Education Bill

Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I think we are united on all sides about the importance of the early years. I congratulate the noble Lord on suggesting the designation of the foundation years; that is particularly welcome.

However, I must express considerable concern about subsection (2) of Amendment 1, which puts massive responsibility on local authorities. That is a responsibility for every child born in that the local authority area, including children of parents who are more than competent and motivated to provide all that is necessary for their child, with,

“healthy physical, social, emotional and cognitive readiness to enter school”.

The resources required for a local authority to be able to do that for every child are enormous. Surely those resources should be targeted on children where there is inability—for good or ill reasons—in the family to provide that readiness.

Perhaps it is a matter of wording, but I do not think that we should give responsibility to the local authority for every child born in its area. For every family, every time a baby is born, to have the local authority and its various agencies move to intervene in the raising of that child is neither feasible nor desirable. Let us concentrate our attention where it is needed and not impose those blanket requirements on a local authority.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. It is absolutely fitting and appropriate that the first topic that we are discussing today is support for parents. That is particularly the case given that, in the rest of the Bill, parents are notable only by their absence. Some measures take power and responsibility away from parents. The noble Lord asks which public body has the duty and authority to support parents to ensure that children, especially those from a disadvantaged background, are school-ready, as he said.

The reason that this is so important has just been referred to. Note, for instance, the work of Leon Feinstein: he has shown clearly that a child born with competent potential in terms of both cognitive abilities and development but who grows up in an impoverished environment without enrichment or the stimulation and support from their parents can, before the age of two years, actually fall behind children who are perhaps born with less ability. We get that crossover. That shows how important the years before compulsory schooling are for the development of the synapses, the brain and all the rest of it. They are absolutely critical.

How we support parents is critical in this. While good nursery and early-years provision—we will go on to talk about that—can help to address that imbalance, you cannot sustain those benefits unless you also work with parents to ensure that they understand how children develop and continue in the home what good early education pre-school provision would be doing. In my experience of going round a lot of Sure Start children’s centres, most parents really want both to do this and the support to enable them to do it well. Very few parents do not care about it. Even though parents may not have much understanding or ability, they can be helped to help their children.

At the moment that responsibility to work with parents lies in the mutual co-operation among the children’s services in the children’s trust in each local authority. That is a statutory duty to co-operate. The Sure Start children’s centres in deprived areas have an explicit responsibility to develop services for parents. Many have done groundbreaking work, not only with mothers, which is the normal first port of call, but particularly with fathers as well—that is very important. Local authorities were also given resources and responsibility for developing parental support services and for co-ordinating health and everybody else.

My concern is that all that current apparatus for supporting authorities in developing services is under jeopardy because of both a number of things that have happened and a number of measures in the Bill. In the children’s trust in the Bill, the duty to co-operate by schools from those arrangements is proposed to go. We are all concerned about the future for Sure Start children’s centres, particularly in deprived areas. With the reduction in funding, many local authorities are cutting those services. I do not know what the situation is with local authorities in terms of the parenting support co-ordinators that they were providing resources for. Can the Minister help us today to understand where the duty to support parents will lie following the Government’s measures—those that they have already taken and those that they propose in the Bill? What will be the impact on parenting support of, for example, taking away the duty to co-operate or the reduction in Sure Start children’s centre funding? What commitment do the Government specifically have to support parents and how do they propose to do that? Those are the questions that all noble Lords around the Committee Room today are interested in.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I am not sure that this wagon really needs much more impetus but would like to put in a couple of words. First, on the coat-tails of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham: we both of us looked at prisons—he in much greater and closer detail, I with a much wider scope and rather more briefly. I did three years as Minister for Prisons, among other things. He was Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons. We got a binocular view of children when they go wrong, who we saw in vast numbers. It became very clear to both of us that the causes of this come early in life.

I also taught for a time in a slum clearance comprehensive school where I saw dramatically illustrated the effect of lack of love on children in deprived families—not only in deprived ones, as it happens in many families. It is evident that children who do not get enough love early in life do not grow into the people that they ought to be. There can be remedies in a sort of pauline way, but it is a handicap for the rest of most people’s lives. These earliest years are the most crucial.

