Affordable Childcare (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank and congratulate our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, our two special advisers, Professor Kathy Sylva and Dr Gillian Paull, and our excellent clerking team for the way they have helped us to make sense of a very complex situation. Our witnesses stated two main policy objectives for government involvement in the early years. Firstly, fostering child development, and by doing so reducing the attainment gap between rich and poor and improving social mobility. Secondly, increasing parental employment, and by so doing helping families to balance their budgets and reducing child poverty. It soon became clear that there is a tension between these two objectives, since certain funding focuses to support the one might possibly hinder the other.

Part of the Government’s difficulty in using their levers is that we have a mixed economy of early education and childcare provision in this country. The private, voluntary and independent—PVI—sector delivers the majority of places, especially the free entitlement places, but the maintained sector delivers most places for four year-olds and is very important and influential for younger children, too. Each sector has its strengths and weaknesses. The highest-quality early education is found in maintained nurseries and schools, although they often do not provide the flexibility that parents need to enable them to go to work. The PVI sector is very flexible, but although there are some excellent settings, quality overall is patchy and in some places poor. We concluded that if they are to achieve both of their policy objectives, the Government must support and celebrate the strengths and address the weaknesses of both. It is the issue of quality upon which I propose to concentrate today.

It became very clear that the best value for government money comes from providing high-quality early education to children from disadvantaged families because they are the ones who have shown the greatest improvement in outcomes when they experience quality provision. Indeed, we went so far as to say that funding poor-quality places is a waste of government money. The coalition Government have attempted to address the attainment gap for disadvantaged children in two ways. The first is by introducing the offer of 15 hours per week free early education and childcare to the 40% most disadvantaged two year-olds to get them involved in a stimulating environment early. It is early days for this policy, and we still do not have figures for uptake, but we have ascertained that not all of these places are being delivered in high-quality settings. That is why we have recommended that the Government will get best value for their money if they move as soon as possible to funding these places only in good or outstanding settings.

What do we mean by quality? The evidence showed us that the best outcomes are where there are qualified staff, outreach into communities and homes, and integrated services, as well as a nurturing, stimulating and safe environment for the children. So where do we find the best quality? The answer is clear. It is in schools, particularly maintained nursery schools, where 57% were found to be outstanding by Ofsted and 39% good. This compares to 12% outstanding across the whole sector and 65% good. Fortunately, because this is where they are most needed, two-thirds of maintained nursery schools are to be found in disadvantaged areas—indeed, these schools are unique in providing outcomes which are as good as, if not better than, schools in affluent areas. No other part of the education system does this, so it is well worth scrutinising them to find out how they do it.

These 410 nurseries, currently providing about 38,000 places, are maintained schools, funded by local authorities, and therefore they have to employ a qualified head teacher, qualified early years teachers and nursery nurses. They have particular expertise in helping children with special needs and have a higher than average concentration of such children. Their role is also to reach out to disadvantaged families, to whom they offer other services such as health and social care because of their multidisciplinary ethos. They help parents improve the home learning environment and they play a vital role in research, leadership and training for the whole sector, since many of them are now teaching schools.

Clearly, we need to foster these schools and, if we want to help PVI settings to improve their quality, we must help them to become more like maintained nursery schools. The problem is that teachers do not come cheap; nor should they. In an attempt to be fair, the previous Government introduced a “level playing field” as regards funding—which is actually anything but level. As a result, settings that are prepared to employ teachers—or must employ them, in the case of maintained nurseries—are not funded appropriately to do so. The PVI sector cannot afford to employ teachers in any numbers, partly because the free entitlement on which they rely is funded below the cost of delivery, which causes them to top up their income elsewhere in order to break even. We said that this must be addressed.

We also need to increase the supply of qualified early years teachers, perhaps by reintroducing the leadership fund, and to fund the free entitlement properly to ensure that, where settings are employing teachers, they get the money to do so. The Government have used bursaries to pay the tuition fees of students studying to become teachers in other shortage subjects, such as sciences and modern languages. I see no reason why the same cannot be done in order to increase the supply of well qualified people in the early years sector. However, at the same time, something must be done to ensure that there are jobs for them to go to when they qualify. Professor Cathy Nutbrown had a lot to say in her report about this, and the committee regretted that the Government have not yet felt themselves able to implement all her recommendations.

If there is no additional money, improvements in outcomes must be achieved by prioritising certain groups of children. Fortunately, thanks to the Liberal Democrats in the coalition, the Government have already developed a tool by which this can be done—this is the second way in which the Government are seeking to address the attainment gap. As has been mentioned, it is called the early years pupil premium. It starts next month and I am convinced that it is going to be as successful as the school age pupil premium has been. Indeed, we have committed to working in government towards tripling the current level of EYPP in order to narrow the attainment gap between rich and poor children even further.

Now, something has happened since our Select Committee published its report, and I really wish we had had this evidence before we did so. The organisation Early Education has published an audit of maintained nursery schools which makes for worrying reading. It shows that, due to a series of cuts in funding from local authorities, many of these schools are faced with closure. They are certainly not able to expand their available places in the way that excellent schools further up the age range have been able to do under this Government. This is a long-term trend—about one in three has closed over the past 30 years—but if we are looking for models of best practice to assist us in bringing up the quality of the whole sector, we need to stop this trend in its tracks. I hope that the early years pupil premium will help because it will go to those settings working with the most disadvantaged children: that is, the maintained nurseries.

However, one other solution has been proposed by the sector since we published our report, which is that maintained nurseries are given greater freedom to innovate to avoid closure. A few are federating with primary schools already, but they are asking to be allowed to become academies or co-operative trusts. They are doing so reluctantly, because most of them value their relationship with local authorities and would prefer to be adequately funded by them. However, hard decisions have to be made, and if it is academise or close, most of them would prefer the former. I am aware that this situation has been brought to my attention since we published our report, but it is reassuring that a great deal of what Early Education recommends in the audit to which I have referred is exactly the same as the recommendations in our report. There is considerable synergy there. I ask my noble friend the Minister: are the Government aware of the dangers facing these centres of the excellence that the Select Committee is seeking, and will they consider the sector’s request to allow academy freedoms further down the age range?