Children’s Centres
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I accept the importance of the matter, and I was delighted to see the ECCE survey, which showed that 98% of parents were “happy” or “very happy” with the services provided by their children’s centre. I know that the Labour Party likes to hark back to a golden age of Sure Start, but in 2009 the National Audit Office reported that children’s centres then were failing to reduce inequality and many were unviable, and Ofsted reported at the same time that half were not reaching out to vulnerable families. It is essential that we reach out to vulnerable families and that the facilities are tailored in the most flexible way to reach the families who need them.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister say what targeted services and support are offered to homeless families who may not be able to access children’s centres?
Lord Nash
Of course I empathise with the practical challenges that such families face. Housing authorities and children’s services work together locally to ensure that the needs of children in homeless families are met. This should include the role that local children’s centres can play in supporting such families. The Housing Act places a duty on authorities to co-operate with social services in situations where children may be made homeless intentionally or may be threatened with being made homeless intentionally.
Childcare Bill [HL]
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, this is a timely amendment, given the Government’s Statement of last week. When we were considering the Bill’s impact, it seemed to us that it would be a progressive move to relate the benefits of the additional free hours of childcare to improvement or otherwise in measures of child poverty, hence the amendment tabled in my name.
When considering the impact of the Bill, we became concerned that the financial benefits claimed by the Government could be completely undermined by changes they are going to make elsewhere. We were right to be concerned, given their announcement last week that they aim to abolish the measures of child poverty that were instituted in the Child Poverty Act 2010. In particular, we are concerned that the combination of those changes and the changes to working families’ benefits will have an adverse impact on child poverty.
There was cross-party support for the Government’s attempt in the 2010 Act to set out targets to reduce child poverty. Therefore, I am disappointed—to put it mildly—that the Government are now intent on removing the income-related figures for child poverty and replacing them with measures of worklessness and educational attainment. If you are a child living in a family on low income or benefits, it matters little whether that is the consequence of your parents’ worklessness or educational attainment, and there is little you can do about it. It is really important that we get to grips with this and use the Childcare Bill to lift more children out of poverty. I am sure there is a commitment to doing that across this House; it is the way we do it that will be a matter of debate.
The Government will want to use the undoubted benefits of the Bill to achieve that by agreeing to amendments that would extend the definition of working parents to those seeking to improve their education and skills. That would marry very neatly with what the Government said in the other place last week about educational attainment being a measure of poverty. If that is to be one of their measures, using the Bill to help parents who are seeking to improve their skills by going into education or training would combine the wishes of the Government with the Childcare Bill. That is something we could perhaps all agree to.
When I raised this issue last week, the Minister said that there were other ways for young parents who were in education to access some form of childcare, and he is right. But, having asked people over the weekend how this works, I can assure him that it is not that easy for young parents going into college, university or training to access really good free childcare. Aligning the Bill with the requirements of people going into education and training would be an enormously progressive move towards helping low-income families and therefore tackling child poverty.
If there is something we can do to lift more children out of poverty—which would have long-term benefits not just for them but for the country as a whole—and if we can do it fairly simply by linking parents’ educational needs with the Bill, we should all try to do it. I would be very pleased indeed if the Minister rethought the answer he gave me last week, in the light of the Government’s announcement, and I urge him to do so. I beg to move.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for moving this amendment. The Child Poverty Action Group has told us that it welcomes this legislation because of the positive impact that it is likely to have on child poverty. I hope that it may be helpful to remind the House of concerns about other current factors in play which might impact on child poverty.
I am grateful to the Minister for agreeing to a meeting on the issue of homeless families. I am reminded of a couple of times recently where, due to a combination of policy factors, many poor families have had to move out of London because they can no longer afford to live here. That is causing concern to employers, as their workforce is leaving London, and one must be concerned that those families are going to areas where they will have difficulty finding employment. While I know that this is an extremely difficult issue, it is helpful when we are talking about policies which will raise children out of poverty to keep in mind other things that might be pushing children into poverty and to think carefully about what we can do to hit that on the head as well.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I add my support to the amendment and to the comments of the noble Baroness and the noble Earl. What the Government are proposing in terms of redefining child poverty is an absolute disgrace. What we need is not a change to the definition of poverty but a plan to deal with poverty. The truth is that, after child poverty fell under the previous Government, last week’s Households Below Average Income DWP statistics show that more than 4 million children have plunged into absolute poverty under this Government. The Government seem to be determined to disguise the fact that they are on course to miss the target of abolishing child poverty by 2020 by changing the statistical goalposts. So what assessment have the Government made of the DWP statistics? Do they accept that the number of children in absolute poverty is increasing?