We then come to mechanisms, which I think are dealt with later. We also come to resources. As many of your Lordships have pointed out, this is going to be expensive as well as complicated. I would like to strengthen the arm of my noble friend Lord Hill for the debates that lie ahead of him—not in Parliament but in Whitehall—and warn him that unless Ministers, and more particularly Ministers’ advisers, can see absolutely, irrefutably demonstrated a cause and effect between a policy and its saving, they are not going to rally to anything which is not already popularly accepted. I found this, first, in running the intermediate treatment fund and then when funding a charity to keep children out of crime. It was at the moment they asked “How much is this going to save?” that we had to say, “It is subjectively perfectly obvious: where this is being done the crime rate has gone down; where it has not been done it has gone up”—and we had many instances of that. However, they can always say, “Ah, but there are other factors that you have not taken into account”.

My noble friend Lord Hill will also meet a local difficulty on which I have great sympathy with him. I can best illustrate it from my experience at the Department of Health and Social Security, as it then was, when I was responsible for the welfare of children other than their health, which meant children in local authority secure accommodation. At that time I had seen a wonderful scheme called the Norfolk Trail, where children who were deprived of love were taken into an organisation and given the close, loving supervision of one adult between four, I think it was, throughout a period of several days and several months. The local justices’ juvenile Bench decided that it would divide into two groups the children who came before them and were convicted of custodial offences: like for like, half would go on to the Norfolk Trail and half would go into custody. At the end of the first year it was evident that there was a considerable reduction in reoffending among those who went into the trail as opposed to those who went into custody.

I took this policy to the Department of Health and said that we should pursue it, and I was asked about the savings. It was pointed out that by the time the savings matured these children would have grown to an age when they were the responsibility of the Home Office and therefore there was no political incentive within the machine for implementing the policy there.

It must be got across to my noble friend and others in government that we must look at this issue entirely holistically and philanthropically, not only in the ordinary world but also in the political world, because the savings in getting it right will be enormous. However, they will also come long after the next two general elections. One has to be disinterested about that because, if we have the welfare of children and this country at heart, the early years have to be put at the top of the agenda.

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Moved by

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 5, at end insert—
“( ) In ensuring free of charge early years provision, the local authority has a duty to maximise take-up by groups defined in regulations as disadvantaged.”

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, after the debate that we have just had and the unanimous support across all sides of the House from your Lordships for good quality early education, I am sure that the principle of entitlement that exists for three and four year-olds and the proposal that the pilots for disadvantaged two year-olds—which is what this clause actually achieves—are welcome. I certainly have no argument with that.

These amendments seek to do three things. First, since the entitlement for three and four year-olds was first established, we have now reached a benchmark, as noble Lords know, of funding for 15 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year. We believe, in the interests of both parents and certainty, that that level of provision can now be consolidated in primary legislation for the avoidance of any doubt that it could disappear. We also believe that any future changes to the level of provision or to the children who can access it should only be in the direction of improving the provision—unless a future Government want to come back to the House and change primary legislation. Amendments 4 and 5 simply seek to do that.

Amendment 5 would enshrine in the Bill the current level of universal provision—the entitlement of three and four year-olds to 15 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year—so that parents who access it and all the professionals working in that sector know that the Government are absolutely committed to it. This issue was of course raised in the other House. Ministers there gave assurances that they do not intend to reduce that commitment. I accept their word absolutely but they cannot speak for any future Ministers or Governments. In enshrining in primary legislation now this level of provision as the benchmark, we make that commitment clear for parents. If any future Government wanted to reduce that level of provision for three and four year-olds, they would have to come back to the full scrutiny of changing primary legislation. I hope that the Minister will accept that and that other noble Lords can see the logic of what we are trying to do.

Amendment 4 will ensure that any changes in scope to the regulation-making power that the Government have put into the Bill—which will enable provision for two year-olds to be built on—will be progressive. In other words, they will be built on as resources allow. If any changes are proposed that would reduce them, again the Government would have to come back and do so by means of primary legislation.

