Education: Early Years

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Walmsley]

That this House takes note of the importance of early years education.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, many years ago someone described this country as an island standing on coal and surrounded by fish. Nowadays the treasure of our country is our people and our future fortune is our children. That is why the way in which we nurture and teach them, especially in the early years, is so important to their and our economic future. But we must not just talk about economics. One of the greatest human pleasures is to hear a happy child giggle or to see healthy children running about and playing sociably together. How sad, and what human waste, when we see children arrive at school undernourished, dull-eyed and stressed and when we see children from less fortunate countries struggling to stay alive, with bellies swollen from malnutrition. So, while we talk about how to look after our own children, let us not forget those for whom to sit down with a glass of milk and an apple in a well equipped nursery would be unimagined luxury.

I am sure noble Lords are all familiar with the mountains of evidence that proved the long-term benefit in human and economic capital of high-quality early years provision based on a social pedagogy model which integrates educational and social development. It pays back six or sevenfold in cash terms and who knows how much more in human happiness and well-being.

So I would like to start at the very beginning: with parents. Parents are the first educators, and we need to do everything we can to ensure that they are well informed and helped to do the world’s most difficult and important job. None of us would dream of taking on a difficult task without some appropriate training, so there should never be any stigma attached to parenting classes. Earlier this year my honourable friend Sarah Teather, then the Minister of State for Children, announced a pilot in three areas offering free parenting classes for all who wanted them. I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister can tell us how well these classes have been taken up and received by the participants.

Of course, babies are learning every hour of every day, faster than they will ever do again in their lives, and their development proceeds at a most rapid pace until they are three. That is why I believe that what we sometimes call “childcare” is really “early education”, albeit informal education. But they prepare for learning initially through their experience with their principal carers. A child who does not have strong, safe attachment to the principal carer will not be so resilient and able to control his feelings as another child who has been well nurtured. Midwives and health visitors, whose ranks are swelling under this Government, have a key role to play in helping parents who struggle with attachment. Can the Minister say how we are getting on with our target of recruiting an additional 2,500 health visitors?

When young children first enter early years settings, they vary enormously: physically, emotionally and intellectually. Their development may have been impeded because of neglect, ignorance, parental substance abuse or downright cruelty, or it may simply be because of poverty. There is much evidence of the effects of poverty on child development. For example, it has been shown that children from privileged backgrounds hear 23 million more words than those from deprived backgrounds, and this has a profound effect on their communication skills and their ability to learn to read. That is why the Government’s efforts to get families out of poverty through universal credit is so important. An additional £300 million has been secured under universal credit to help with the cost of childcare, and the rules of working tax credit have been changed to remove the 16 hours a week minimum in order to qualify for support with childcare costs. These things will surely help.

However, good quality childcare costs money, so I was delighted recently to receive a letter from the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, in which he assured us that he is working hard within government to ensure that good quality childcare becomes more affordable for parents, but not at the expense of quality. There are many ways of doing this, and my honourable friend Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister, is working hard with Elizabeth Truss MP in the childcare commission to find the right way. I was very interested in the Resolution Foundation’s recent proposal that after the 15 hours free entitlement, the next 10 hours could be made available at a subsidised rate of £1 per hour. Twenty-five hours care would make it more worthwhile for mothers to work part-time, so I hope the commission is looking seriously at this. Currently the workforce is losing an unnecessary number of talented women because of the cost of childcare.

However, we must not undervalue those dedicated people who work with our children. They need to be highly qualified and properly paid, so more money needs to be found. The report by Cathy Nutbrown on the early years workforce and the current programme to improve the qualifications of that workforce is a very important factor in ensuring our children get the foundations for good life chances. Can my noble friend the Minister say anything about progress in improving the qualifications of the early years workforce?

We know that the best way of getting a family out of poverty is to remove the barriers preventing parents, who wish to, raising their family’s income by going to work, at least for part of the week, but there is much more to it than just providing affordable nursery places. The right to request flexible working is important, as are counselling to help troubled couples stay together so that they can share the load, employers who allow job-sharing, and adequate shared parental leave after the birth of a child. All have their part to play, and Governments have a role in encouraging all these things and legislating where necessary.

However, especially for struggling families, good quality early years care is essential if their children are not to suffer for the rest of their lives. Graham Allen MP outlined in his report Early Intervention: The Next Steps how a child’s development score at just 22 months can serve as an accurate predictor of his educational outcomes when he is 26 years old. Liberal Democrats have always been vocal on the need for high-quality early education, and that is why I was delighted when Sarah Teather, when she was Minister, announced 15 hours of free early years provision for deprived two year-olds. This will take children into a more stimulating social background where they can learn through play with a much wider variety of toys than they have at home. Initially aimed at the most deprived 20% and later to move to 40% of two year-olds, the programme started this September. This is one of the most significant achievements of the Liberal Democrats in the coalition Government, but we do not stop there. Our 2010 manifesto outlined a plan to move to 20 hours free childcare for all children over 18 months as soon as the nation’s finances will allow. This may be an aspiration, but it is a good one because quality early years provision benefits all children, but it benefits the poorest the most.