Following on from the Oral Question on the Family and Childcare Trust report, Access Denied, how will the provisions of the Bill contribute to meeting the child poverty target when children in disadvantaged areas are expected to miss out disproportionately on the early years provision? Does the Minister accept that families on low incomes frequently work on unstable contracts both in terms of the hours they are offered each week and the length of contract? These are the points that we rehearsed in the debates last week. So how can we be assured that low-income families will benefit from these proposals rather than being penalised —or even possibly criminalised—by their uncertain working patterns, where, for example, shifts are cancelled at short notice and the eight-hours criterion is not always met? This is a real challenge for us. How are we going to measure the progress that we are making on these issues? How can we be assured that disadvantaged children are not going to miss out disproportionately once again through these proposals? I look forward to the noble Lord’s response.
The Earl of Listowel
Before the noble Baroness withdraws her amendment, I thank the Minister for her comments and her elucidation of the Government’s plans on child poverty. I recognise that she does not want to give any details now but it was helpful to have that information. I omitted to say that I was at a meeting with the Local Government Association a little while ago, which was chaired by her colleague the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton. The association is asking for greater flexibility in borrowing for housing, for instance. The Government might choose to take certain measures which would help it to increase the supply of housing. I will leave that with the Minister for her to think about.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
May I ask the Minister about a point of detail? At a recent meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group dealing with children’s centres, one of the practitioners said that, while in the past Ofsted has examined centres to see how they were engaging with fathers, it had been decided that it should no longer do that. For instance, when providing information to parents, a centre might say, “Dear Mum and Dad” or “Dear Mother and Father”, rather than saying “Dear Parents”, in order to reach out to and engage fathers. They do a lot of work to try to reach fathers. That should be recognised. It may not be the case—it was only one practitioner’s experience—but I would be grateful if the Minister could write to me to confirm whether Ofsted is checking this, acknowledging the good work in this area.
Lord True
My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend. She looked around to see whether I was still in my place. I share the concern of noble Lords who are coming in about the trauma being inflicted on the people of Greece by the euro project, and I have moved along to allow other people to come in and make a point. I have to leave after this stage.
I am very grateful to my noble friend for what she said. It is important always to remember, before every piece of legislation that comes before this House, that the need for one local government officer at a relatively low grade across the 32 boroughs of London alone costs £1 million. That is besides the rest of the country and is a minimum sum, so noble Lords will understand why I am concerned that no regulatory demand should place pressure on local authorities to employ even more.
I am very grateful for the undertaking that we can have discussions on this and I am very grateful for the spirit in which my noble friend responded to the amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, Amendment 39 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord German and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. The amendment is an extension of our discussion on Amendment 34 on the links between this Bill and child poverty. As we know, the Government have a way of encouraging people out of poverty by encouraging them into work, and to make work pay. One of the ways of making work pay is by providing additional free childcare. Those who have relatives with young families will know the huge cost of paying for childcare in order to go out to work. We know that some working parents currently pass over most of their income to childcare costs, so this Bill is to be greatly welcomed.
However, I would like to explore through this amendment the link between the Bill and the incomes that families will have, and the changes to those incomes that we know are on the cards later this week in an announcement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Government have claimed, no doubt accurately, that the provisions in the Bill will see an additional benefit to families of around £2,500 a year. That would be a huge and significant saving to parents. However, the simple fact is that for those on low incomes and who most need the benefits of free childcare, all that good work could be wiped out by government cuts to tax credits of various kinds and perhaps to housing benefit.
I know that the Minister will be unable to tell us exactly what cuts to tax credits we are set to see in the Budget this week. Indeed, the Government have been singularly unwilling to spell out where their £12 billion of welfare savings will come from, but I think all sides of the House can agree that these cuts are likely to come at the expense of lower-income working families. The Prime Minister has already trailed that we will see cuts in tax credits, with some people suggesting that there might be up to £5 billion of projected savings. If that is the case, it would result in families with two children losing up to £1,700 a year, seriously diminishing the very welcome impact of the free additional childcare.