Those two amendments are important for parents in terms of certainty. They put in statute the direction that the Government have said that they want to proceed in—which I very much welcome. They also start to build an appreciation of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and other noble Lords used in the previous debate that the foundation years are equally important. Parents can now expect at least that free entitlement for three and four year-olds, together with anything further for two year-olds, as part of the process of free education. It is not compulsory before the age of five but it is an opportunity—a free entitlement for youngsters below that age.

Amendments 2 and 7 seek to maximise the impact that this excellent entitlement will have on such youngsters. Amendment 2 seeks to impose a duty on local authorities to maximise the take-up of the free entitlement among groups of disadvantaged children. Noble Lords will know that the take-up of the free entitlement by four year-old children is pretty high—it is well above 90 per cent—but, more importantly, there is a great variance in the take-up among three year-olds in different parts of the country and in different neighbourhoods. Of course, unfortunately the lowest take-up is in the most disadvantaged areas. This is for all the reasons that we have been talking about—the difficulty of engaging with parents and parents being suspicious of what they regard as statutory services, and so on.

In order to improve the impact, particularly on disadvantaged groups—this will have to be done for two year-olds anyway; at the moment, it is a targeted provision—local authorities should be under a duty to maximise the take-up among disadvantaged children whether they are three, four or two years old. In so doing they should make sure that they reach the children who most need it and will benefit most from it but who, at the moment, are least likely to access the entitlement.

Amendment 7 relates to the second big issue that maximises the impact of good early-years education—the quality of provision and the flexibility with which parents can use it. If they are being helped into employment, they should be able to use it in ways that fit in with that employment. However, quality is the main issue. I am concerned that the Government have recently relaxed some of the standards on quality—for instance, the qualifications required by people working in Sure Start children’s centres and the dropping of the qualified teacher status, early-years professional status, and so on.

Amendment 10 seeks to reinstate both the qualification requirements and the ring-fencing of funding for Sure Start children’s centres. This is particularly important and will send a strong signal to local authorities and their partners—in health and elsewhere—that the Sure Start children’s centres will be the bulkhead of the progress that we need to make in early years. It is where some of the best practice has been generated, for example, on multi-agency working, targeting the most disadvantaged children, engaging parents and making a real difference. At the moment the relaxation of the qualification requirement is confusing for providers and the lack of ring-fencing on funding has meant that everything is lumped together in the early intervention grant.

As I have said, we are seeing a great threat to the level of Sure Start provision. This provision is particularly important for the pilots and the development of the offer for disadvantaged two year-olds. Such children require a considerable outreach effort and an engagement with parents—this was funded by the previous Government—because it is not only a provision for getting children into good early-years education but for persuading parents to go along with that. It allows work with parents to continue to enable them to learn good practice in parenting—for example, the importance of reading and singing and all the other things that we have said and understand are important for young children.

Does the funding the Government have set out for the build-up of the entitlement for disadvantaged two year-olds include the cost of the work that was being done through the children’s centres where the early pilots on the two year-old extension was taking place? Does it include the elements of outreach work, parenting support and the communication specialists who are frequently required for these disadvantaged young children? The parents of these children are often teenage single parents who use substances and have all the attendant problems themselves. It is very important that resources are available for working directly with the parents as well as for providing two year-olds with a good quality early education. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

Does the Minister agree with my point that underneath that figure of 93 per cent for three year-olds there is considerable variance, and that the lowest take-up is in the areas of the greatest disadvantage?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I suspect that that is true. I do not know the precise figures, but that sounds as though it could be true, which is why it is extremely important that we do all we can to make every effort to reach out to those families and to encourage them to take advantage of that entitlement. I will come to that.

We know that children who achieve a good level of development at age five go on to do much better at school. I do not need to rehearse the argument why that is important. There is wide acceptance that extending that entitlement to disadvantaged two year-olds and engaging their parents earlier is a key part of our strategy for taking up entitlement at the age of three and four. If we can do better at the age of two, that will help, in part, to address the noble Baroness’s point about take-up at three.

