Child Development

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester for giving us the opportunity to explore this very important matter in such depth. The number of speakers and the quality of the contributions mean that I may not be able to respond to all the very significant points that have been raised in the debate, but perhaps I may reassure noble Lords that none of them will be lost and that, where appropriate, a written response will follow. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, to the Dispatch Box in this debate. I do not think that she has faced us on education matters before.

I have listened with great interest to all the views expressed, and I shall set out briefly the Government’s position. We agree completely with the premise behind this Motion, that a good childhood is key to our national well-being. We must do all we can to ensure that our children and young people develop as individuals, as members of their communities and as citizens to reach their full potential. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, reminded us, we should be mindful of the privilege of childhood. To do this successfully, it is important to get a strong evidence base so that our policies can be fully informed. A considerable amount of work has already been done by a great number of distinguished people, including many here within your Lordships’ House. I should also like to acknowledge the contribution of the previous Administration and all the work they did in this regard, as well as their promotion of the concept that every child matters.

Building on that, the Prime Minister has asked the Office for National Statistics to devise a new way of measuring well-being in Britain, the Measuring National Well-being Programme. This is in recognition of the limitations of GDP as a measure of the country’s progress, and indeed many noble Lords referred to that in the course of the debate. We want to develop a wider suite of indicators covering not only economic development but the state of the environment and, crucially, the quality of people’s lives. One strand of the work is to develop questions on subjective well-being, in essence how people think and feel about their own lives. So far, the ONS has developed four self-report questions to measure universal well-being among adults aged 16 and above, and we intend to do something similar for children and young people aged under 16.

Yesterday, the ONS published a report on 16 to 24 year-olds that has some interesting results. It shows that young people’s subjective well-being is higher than for older age groups. Young people aged 16 to 17 rated their life satisfaction on average at a higher level than all other age groups, while average ratings for all young people show lower levels of anxiety than for older age groups. The details for children aged under 15 are still to be finalised, and we expect the ONS to report on 26th of this month. More recent research suggests that the well-being of young people in the UK is broadly in line with international averages. We have seen a range of surveys in this area that, in the interests of time, I will not go into in great detail, but perhaps I may pull out one from the University of Essex. Its Life Satisfaction and Material Well-being of Children in the UK survey shows that, overall, children appear to be satisfied with their lives. In relation to a point raised by a number of noble Lords, it also found that children’s happiness and well-being is not entirely linked to family income. A stable home life with a network of friends, a healthy lifestyle, a sense of community and good behaviour in their classmates matter more to children’s sense of well-being than their parent’s earnings.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, children who live with both their parents are generally happier than those living in single families and stepfamily relationships. But this is not to suggest that such families are somehow failing their children, it is just that they face greater challenges. We heard a valuable contribution on this subject from the noble Baroness, Lady King, who also linked it to the cost of failure in telling detail. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester raised the importance of marriage, while the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, talked about male role models and the importance of fathers, as well as the joint parenting that is so vital to the well-being of children. There is absolutely no complacency and the Government are already acting to address these issues.

We are working to support families and improve parenting. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, I, too, pay tribute to those who work in those areas that deal with families, and sometimes families in the greatest need who can be in the most stressful situations. We have the Family Nurse Partnership Programme, which is a preventive programme for first-time mothers. It offers intensive and structured home visiting delivered by specially trained nurses from early pregnancy until the child is two. The Government are also committed to turning around the lives of 120,000 troubled families in England by 2015 through getting children back into school and reducing youth crime and anti-social behaviour. We are working with local authorities to deal with each family’s problems as a whole, with a single caseworker to provide intensive help and promote long-term change. We heard the powerful contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby on this, and indeed his passage in rap which set a standard for the rest of us to deliver our speeches in a slightly different fashion.

We have provided funding for Family Support Services, which contribute to children and young people’s development and well-being by supporting parents with advice, guidance and intensive support on issues such as child mental health and behaviour. The services support parents and families when and where they want it and in a form that suits them. We are also taking forward policies that will enhance children’s development by promoting their self-confidence and sense of responsibility. The contribution made by the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, posed a challenge to educators for parental education. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley also spoke passionately about good personal, social, health and economic education. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, spoke of his own experiences in this connection, while the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, emphasised the importance of soft skills in this area.