Despite what the Prime Minister suggested about companies paying more to workers to offset the impact of any cuts to tax credits, without real action on the minimum and living wage that is frankly rather more hope than expectation. We cannot assume that employers will be either able or willing to pick up the slack by paying a living wage to make up for the loss, for instance, of working tax credits. The decision about tax credits will make a huge difference to people, whether in employment or not. Cuts will mean that it is no longer financially possible for someone with high childcare costs to go out to work. That means that they will lose not only their tax credits but potentially the entitlement of free childcare, a double whammy that will do what none of us wants and punish the children of those families.
However, as much of this detail is still to be discussed and we may not know the Government’s intentions until Wednesday, we propose in this amendment to have a review two years hence of the financial impact on lower-income working families of the combination of the free childcare offer and any reductions in working tax credits, child tax credits and housing benefit. I made the case earlier today about the important link between this Bill, child poverty and the impact on low-income families. If the Government want to be progressive—I am sure they do—they will see that link and try to make work pay by ensuring that childcare is of benefit to low-income families. Ultimately, that is the purpose of this amendment: to consider the link between the two. I beg to move.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, the noble Baroness referred to the national living wage. I believe that two former advisers to the Prime Minister recently endorsed a move towards the living wage. Clearly, this Bill would be that much more effective and there would be much more incentive for people to take what is offered in it if we moved to a national living wage. What current position do the Government take towards the gradual introduction of a national living wage?
Lord Nash
In Amendment 39, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks assurance that the Government will monitor and report on the impact of the entitlement. She spoke with passion about the importance of supporting low-income working families with the cost of childcare, which is the subject of today’s debate, and I will confine my remarks to the subject of today’s discussion. I agree that it is extremely important and must be kept in mind at all stages of policy development in the early years.
The Government have ably and amply demonstrated their commitment to supporting low-income working families with the cost of childcare and to improving the educational outcomes of all children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. As my noble friend and I have set out in this debate and in previous discussions, the Government have committed to increasing childcare support within universal credit by around £350 million to provide 85% of childcare costs from 2016 where the lone parent or both parents in a couple are in work. The Government have introduced an entitlement to free early education for the most disadvantaged two year-olds, while the early years pupil premium will provide more support to improve outcomes for disadvantaged three and four year-olds.
The Government have demonstrated their commitment to understanding the impact of the provision of free childcare through previous projects such as the Effective Pre-School, Primary and Secondary Education project and the new longitudinal study of early education and development, as my noble friend and I mentioned previously. The Government also collect a range of data on the take-up of the existing entitlements, including the number of children taking up a place. The most recent data were published on 25 June. They reflect the position in January of this year and are extremely encouraging. As detail of the new entitlement is developed further, we will consider what further data should be collected to enable effective monitoring of the new entitlement.
The Government recognise the benefits and importance of evaluating the impact of significant policies such as this but do not believe that it is necessary or appropriate to legislate for the production of a report or to define the timeline and content of such a report. I therefore urge the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to withdraw her amendment.
Childcare Bill [HL]
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(8 years, 12 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for this announcement. Having worked with him on the children Bill, which he led through Parliament, I know how very hard he works to listen to Peers’ concerns and to respond to them, so I am very grateful to him for this response. I also know that his first ambition is to make a difference to children in this country. I am sure he will agree that, by delaying the Report stage and allowing us to gain more information, we will be in a better position to challenge him and work with him to get the best Bill and one which will make the most difference to children. Therefore, I warmly welcome the Minister’s announcement.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I find it very surprising that today the Opposition have decided that the Statement on child poverty made in the other place by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions should not be repeated and discussed here. The Statement details the Government’s approach to tackling the root causes of child poverty and improving the future life chances of young people. Instead of debating child poverty as a matter of public importance, the Opposition have chosen to have a debate about procedural matters, when the Government have already made it quite clear that they have responded to their request to defer the Report stage of the Childcare Bill to October.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 29, and first declare my interest as a newly appointed vice-chair and parliamentary representative of the Local Government Association. I omitted to thank the Select Committee and the Opposition for their part in ensuring that we have this thinking space before Report on this very important Bill. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and I was pleased to hear the passion in what she has just said.
I do not think it a good thing if a newly elected Government with a manifesto commitment and with a majority feel timid about taking action. I very strongly opposed the Academies Bill, which was introduced under the coalition Government. I do not feel it is wholly redeemed, but I think a Government have to be fairly bold, and maybe do new and dangerous things. Sometimes those can have very good outcomes. In what became the Academies Act, I think the power given head teachers has been a very good thing.