With that same goal in mind, we are committed to retaining a network of Sure Start children's centres, but with a greater focus on identifying and supporting the most disadvantaged. I completely accept that children’s centre outreach workers play a critical part in reaching the most vulnerable families and are well placed to make them aware of all the support available. As was mentioned in our earlier debate, we have invested funds to create another 4,200 health visitors. I hope that that will also help to spread the message.

We are taking a range of measures to help disadvantaged young children, with the goal of increasing the take-up of free early education and their readiness when they start at school. On the additional duty that the amendment proposes, I believe that the existing legislative framework provides for what the noble Baroness seeks. Section 3 of the Childcare Act 2006 already requires local authorities to take steps to,

“identify parents or prospective parents in the authority's area who would otherwise be unlikely to take advantage of early childhood services that may be of benefit to them and their young children, and … to encourage those parents or prospective parents to take advantage of those services”.

Existing legislation places duties on local authorities to that end.

Amendment 4 is intended to ensure that the existing offer of free early education for three and four year-olds and the new offer for disadvantaged two year-olds continue at least at their current level. The amendment would make the current entitlement the baseline, which is an aim that I understand. We decided to implement the extension of the number of hours per week from 12.5 to 15 hours from September 2010. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, was kind enough to recognise, we have made clear our commitment to continue to fund the enhanced three and four year-old offer and to build to the new two year-old offer during the rest of the spending review period until 2015. I hope that noble Lords will accept that the Government have given absolutely explicit assurances about those priorities.

I appreciate what the noble Baroness is trying to achieve by her amendment, but it could restrict our aspirations, or those of a future Government, to improve the entitlement for parents by allowing it to be taken in more flexible ways. I know that that would not be her intention. As drafted, it is possible that it could prevent future regulations giving entitlement to fewer hours in one year and a greater number of hours in another year, if that suited the family circumstances.

I now come to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Peston. I believe that we should try to avoid that degree of prescription in the Bill. The Childcare Act 2006 provided for the entitlement for three and four year-olds—both the amounts and their ages—to be set out in regulations. That has worked very well. The original regulations, which I think were signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, came into force in 2008. I argue that now, as then, we should continue to set out the principles in primary legislation and details in regulations.

Amendment 5 would require that regulations made under new Section 7 set out that all children are eligible for free provision from the start of the term following their third birthday. That position is set out in the current regulations.

I will make it as clear as I can that the Government have no intention of removing free provision for every three and four year-old. That commitment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, said, was made during the passage of the Bill in another place, and I am happy to confirm it today. I am also glad on behalf of the Government to have the chance to build on the current free offer of entitlement by extending it to the most disadvantaged two year-olds. Current legislation would not allow us to target that provision; that is why we need Clause 1.

Amendment 7 deals with the important issue of the quality and flexibility of the early-education settings that offer the free entitlement. I hope that I will be able to assure noble Lords that we take seriously the issue of quality in the early years. Clause 1 provides that, in discharging their duties, local authorities must have regard to any guidance given by the Secretary of State. That mirrors existing legislation under which local authorities must have regard to the code of practice on delivery of free early-years provision. The current code was published in September 2010 and includes sections on flexibility and quality.

We plan to consult in the autumn on revisions to the code of practice on free entitlement, including on provision for disadvantaged two year-olds. The consultation will make proposals and invite views on the issues both of flexibility and quality. We want to hear the sector's views on what we can do to ensure that children can access the free entitlement in a high-quality setting and in increasingly flexible ways that will work for parents and providers. Therefore, it is right that matters such as this are included in the code of practice, where they can be set out more fully and can allow for departure from guidance where local or individual circumstances mean that there is good reason for this, rather than in legislation. That approach has served us well to date.

Local authorities are funded through the early intervention grant to provide, among other things, advice and support to early-years providers to help them to improve their quality. The Department for Education is also grant-funding a range of voluntary sector organisations, including the National Childminding Association, the National Day Nurseries Association, the Pre-school Learning Alliance and others, to provide support to local authorities and providers with the aim of improving quality.