PSHE contributes to children and young people’s development and well-being by enabling them to make safe and informed choices. In spite of what may have been said earlier in the debate, Ofsted reports that PSHE continues to be well taught in over 75% of schools, and we are looking to improve the remaining 25% through a review of PSHE education. We expect the review to report early in 2013. Citizenship education is a compulsory part of the national curriculum in secondary schools. As part of the national curriculum review, we are considering what the secondary national curriculum should look like, and we will set out our proposals in due course. We also have the National Citizen Service, which gives young people the confidence and skills they need to get involved positively with their local communities and increasing the number who want to stay on in education. It gives them the chance to try new activities and mix with other young people they would not normally meet. It supports their successful transition to adulthood. An independent evaluation report showed that 95% of the young people involved said that it had given them the chance to develop useful skills for the future.

Positive for Youth, a briefing published on 19 December 2011, is a radical new approach to youth policy that puts young people in the driving seat. It has been developed with and for young people and sets out a vision in which they all have the supportive relationships, strong ambitions and good opportunities they need. It includes nine outcome measures to be reported on annually. The first of these is a new national measure of young people’s subjective well-being that will be recorded as part of the ONS’s Measuring National Well-being Programme.

I should also like to take the opportunity to mention the Cadet Forces and similar uniformed organisations such as the Scouts and Guides. They make a major contribution to young people’s development by building self-confidence, promoting a sense of personal responsibility and teaching skills of leadership. I have seen at first hand, for example, how the Air Training Corps can provide a forum for young people with few home advantages to blossom when faced with leadership challenges, to speak in public with confidence, often to the astonishment of their close family, and to take pride in their behaviour and their appearance, as well as to demonstrate social responsibility and care for their neighbours. Further, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby pointed out, they get preparation for the world of work.

There is no contradiction between academic attainment and well-being. Research from the Centre for the Economics of Education has found that pupils with higher levels of enjoyment of school at age 14 go on to have relatively higher levels of attainment at age 16. Our policy is to allow good schools to continue to play their vital role as promoters of well-being in their local communities, and to do so as far as possible without central government prescription.

Perhaps I can pick up on some of the points that were made in this very varied debate. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester, my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, all asked about parenting. We have the CANparent trial project which aims to stimulate a private sector market in parenting education by encouraging parenting programme providers to offer a range of universal parenting classes. Most of the providers offering classes within the trial are charitable or not-for-profit organisations. The right reverend Prelate also mentioned the vital role played by the charitable, voluntary and not-for-profit organisations in this field. He also asked what progress had been made with the pre-school pledge. The new entitlement for two year-olds will be introduced in two phases. From September 2013, 20% of two year-olds will be eligible; from September 2014, this will be extended to 40% of two year-olds—around 300,000 children.

My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay asked what we were doing to support marriage. Family support services contribute to children and young people’s development and well-being by supporting parents with advice, guidance and intensive support on issues such as school admissions, appeals and exclusions, child mental health and behaviour, and disability and special educational needs.

The question of marriage and tax was raised by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble Lords, Lord McFall and Lord Browne. The Government remain committed to recognising marriage in the income tax system. We want to show that we value commitment. We are considering a range of options and fully intend to come forward with proposals at an appropriate time.

The noble Lords, Lord McFall and Lord Low, mentioned the child poverty benefit reports. The Government are indeed committed to tackling child poverty but believe that it is key to tackle the causes rather than to treat the symptoms. We remain committed to the target set out in the Child Poverty Act, but want to find new measures better to reflect the reality of living in poverty today. We are launching a consultation on this shortly and would very much welcome input from noble Lords who have contributed to today’s debate.

My noble friend Lady Walmsley raised a range of issues. I will, if I may, write to her in response to some of those. She asked about identifying problems early and the training of children’s centre staff. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has introduced compulsory training on sexual health and domestic violence in the foundation programme curriculum for children’s centre staff, and there is ongoing work to ensure that children benefit from informed and qualified people at the earliest stage. I acknowledge the noble Baroness’s contributions about music and so on at a very early stage, which is proven to have some beneficial effects.

The issue of child sexual exploitation and trafficking was raised movingly by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Browne. On 3 July, the Government announced that urgent action would be taken to help protect young people in residential care who may be particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, and that will report by the end of the year. Obviously, we hope that the dreadful cases that happened in Rochdale will be prevented from happening again.