I think it is a difficult balance for a new Government. They need to assert themselves, and they should not be too timid, but for something as important as this—and I totally agree with the noble Baroness—time, thought and consideration are vital. I am happy that we have had this opportunity for extra thinking time.
In my amendment, I call for a commission to be set up:
“Within two years of the coming into force of”,
the Act, which will look,
“with particular regard to value for money”,
in childcare provision. Under the amendment the commission would appoint,
“the Children’s Commissioner for England … a representative of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and … a representative of the Nuffield Foundation”,
to look at value for money in the childcare sector. I have done this because I have been rather shocked in the past to see from international comparisons of the cost of childcare how expensive it is in this country. I am concerned that the taxpayer is not getting value for money.
I must apologise to the Childcare Minister. In a recent meeting when he briefed us on the Bill, I am afraid that I put words into his mouth which he did not use. He did not refer to his concern that the cost of childcare in this country is higher than in other nations; that was a concern expressed by his predecessor in the other place, his colleague Elizabeth Truss. I apologised to him for that but he did point out that childcare provision in this country has been part of a piecemeal process. Over the years, it has been rather reactive and there has not been a strategic view of what we should be doing, so I hope that your Lordships might think this a worthy consideration.
One particular concern I have is that while parents are the drivers here—the money goes to where they choose to place their child—I know from research that they will often choose price over quality. That is absolutely understandable when you are desperate for childcare, but because we all know that quality is so important, we may need to think of other ways of funding the way the market works to ensure that there is more of an incentive to improve quality, rather than simply to have extra provision.
I will also speak briefly to my colleague and noble friend Lord Sutherland’s amendment, 38A. I do not have it in front of me right now but, having looked at it briefly, I felt that he had made a very helpful contribution in saying that there should be a longitudinal study of the impact of early years childcare. The development of children who experience early years provision is fundamental. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Northbourne will raise the question today of what happens in early childhood, and particularly how the relationship between mother and infant is mediated by early years care. That is fundamental to how we make mature relationships as adults. So much of the security and success of our relationship with our partners and children depends on what happens in early childhood. Perhaps we can get more information on this long distance between infancy and the ages of 25 or 30, when we start to make our own families, and even look at the next generation on. It would be really helpful to have a study to look at the impact of this, so I welcome my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I believe we are in a much better place now than we were during Second Reading and I thank the Minister for the part he has played in that. I also thank the usual channels, who I am sure were not silent when critical issues came up.
That being said, there are still some major issues and some of these amendments deal with them very well. Pro tem, until we see how much information we will have before Report, I would be inclined to give my support to Amendments 1 and 27—particularly Amendment 27, because we need to be clear that the regulations that do not come before this House deal only with practical constitutional matters. In principle, I give my support to both these amendments and we will see how things develop between now and Report. Effectively, the Government are under detailed scrutiny here and I encourage the Minister to do all he can to work with the good will around this place to bring about a successful conclusion.
That being said, I will refer briefly to my own Amendment 38A, which is quite different from the others. It recognises the fact that excellent work of a longitudinal nature has been done—for example, in the EPPE and EPPSE reports—with the encouragement and sponsorship of the Department for Education under two different Governments. That is something we welcome. We should look at the value of that work, which was evident to the Select Committee, with a view to continuing with a similar evaluation of what government policies bring about. The EPPE study takes children from the age of three. This legislation might alter that age and, if so, is an additional reason to look for the ways in which early education impacts on later educational opportunity.
I am looking for an indication from the Minister that the department still attaches great importance to building up this long-term database of how well or ill any particular policy might be working.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I welcome the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I was also very interested to hear what the Minister said about the research that is taking place and I will look at that in some detail in Hansard in due course. I will also scrutinise very carefully the wording of the information that the Minister has now provided about the timeline and I welcome his suggestion of a road map. I think that would help all noble Lords to understand what we can expect on Report.
The critical issue here is not an October deadline. I am grateful that the noble Lord has offered that but it is more important to get the information right than to tie ourselves down to an artificial date. Whether it is October or November does not matter. What matters is that we are furnished with all the information that the Minister is now saying that we will get. I would hate to think that some of this work is being rushed to meet an artificial deadline, so I will just put that marker down, but if it can be ready by October, that is fine.