In response to the question of my noble friend Lady Walmsley, I say that we are committed to a high-quality early-years workforce. The Children's Workforce Development Council will continue to deliver the early-years professional status and the new leaders in early-years programmes. We are also considering recommendations made in Dame Clare Tickell’s review and have set up the group chaired jointly by Bernadette Duffy, who is head of Thomas Coram Children's Centre, and Jane Haywood, chief executive of the CWDC. The group will take forward recommendations, including those about improving quality in the workforce.

Amendment 10 concerns children’s centres: their sufficiency to meet local needs and the qualifications of staff working in them. There is broad agreement on the importance of Sure Start children's centres as a way of providing parents of young children with access to services that include family support and healthcare, early-years education, childcare and advice on training and employment. These are the main way in which local authorities bring together these services to improve results for young children and their families. We know that overall there have been improvements in early-years foundation stage outcomes and that children's centres form an important part of that landscape.

Section 5A(1) of the Childcare Act 2006 requires local authorities to ensure sufficient children's centres to meet local need so far as is reasonably practicable. This relates to the points made by my noble friend Lord True. Local authorities must be able to determine local priorities in the context of their many responsibilities and available resources. As the previous Government recognised when they proposed this provision in 2009, “so far as is reasonably practicable” should be included in the wording because local authorities need to be given flexibility. In any financial climate there are always constraints on the resources of those responsible for commissioning services and there are always competing priorities. It was got right back in 2009 and that is where one should rest.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the noble Baroness replies, can I pick up two or three points in what the Minister said? To begin, I again warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to recruit more health visitors. That just seems so vital and may well answer some of the noble Baroness’s concerns.

I mentioned recently a visit to Walthamstow where a health visitor saw a mother with a young infant. She tried to persuade the mother to go to the local children’s centre but only had one bite at the cherry to do so. She had a statutory responsibility to see families something like five times before the age of five. She only had a short period—some 15 minutes or so—to spend with this mother. There was no father; he was absent. The mother’s family was in Africa. The only people she knew in the area were local church people who came and helped her. She was otherwise completely isolated. If we reinforce health visiting and strengthen family/nurse partnerships, people like that mother might be encouraged to use children’s centres and engage. We might reach out to more vulnerable families. I warmly welcome the Government’s commitment in that area.

I may be wrong about my concern with regard to private providers; I reiterate that there are many outstanding private providers in many areas. However, when we discussed the Childcare Act, some of the evidence appeared to indicate a higher staff turnover among some of the private providers. Can the Minister provide information about staff turnover in early-years nursery provision as that seems to me the crucial piece of data? If we can see how private providers compare with local authority providers and voluntary providers, we can get a sense of their performance. Although that information obviously needs to be put in context, I think we all agree that the most important thing for any infant is a stable relationship with their carer. A high turnover of staff in a setting certainly gives cause for concern. I have had the privilege of speaking with a manager of a Montessori centre on a number of occasions and have great admiration for that approach. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his support for the other comments that I have made today.

I understand the Government’s concern not to be overly prescriptive and to avoid rigidity as far as possible as regards setting minimum standards. However, the noble Lord spoke about the health service setting certain minimum standards for its practitioners. If we all agree that the early years are the most vital point in a child’s life and that this measure is a very important way of breaking the cycle of disadvantage, perhaps we need to think a bit more about whether, given the current enormous financial pressures on local authorities, we might do more to assist them to make the best decisions for children in these circumstances. I am sure that we will discuss this further.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I thank the Minister for a very detailed response to these amendments. I also thank other noble Lords for their contributions, particularly those of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, on disengaged parents, the importance of qualifications, how that relates very clearly to quality, and how quality is the key factor that makes the biggest difference to children’s experience of a setting. That is all very positive and I am grateful to them for their comments.

I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord True, felt that there was a conflict between the various amendments in the group; perhaps I did not explain them well enough. I did not perceive that conflict, but perhaps when we return to the amendments on Report—I think that we will do so—I can iron that out for him.

