Children: Early Intervention

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, there is nothing more important than giving all our children the best start in their lives, and there is nothing more shocking than the data which demonstrate that in the UK in the 21st century a child’s long-term future success is dictated by their place of birth and the socioeconomic status of his or her parents. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for instigating this important debate and congratulate our two excellent maiden speakers. I welcome both the Frank Field and the Graham Allen reports.

It seems to me that much of our public debate over the past 13 years has been about ensuring that all children get access to early education, and that there has been dissent between experts and politicians about the formality and nature of the early years foundation curriculum. It is on the nature of these formal stages of education that I wish to focus.

There is absolutely no doubt that access to proper early years support enhances and changes children’s life chances but certain elements must be in place to make that happen. In the 1980s, Tennessee state educators ran the now famous STAR project, providing detailed longitudinal research into the performance of children starting in kindergarten in a small class of one teacher to 15 children, and following them, initially as they moved through to third grade, and then over the subsequent three decades. Formal education did not start until these children were well into the first grade—rising sixes, as our parlance would have it. I will return later to the question of the age at which children start formal education.

I remember the Tennessee STAR data being released in the early 1990s. It was very much an education mantra of the time: for each dollar invested in these children, $7 of public money were saved later on, because these children graduated from high school, went on in education, were more likely to find regular employment, were significantly less likely to need public support, and were very much less likely to end up in the criminal justice system. It is interesting that similar long-term savings are beginning to emerge in the UK.

Those of us responsible for UK local government education budgets then—following the recession of the late 1980s and with major public service cuts—were struggling to make the case for increased funding for early-years education. Does that sound familiar? However, we achieved that in Cambridgeshire, where we Liberal Democrats were in coalition with Labour. We targeted our limited funds on providing support to children in the most deprived areas for whom we knew that this could be life-changing. It has been mentioned already that no Liberal Democrat council is closing Sure Start centres, which demonstrates that they can be a real priority.

Since then, work has continued on tracking the STAR cohort, and it still holds true that, as these former pupils become parents themselves, the next generation of children benefit from the experience in this scheme and that lower class sizes and having trained early-years professionals are a cost-effective way of providing an excellent start in life for young children, from which society as a whole reaps the benefit.

I want to focus briefly on the nature of that early-years interaction with children, because I worry greatly about the previous Government’s focus on starting the formal part of education early. I am with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said in 1762:

“You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again”.

We need to view the world from a child’s perspective, learning at their own pace and developing their social abilities. A kindergarten should be exactly that—a place to learn to play, socialise, learn to talk and discover the world.

I am pleased that there is now a focus on providing the pedagogic specialism needed for children in these early years, because the holistic approach to a young child’s well-being must take precedence for the under-fives before enforced focus on letter recognition. I fear that much of our UK focus on early formal learning brings its own problems—hence the need for intervention, such as the highly regarded Reading Recovery and the Norfolk-based catch-up schemes for literacy, numeracy and maths. Children and teachers alike love the schemes, partly because they are much cheaper to deliver, given that they are run by teaching assistants and staff trained within the school.

It is interesting to compare the UK’s standing in the PISA education rankings of the OECD. Sadly, the UK has dropped to 21st in the rankings for reading and 22nd for maths. As a nation, we should be extremely concerned about this dip in performance, which was described as “stagnant at best”, while there has been a significant improvement in many other countries. It is interesting, however, to consider those countries nearer to the top of the rankings and examining when each starts their formal education. Finland, Canada, Japan, Australia and the US all have substantial early-years provision, but children do not start formal education until the age of six, or even when they are rising sevens, because those countries believe that the informal kindergarten stage of child self-development is so important.

Let us learn from these countries overseas that understand that balance between early years provision and the start of formal education, and make it an absolutely priority. We cannot afford to get it wrong for our country and its future, socially and economically, but most importantly for each and every child growing up in the UK today, and for those tomorrow who follow.