A number of noble Lords have said that we have had the procedural discussion and the procedural row and I agree with that. We are keen to move on with the detail of the Bill now so let us put the process behind us. I look forward to the information the noble Lord has given and will give in the follow-up letter and I hope that we can go forward on that basis.
I have one last caveat. The Minister talked about the draft regulations. Again, I need to check exactly what he said, but our Amendment 27 says that the regulations should be affirmative, which is an important principle. It is what the Delegated Powers Committee recommended and I hope the noble Lord will take that on board so that we can have a proper opportunity to debate the regulations, not only in draft form but in their final form, before they are put on the statute book. With that caveat, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, before the amendment is withdrawn—I apologise for being slow off the mark—may I make a brief comment? I thank the Minister for his careful response, which I appreciated, and for your Lordships’ comments on my amendment.
On my noble friend’s amendment, I take it that the longitudinal study referred to by the Minister will finish fairly early in the children’s lives. It seems that our discussion is about longitudinal studies that are focused mainly on the educational outcomes and maybe a little on child development. The EPPE study terminated at either 16 or 18, but here it may be slightly earlier.
My concern is that we need some means to think about the long-term impact of early years care. We are becoming more and more aware of the importance of a secure attachment in the early years. I visited the Anna Freud Centre over quite a period and spoke to professionals at Coram. To give an example of the importance of a secure early attachment, they have developed a means of assessing potential adopters. With that tool, they can learn about the adopters’ own experience of their early childhoods, and from that discussion they can assess how secure the child that would be placed with them is likely to be. To simplify grossly, if the adopters have had a secure attachment in their own lives, it is likely that they will be able to give a secure attachment to an infant placed with them, even if that child is quite challenging, because they had a very good experience early in life. This is a very important thing to keep in mind.
I am sorry to bore your Lordships with this—I mention it so often—but in this country about 22% of boys and girls are growing up without a father in the home and, according to the OECD, we will overtake the United States in a few years. It is of course deeply distressing for children when their parents separate, and hugely economically costly for us as a nation when families break down.
I am sure many of us would feel reassured if there was research that looked at the experience of early years provision and the early years experience of childhood and connected that with the success of family relationships down the road. Maybe the Minister will think about that, and then we can discuss it at another point. I thank noble Lords.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, Amendment 4 in this group would insert “high-quality” into Clause 1(1). Amendment 6, which we will come to later, similarly inserts those words into this subsection. It also asks the Secretary of State to produce a strategy for developing high-quality care within six months of the Bill coming into force and lays out that the strategy should include,
“a target for the number of graduates in the early years workforce”—
I am not sure whether it is a particularly helpful target so I will not discuss it—
“a target for the proportion of managers of early years settings who are graduates, and … a plan for increasing the number of nursery schools to a specified level”.
The reason I tabled this amendment is, in part, the same reason that I gave earlier: what happens at the very beginning of our lives affects our adulthood to a huge degree. This is something of which we are becoming more and more aware. The intimacy that we experience in childhood is very much what allows us to have intimacy as adults. If that experience of intimacy as a child causes fear and disquiet, then, as an adult, we may find it difficult to be intimate with others, which has a huge impact.
Quality is really important. I was grateful for the opportunity to speak to the Childcare Minister and to hear, for instance, that he is looking at sharing early years practitioners with schools, perhaps in reception. I hope that a strategy will look at these innovative ideas so that perhaps it would become normal for early years practitioners to move into primary school education and for primary school practitioners to move the other way. It would greatly enrich learning in primary schools; a really good understanding of child development—which can be developed in particular by working with and observing infants—could be really helpful for primary school teachers. Anna Freud said so to a group of teachers back in the 1930s or 1940s. As a teacher, your job—or an important part of it—is to understand child development, recognise when the child has strayed from the normal course of child development and know how to bring that child back on to their proper developmental course.
That notion is important. We might also look at a strategy of co-training—something that I know has been discussed in the past—whereby early years professionals train with health visitors, mental health nurses, social workers and family support workers to strengthen their understanding of, and develop a respect for, what others do so that they can work more effectively. It is a multi-agency way of getting the best outcomes for children.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, alluded to concerns about the number of graduates leading early years provision and the evidence that we are unlikely to get the outcomes that we want if graduates—I think they have to be the right kind of graduates—are not leading settings. I had some acquaintance with the manager of a Montessori school in London. She was an Oxbridge graduate and we had many interesting conversations about her work. I was struck by how very thoughtful she is. Clearly her children must benefit from the degree and depth of thought that she gives to her work.