I want to comment specifically only on the Minister’s response on Amendment 5, which would enshrine in legislation current provision for three and four year-olds. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Peston for his comments in that regard. Including this provision on the face of the Bill would consolidate the progress that has been made. I am not requesting that it should be included simply to nail it down; the measure would indicate powerfully to parents and to the private and public sector early-years providers that any future Government who rolled back the provision would be subject to the full scrutiny that is involved in changing primary legislation. As the Bill stands, the regulation that enables provision for two year-olds to be extended also allows the entitlement for three and four year-olds to be reduced if a Secretary of State chooses to do so. It is a lost opportunity not to make clear to parents and providers—

[Baroness Walmsley]

Can the noble Baroness cite any single word that she has heard from this Government which suggests that that might ever be our intention?

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

No. I made it very clear that I do not doubt the commitments that have been expressed both here and in the other place. I said in my opening remarks that while these Ministers and this Government can speak for themselves, clearly they cannot speak for any future Government. Therefore, to capture this entitlement for parents and children in legislation would protect it and send a signal to both parents and the private and public sector providers that it will take any future Government something other than the diktat of the Secretary of State through the negative procedure of secondary legislation to remove it, which would be allowed under the Bill as currently drafted.

The Minister said that he felt the current wording of our amendment might be too restrictive and would not allow the Government the enormous flexibility they would need if parents were unable to accept the offer of 15 hours over 38 weeks. However, it should not be beyond our wit to find a formulation which would allow us to put the offer in the Bill and make it subject to any subsequent provisions for increasing flexibility. I should like to talk to the Minister between now and Report to see if we can find a way of achieving the spirit of the amendment in a way that does not restrain any future thoughts on flexibility.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I omitted to ask the Minister whether he could remind the Committee of the present situation on the requirement for a graduate lead provision in early-years settings. I think the Government have introduced some exceptions; can he remind me of the situation or perhaps drop me a line?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I think the absolute requirement that there should be such a provision was removed at the end of last year. However, we expect that there would be at least one early-years professional or a qualified teacher to provide leadership in centres. There would be more local judgment on which people would be appropriate in the setting. However, we will speak further with the noble Earl.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I am happy to withdraw the amendment in Committee but we shall return to these amendments on Report.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

I support my noble friend Lord True in what he said about allowing providers flexibility in what they charge parents. I had a discussion with a manager of a children’s centre—in fact, she had responsibility for 10 children’s centres across London. She said that we need innovative ways of finding the money to keep these services going in the current recession. In particular, she highlighted that we should encourage parents who can pay to pay, so that parents who cannot can get a service. That seemed to be line with what the noble Lord, Lord True, said. It seems sensible. I will perhaps need to look more carefully at his proposal but hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to what he said.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I will make a few brief remarks on these amendments. First, in terms of Amendment 8 and the principle of having a diverse sector, I have personally always strongly supported that—as did the previous Government. It is in the interests of parents and children for us to maintain that diversity and to try to raise the quality right across all parts of that sector. There is no difficulty there.

My problem with Amendment 6 and Amendment 9 is that they would basically allow individual nurseries to charge top-up fees to parents in one way or another. They would either say, “You can bring your children for the 15 hours but then you have to pay an extra X pounds per hour because that is our charge”, or they would apply a condition that the parent had to take more than 15 hours. There would be a very high charge for the hours over 15 so as to cross-subsidise. As the noble Lord, Lord True, alluded to, there are other kinds of conditions as well, such as parents having to pay for certain facilities or other items. This is just a way of getting extra funding in.

I appreciate some of the problems that nurseries have had. In discussing this, we have to recognise what the impact of allowing it would be. Instead of an entitlement with equal access to all provision for all parents whatever their circumstances, we would have a different two-tier system from that which the noble Lord, Lord True, alluded to. We would have a two-tier system in which parents who could pay the extra fees could go to the nurseries of their choice but other parents with less income would be restricted to going to those nurseries that were not charging a top-up—that did not have to. That is in fundamental contradiction to what this entitlement is trying to achieve.

Having said that, I also investigated this at some length. I have long relationships with some of the private providers and great respect for many of them for the work that they do. We commissioned a report to try and understand why some but not all private nurseries were having this kind of problem. That independent report identified two main factors. One was that not all local authorities were distributing the funding allocation quite fairly, and that some were supporting public sector provision, particularly nursery classes in schools—there is a higher cost there—more than the private sector. We introduced, and I think that the current Government are going to proceed with this, a proposal that each area has to agree a single formula for the allocation of funding so that there is parity across private, voluntary and public sector providers.