Combating human trafficking is a key priority for this Government. We are committed to tackling the organised crime groups that profit from this human misery. The response to trafficking should be primarily about protecting the victims of crime and bringing those who exploit them to justice. An immense amount of work needs to be done on this because it is an extraordinarily serious issue, and we benefit from co-operation with European partners and cross-border organisations, which help us to treat this as the international problem it is. We acknowledge that this has been a particular issue in some areas of the country. The current figures of potentially trafficked children who go missing from care remain too high. It is encouraging to see the year-on-year decrease in numbers of missing trafficked children but of course we are in no way complacent about this issue.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady King and Lady Worthington, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, talked about the early intervention grant being reduced. It has become clear that local authorities and others believe that £534 million will be removed from the early intervention grant in 2013 and transferred to the dedicated school grant, but this is not the case. The department consulted earlier this year on the proposals to transfer funding from the EIG to the dedicated school grant, and the change was supported in the consultation, but the two year-old offer is funded with £760 million of new money, as announced in the Autumn Statement. So it is not true to say that it is being funded through cuts to children’s centres, which indeed is not what we would wish. We pay tribute to the report of Graham Allen MP on these issues.

My noble friend Lady Benjamin, who has a long record of championing children’s rights, particularly through television and radio, mentioned the effects of children’s television—or rather the effects of sitting children in front of the television at too early an age. I know that she is also very active in ensuring that the quality of children’s television and radio programmes remains high, and remains a proper informative and positive experience for children. She also referred to cyberbullying, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, who has been so actively involved in this area, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. The problems of cyberbullying are totally insidious. It is a very complex problem but we have got co-operation, particularly in response to Reg Bailey’s report on this, to try to keep children safe online.

One problem is that very often the children actually know rather more than the parents. Indeed, hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, about her two year-old already being proficient with an iPad, one feels that this is a problem that may become less as that generation grows up to be responsible parents. Today’s parents have slightly more of a struggle sometimes in matching the skill in technology of the young people. We have been consulting and have had a wide range of responses. We are drawing on a wide range of people from the industry as well, from businesses and regulators, to try to make it easier for parents to block adult and age-restricted material or to find other ways in which exposure to such totally unsuitable material can be managed. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, mentioned Islamophobia. Of course, that itself is a form of bullying, which needs to be addressed as well for children.

My noble friend Lady Miller raised the issue of good nutrition. The Government are certainly committed to promoting the health and well-being of infants, children and young people, and supporting them to eat a healthy and balanced diet. There is a range of initiatives, including the “eat well plate”, which shows the types and proportions of food needed for a healthy and balanced diet, and Healthy Start, which is a statutory scheme providing a means-tested nutritional safety net to pregnant women and families with children under four in very low-income and disadvantaged areas. We hope that those programmes will continue to improve children’s nutritional health.

The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, asked a number of questions. I may need to write to her on some of those. She talked about child development in initial teacher training. That is down to the ITT providers, but we would certainly expect that to be part of training, and for child development to be fully taken into account during the recent review of the national curriculum. She also referred to the Sure Start centres. It is for local authorities to determine where those cuts should fall. There has been only a small net reduction in children’s centre numbers and only 18 outright closures to date. The vast majority of the reduction is accounted for by organisational changes such as mergers of children’s centres to make efficiency savings.

My noble friend Lord Storey made reference to play, which of course is such an important factor, and paternal leave. The Government have consulted on more generous and flexible parental leave and an extension of the right to flexible working to all employees, to support mothers and fathers to develop positive patterns of shared caring from the start.

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, said—indeed, reference has been made throughout this debate—all these efforts are constrained by the financial situation in which we find ourselves and trying to ensure that we can operate as effectively as possible in this important field. Of course, the pupil premium is one measure that we have been able to take, and it is having a tremendous impact in schools. It is for schools to decide how it is spent, and schools must be accountable for that, but it is one of the things that we have been able to implement.

In conclusion, once again, I thank noble Lords for their thoughtful and thought-provoking contributions. I apologise if I have not referred to all the contributors to the debate. All the contributions were valuable and wide-ranging. Most especially, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester for initiating the debate, and giving us the opportunity to explore these very complex issues so fully.