I have mentioned previously one element that is really important in a nursery setting and that is the “key person”—a designated early years practitioner who is responsible for each child. In a sense, the key person is the guardian of secure attachment while the child is placed in a nursery. However, there are two difficulties with that. First, it can be quite distressing for the key person from an emotional point of view because they become quite attached to the child and the child becomes attached to them. If they move on or there is a break in the care, the child will be upset, as will the key person. So, from an emotional point of view, there is pressure on them not to really engage with and care for the child. Secondly, some parents will be jealous that their infant is forming such a close relationship with someone in the early years setting. These things have to be thought through very carefully so that the child does not grow up in a sterile, unemotional environment but in a rich, warm environment. That is why I have tabled my amendment, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 20 in my name. However, before doing so, I want briefly to lend my support to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I feel that it is a very important amendment as it provides a necessary rebalancing in the Bill between the needs of the child—we heard the statement about putting the child at the heart of the Bill—and those of working parents. Both are important but we have to think very hard about how those two interests and sets of needs can be best balanced.
The amendment to Clause 1 in my name would require regulations to set out the quality standards that childcare providers must adhere to in order to deliver the 30 hours of free childcare. Essentially it is about the quality of the childcare to be provided and it is a probing amendment.
While it is encouraging that the quality of childcare is gradually improving—we heard about this at Second Reading—there are still insufficient numbers of high-quality free entitlement places for three and four year-olds and disadvantaged two year-olds, resulting still in too many children attending poor-quality settings or being unable to access provision that meets their individual needs. Some 15% of disadvantaged two year-olds are attending settings that have not been judged good or outstanding by Ofsted. We know that this position is particularly stark both for children with special educational needs and disabilities—we will come later to amendments that focus on that group of children—and for disadvantaged children. I thought that the Affordable Childcare Select Committee report—I declare an interest as a member—was particularly strong in pointing out that childcare provision in deprived areas is less likely to be good or outstanding than that in affluent areas, compounding the disadvantage that already exists.
We know that current quality standards for early education and childcare are set out in statutory guidance for local authorities. However—this is my key point—it seems to me imperative that the expansion of free childcare to 30 hours does not in any way undermine recent progress in improving the quality of the free entitlement. The early years foundation stage and a robust Ofsted inspection process have both been central to improvements in outcomes for young children in recent years. While the Government acknowledge in statutory guidance that high-quality provision has the greatest impact on children’s development—that is very welcome, particularly for the most disadvantaged children—they have not restricted the delivery of the free entitlement solely to good and outstanding providers due to a shortage of high-quality places.
It is unclear to me—hence this probing amendment—whether the Government plan to use regulations underpinning the Secretary of State’s new duty to prescribe the quality standards that childcare providers must meet in order to be able to deliver the 30 hours of free childcare. I always like to look on the bright side, so it seems to me that the Bill presents an opportunity to secure quality standards for the additional 15 hours of free childcare and, at the same time, to strengthen existing quality standards for the free entitlement for three and four year-olds.
Very much in that spirit, perhaps I may ask the Minister some questions. First, will regulations be used to place quality requirements on providers of the additional 15 hours of free childcare? Secondly, can the Minister provide assurances that all childcare settings providing the additional 15 hours will be required to be judged good or outstanding in their most recent Ofsted inspection to deliver the early years foundation stage and to have all staff holding or working towards a level 3 qualification? Thirdly, will the Government consider using the introduction of the additional 15 hours of childcare to raise the quality of the current free entitlement? Finally, can the Minister provide any assurance that the Government will develop, publish and implement—I am sure that many people in this House would be happy to help on this—a strategy for expanding on and improving the quality of the early years workforce, building further on the recommendation in Professor Nutbrown’s report and, in particular, on the recommendation that there should be graduate leadership in all settings, including, most importantly, those in disadvantaged areas?
The Earl of Listowel
I apologise for being slow to my feet this evening. Before the noble Baroness withdraws the amendment, may I make a few comments on what the Minister has said, since we are in Committee? I am very grateful to the Minister for her careful reply and for her reference to the importance of the key person in the nursery. I am also grateful for everything I have heard about the improving educational qualifications of staff and the encouraging inspection reports from Ofsted.