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[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I, too, have great admiration for the Montessori system because my daughter went to a Montessori school and it got the best out of her. I believe that young children need to be excited by learning, by discovering who they are, by play and by forming their own self-opinion and doing things that are beyond them. The Montessori system is one of the best ways of getting children to understand who they truly are, especially if they then go on to conventional education in schools. It broadens their outlook, it makes them excited about learning and the amendment should be supported by everyone in the Room.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I also agree that Montessori offers a high-quality experience for children and one would want to support it. In talking about Montessori and supporting it, I was very keen that more children from disadvantaged backgrounds should be able to access this high-quality provision. What progress has been made in the proportion of children from disadvantaged backgrounds who now attend?

I would not have thought that mapping the qualification is an insuperable problem. I am sure the Children’s Workforce Development Council will be positive in resolving the issue. When the Minister replies, will he enlighten us as to what is going on in the CWDC? It has been doing good work in raising the level of qualifications and ability of early-years professionals, in improving the infrastructure of qualifications and in supporting all parts of the sector going forward. I understand that the Children’s Workforce Development Council is going to be brought in-house and that its annual grant of £110 million has been taken away, as has its non-departmental body status. What are the implications of that for the progress that has already been made in early years and for continuing that progress in raising the level of qualifications and so on which we are all so concerned about?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, Amendments 11 and 70 relate to Montessori nursery schools and qualifications of Montessori teachers. I hear what my noble friend also said about Steiner schools and the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, as to whether it is legitimate to add these in to the amendment when they have not already been mentioned. Perhaps we can discuss that at a later stage.

I am grateful to my noble friend for moving the amendment because it gives me the chance to say that we fully understand, as has been reflected in the comments from noble Lords today, that for many parents the Montessori ethos is valued and reflects the early education that they want for their children. The Government are committed to maintaining and supporting a diverse early-years sector and I welcome the continued role of Montessori nurseries within that sector.

As my noble friend Lord True will be aware, Montessori organisations opted out of becoming part of a national qualifications framework which was part of the previous Government’s efforts to raise the quality of the early-years sector. Montessori qualifications would have gone unrecognised by the Child Workforce Development Council as relevant qualifications under the early-years foundations stage if it were not for the previous Government’s decision to give temporary recognition to those qualifications while discussions with the relevant bodies were continuing. This was due to expire in January 2010. These conversations are continuing and Montessori qualifications will be recognised on a temporary basis until January 2012.

The position beyond that point is the subject of discussions between representatives of Montessori organisations, officials at the CWDC and officials at the department. I am sure that they can also include Steiner organisations. I can assure my noble friends that we have not ruled out extending the period of recognition beyond January 2012 and that we are clear that we will not do anything that may disadvantage those who take Montessori qualifications. I am sorry to hear from my noble friend Lord True of what appears to have been poor communication. I understand that the CWDC carried out a wide-ranging communications exercise with local authorities, employer settings and the workforce. The thrust of this was information sent to local authorities tailored for different audiences that should have been sent on to providers including Steiner and Montessori settings. Further discussions need to take place on that.

Amendment 70 concerns Montessori education and qualifications and would require teachers in Montessori schools to have served their induction period in a Montessori-accredited school or any other school approved by a Montessori training body. Later in the Committee’s deliberations, we will consider teachers’ induction periods in more depth but I take this opportunity to provide my noble friend with some assurances on induction for Montessori teachers.

Independent schools, including Montessori schools, can offer statutory induction if they so wish, although there is no legal requirement for them to do so. Should they choose to offer statutory induction, the teacher must hold qualified teacher status—QTS—before they start their induction. The post must of course be suitable and include the necessary support mechanisms. The conditions under which a teacher is employed in any independent school are contractual matters between the employer and the employee. I can assure my noble friend that if a Montessori school wished to employ only teachers who have served statutory induction in a Montessori school or a Montessori-approved institution then that would be a matter for that school, not for legislation. To legislate in such a way would create unnecessary government interference in a very small section of the independent schools sector. Government’s role is to enable the independent schools sector to access statutory induction arrangements rather than to dictate how they should run their schools. Legislation is not the right approach to securing the terms under which an independent school employs its teaching staff.