Of course, the Sure Start children’s centres are one of the key achievements of the previous Government, and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to reassure the House that tales of the demise of these centres are premature. Sure Start centres are a valued resource and, although some local authorities have merged or moved centres, only 18 have been closed outright, despite the austerity under which most authorities work. The great virtue of these centres is their ability to wrap services around the child. I would contend that one of their most important functions is also to engage with parents, because children should be seen as part of families whenever possible. At the very least, early years settings should be ensuring that parents understand how they work with the children, how the child is progressing and how they can continue the work at home. Some of them also have toy libraries and other services such as English classes, help with benefit or housing queries and help to find a job. Some are the location for parenting classes and mother and baby groups. They understand that help for the family is help for the child. I would encourage my Government to continue to support these centres and help them to develop their reach, especially into the hard-to-reach groups. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister can say something about this.

Some of the centres are now concentrating their services on the poorest families and, although I would ideally like to see a universal service, in times of economic austerity this is right. The Government's social mobility strategy—a high priority of Nick Clegg—has data showing that high ability children from lower social backgrounds are overtaken by children of lower ability from higher economic backgrounds between the ages of five and seven unless there is some intervention to ensure that all children fulfil their potential. This is a waste of human capital that we can ill afford.

One of the Liberal Democrat policies to improve social mobility is the pupil premium. This is about to rise to £900 per qualifying pupil per year and, although the accountability of schools as to how they spend this money clearly needs to be fine-tuned, it is already showing results. But it starts at five. I have often found it odd that we have for years spent more on the education of teenagers than we do on young children where the cost-effectiveness of spending has so clearly been shown to be greater. This is a topsy-turvy way of doing things. That is why my party carried a motion at our party conference in September to extend the pupil premium into the early years as soon as resources allow. It is more expensive, because it requires greater professional expertise, to help children disadvantaged by poverty or disability than fully able children from comfortable homes. But if we are not prepared to pay for that expertise, it will not happen. Interestingly, Barnardo's has just published a report called Mind the Gap which shows that the amount of financial uplift available to help disadvantaged children varies substantially at different stages of their educational journey. The biggest gap is exactly where the Liberal Democrats have proposed to provide more funding; that is at ages three and four. How prescient we were—or was it well informed? As Barnardo’s points out, it would be a pity if all the good work done with disadvantaged two year-olds was allowed to slide when they get to three and four. To enable us to get the best out of the policy on two year-olds, we must be consistent and provide for the most disadvantaged three and four year-olds too.

That brings me nicely to the issue of the transition between early years settings and primary schools. One of the most important issues is summer-born children and “school readiness”, as yet an undefined concept. There has been much research about the birthdate effect; for example, Sykes, Bell and Rodeiro in 2009 and Sue Bingham and David Whitbread published this year by TACTYC. The evidence shown by the Government's recent phonics screening check illustrates the problem very simply. In a single year, the percentage of those born in September reaching the “required standard” is 68% and the percentage born the following August reaching that standard is 47%. It would be helpful to have a similar analysis of the early years foundation stage profile, which does compare boys and girls but does not take account of age differences. I put that to my noble friend the Minister as what would be a welcome development.

These children are not stupid. They are just young. Summer-born children are more likely to be identified as having special educational needs than older children in the same class. In many cases this is wrong but it follows them through their school career leading to a poverty of expectation. Sykes et al also showed that summer-born children are not progressing onto certain routes and into certain levels of education. Although those who get through to the highest levels of education do well, fewer of them ever actually get there. This is serious and it means that we need to take a close look at how we can adjust our early education system to mitigate this disadvantage. It may mean having several entry points into school through the year instead of one. It may mean a different approach to teaching and learning in the first few years of primary education, a social pedagogy model rather than a curricular straitjacket. It should certainly mean understanding how children learn through play and having early years qualified specialists in the classroom who know how to guide children at all stages of development. It may mean looking again at the age at which formal education starts. In those countries where children do not start formal schooling until they are six or even seven, the educational attainment results are better than ours. It is clearly worth looking at their model which places equal value on their care, upbringing and learning. What is sure is that formal education should not start too early, whatever the setting.

In ending, I can do no better than describe my aspiration for our children in the mission statement of the British Association for Early Childhood Education. It says:

“Members … actively promote the entitlement of every child to developmentally appropriate early years provision which underpins their emotional, social, physical and cognitive development in order to become learners for life”.

I think that is a splendid aspiration and one which I hope my Government will embrace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very full reply and all noble Lords who have taken part in this very wide-ranging debate. We have had everything from brain development, early intervention, the international perspective, parenting and preparation for parenting, to funding issues, the connection with social mobility and well-being, communication skills and the all-important qualifications issue.

If you are given the last word, you are crazy if you do not use it. Here is my last word. I would counsel caution about this concept of school-readiness. Schools must be ready for children and they will only be ready for children when the classrooms are filled with highly qualified early years experts with the freedom to use their professional judgement. That brings me to the issue of assessment and tests. There is no place for summative assessment in the early years. Formative assessment, yes—as long as it is done sensitively and the purpose is to inform the practice of the professionals who work in the early years. But please let us not go back to curricular straitjackets—and certainly not league tables.

Motion agreed.