that will now weigh them down over 40 years?

My second question builds on the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and others. Even if, as the Minister asks us, we put the question of income to one side and just look at graduate jobs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said, there is very much a regional issue here. People may do a maths degree in some places, but they might choose, because of the circumstances of their life, not to move to a place where they can get a graduate job, as defined by the Office for Students. But that does not mean that they are not benefiting from that degree.

What about, say, a grandmother—the Government say that they are keen on lifelong learning—who does a history degree and puts all her time, energy and talents, when she is not caring for her grandchildren, into doing local history and writing up local history? That is never going to make any money, but it is hugely contributing to the community and her enthusiasm will undoubtedly transmit to the grandchildren and their friends. Or what about someone who is a carer; they start a degree, the university knows they are a carer, it has affected their studies at school and they drop out half way through to go back to their caring responsibilities? Are we not going to see an impact on admissions? Will institutions be forced to direct themselves towards admissions of people who are then going to fulfil the criteria down the track?

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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In relation to the noble Baroness’s first question about the impact of debt on students far into the future, it is genuinely very interesting—given the level of debt and the amount of debate about debt—that demand to go to university continues to increase and continues to increase in very disadvantaged communities. Young people with an older brother or sister who is grumbling about repaying their student loan know that this is the case, yet there is huge demand for our universities.

I think the noble Baroness would also recognise that there are other taxpayers. Somebody must pay the costs of higher education and currently we have a balance between the students themselves and other taxpayers, some of whom have not been to university. That is a delicate balance to strike. But if one were to do away with student debt entirely, somebody would have to pay and that would obviously fall on every other taxpayer.

In terms of the individual examples she gives, whether it be deciding to live in a particular part of the country or choosing not to take a graduate job, or the grandmother, or the carer, I do not think any of those things change as a result of this. What we are saying is, you have two courses delivering the same thing, and in one course 40% of people drop out and in the other course 10% of people drop out with a similar profile; should we not be asking why that is happening?

Childcare Reform Package

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Thursday 29th June 2023

(9 months ago)

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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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It is a very long view. Recruitment is extremely important and absolutely critical to the delivery of this programme. Obviously, apprenticeships offer an important way to learn and earn at the same time, whether they are degree apprenticeship or not. We will also start a major recruitment campaign early next year, working with local authorities all around the country. However, the right reverend Prelate touched on how we show that we really value this as a profession and how critical it is for the future of our children and the economy.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, like the Opposition Front Benches, I begin by commending the Government on significantly increasing spending in this area. I see that it is heading in the direction of Green Party policy, which is the provision of free early years education and childcare from age one to starting school.

The Minister may be aware of the excellent report published in March by the Women’s Budget Group, working with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which looked at the nature of the provision and what kind of organisations the money is going to. The report strongly recommended a move away from a market-based model towards a shared vision of public services for public good. We have just been talking about the importance of staff and attracting more staff into this sector. The report noted that 44% of early years professionals are reliant on state benefits to top up their salary or wages so that they are enough to meet their basic subsistence levels. That is 44% of people who work in the sector who are not paid enough to live.

I also note that, at the same time, many of those people are increasingly employed by—in fact the whole sector is dominated by—financialised large companies with highly complex financial structures that are thoroughly untransparent. It is reminiscent of the water sector that has been in the headlines so much this week. Will the Government take a serious look at where the money is going and how they can make sure that it is not for private profit but delivers real social value?

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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Unlike the noble Baroness, this Government do not feel that private profit is inherently evil. We cannot live in a world where, on the one hand, we say that the sector is underfunded so we give it enough money and, on the other, we are critical because we are worried that people operating in it, who might be small childminders running their own businesses from home, are able to move off benefits and live independently, as the noble Baroness suggested. I think we absolutely want to live in a country where we give local small entrepreneurs—which many people are who run nurseries and offer childminding services—the ability to pay their staff properly, make a decent return and provide an excellent service for children.