Briefly, on the future of the Children’s Workforce Development Council, the CWDC will cease to be a Department for Education NDPB as the department will withdraw its investment in the council. The department is now in the process of carefully considering all the current functions of the CWDC in light of the spending review before deciding what will end, what will continue and where responsibilities will lie in the future. Our expectation is that work transfers will be completed by 2012 and that the CWDC as a company and employer lead body will be free to seek alternative funding.

I hope that my remarks have gone some way to giving comfort to my noble friend. In light of this, I hope that he will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, this has been an excellent and wide-ranging debate. I thank all noble Lords who contributed, and in particular the Minister for his reply. Before I make a few comments, I will make one correction. I mentioned that it was the Association of Colleges that was against the statutory requirement for training: I meant to say that it was the Association of School and College Leaders. I am sure that Hansard in its usual inimitable manner will correct that for me.

I will pick up on a few disparate points from the debate. First, a number of noble Lords raised the issue of what would happen if a child were wielding a knife. I believe that a teacher or anybody else in the room would have a common-law right to intervene to protect themselves or any child there: they would not need these searching powers. Anyway, you do not need to search for something that is in full view.

I thank the Minister for his assurance that no teacher will be pressurised into doing a search. I am aware that this was in previous legislation. However, the Government are repealing a number of checks and balances in previous legislation, so I was a little concerned that they might be repealing that.

I very much agree with the points made by my noble friend Lady Benjamin about stop and search. She made her points very passionately. These are things that we must bear in mind. I asked for a very detailed review so that we can make sure that no discrimination is occurring. Of course, if the incidents are reported and recorded, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, suggested, it will be very easy to collect the information. I know that the Government are trying to ease the bureaucratic burden on schools and are not implementing the duty in the previous Bill to record all incidents, but incidents of this nature are really quite serious and perhaps it should be suggested in guidance that best practice should dictate that these sorts of things are recorded under the school’s judgment.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

Is the noble Baroness aware that in some parallel situations, for instance in children's homes, a written record is required? One can only think that, if it is required there, perhaps it should be required in schools.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I quite agree with the noble Baroness. We need to have another debate about consistency in the way that we deal with children across the piece.

The noble Lord, Lord Elton, suggested that searching might be a preventive measure. I do not think that this legislation would allow a whole class to be searched as a preventive measure. I may be wrong about that, but I think that it would not.

On the issue of how to search a child safely, I am not suggesting that there should be any kind of qualification—simply that the head should be satisfied that the staff have had appropriate training. The Minister pointed out, when he was talking about not forcing a member of staff to do the search, that the head would have to designate who could do these searches, and I accept that. However, we are making a number of assumptions here about what the head would know about the competence of the teacher. That is why we need something either in the Bill or in statutory guidance to say that, in designating teachers to do that sort of search, the head must assure himself or herself that that person is competent to do that. Without our being too prescriptive about the sort of training, it really is up to the head or principal to ensure that the training is adequate and appropriate. That would probably satisfy me.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, who is not in his place, suggested that if the CPD was expensive the head would not want to do it, and therefore all the legislation would be redundant. Nothing would make me happier than that. I point out that it was his Government who started down this slippery slope in the first place.

I pass on to the Committee a point that my noble friend Lady Sharp made; she is no longer in her place but was here a little earlier. She has been doing a report about FE colleges and has been visiting a great many of them recently. She said that the proposal in Amendment 30, in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, would be inappropriate in a big college because its senior management would not want these powers and would very willingly delegate them to the security staff or to other senior staff in the college. The powers in Amendment 30 would not actually be welcomed.

As I said earlier, I would, reluctantly, not oppose these measures lock, stock and barrel. However, it is important that we get this right, which is why I have tabled a raft of amendments about training, gender, witnesses and various other matters that we will come to the next time we meet. With those words, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.