What troubles me, and I think may trouble other noble Lords, is the concern that this is a very low-paid workforce of mainly very young women. I recently visited a nursery near here and met a couple of young women who had just started working there. I learned of their history: they were abused themselves as children. I do not know how good their experience was of recovering from that. However, childcare staff are often young women who are poorly educated and may well have had poor emotional experiences themselves growing up.
With respect to levels of maternity in young people in care or leaving care, I believe that research was carried out 10 or 15 years ago which highlighted that about a quarter of girls were getting pregnant before leaving care, and a further quarter shortly afterwards. Young women who have had a poor experience of childhood are often attracted to the idea of having a baby, and perhaps to working with young children, because they seek love—the love that they never had—and they hope that through having a baby or caring for a child they will receive that love. Sadly, what they learn is that the child needs to be loved by them, and that responsibility quickly becomes too much for them. Perhaps that is part of the reason why so many children who grow up in care go on to have children who are taken away from them and placed into care again.
I am going to make it my job to visit a few more early years nurseries before Report to reassure myself that the improvements that the Minister described are taking place. Given the realities of the workforce, I find it surprising that we are moving forward in the way that the Minister describes. However, it may be that this is such a vocational line of work that there are young women attracted to it who have great capacity for it. That might be one reason why we are seeing such an improvement, despite the low pay and low status of the work.
I do not expect a response from the Minister, but I wanted to flag that up as a concern.
The Earl of Listowel
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 5, and to Amendments 8 and 9.
I want to include homeless families. I want them to have the offer of 30 hours’ high-quality childcare each week. More than 90,000 children in England are living in temporary accommodation, and more than 2,000 families in England are living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. These are the worst figures in seven years.
I do not know who is to blame for the current situation, but we seem somehow not to have produced enough housing. As a landlord, I know how challenging it is to be a landlord. I feel how badly we, as a nation, have all let these wonderful families down by not providing adequate housing for them. I think there can be some ambivalence about social housing. I have heard a couple of colleagues say, and I understand their concern, “If you offer social housing, then young women will have babies in order to get on the housing list, and we will be creating a culture of dependency”. My response to that is “Perhaps some might”. There is the other perverse situation in which women may bring up children on their own because, in order to get a home, the father has to live separately. On the continent, they seem to be more humane, and they do produce sufficient housing. In Italy, Germany and France the rate of teenage pregnancies is lower than ours. They do not have as much family breakdown as we do. So, experience elsewhere suggests that that ambivalence about providing adequate housing for our people is not necessary. People—families—need decent homes if they are to thrive and do well and secure employment. That is the context of the amendment.
Many years ago, I went with a health visitor to a number of households in Redbridge, in east London. One had damp running down the walls, another had a flooded basement that the landlord would do nothing about. In one, bizarrely, the lavatory was somehow part of the shower arrangement. The mother slept with her child in her bed. The provision was overcrowded and of poor quality.
I have also spoken on a number of occasions with mothers in temporary accommodation. Barnardo’s used to run a project called Families in Temporary Accommodation, managed by John Reacroft. I was fortunate to speak to those mothers about their experience. What I gathered from them is the isolation they have experienced: they might well be placed many miles away from their community, their family, their friends, and they might have to make a number of bus journeys to get where they need to go. Of course, there was also the uncertainty in their lives resulting from living in temporary accommodation.
I therefore encourage the Government to accept this part of the amendment, so that such children can get respite from an unstable and chaotic situation at home, and can have the stability of a hopefully high-quality nursery placement. I ask the Minister to consider asking the Education Secretary if there might be some ministerial discussion about the issue of homeless families, and what the Department for Education thinks needs to be done in this area.
The next subsection of the amendment is concerned with families with children at risk of significant harm. Visiting a nursery some time ago and being told that one of the mothers was a heroin addict helped me to think a little about this issue. Many of these parents will be addicted to either drugs or alcohol, so the benefits for them of having access to 30 hours’ free child care would actually be for the siblings of those three year-olds. Often, it is the siblings in an alcoholic or drug-addicted family who look after the younger children, so the elder children can get a break from having to worry about and care for the younger children. If the parent is taking part in a drug or alcohol programme, that allows them to immerse themselves in that programme, to build new relationships—their old relationships would probably lead them towards a drink or a drug—and to take a full part in the therapy offered, develop new activities and move on.
The family drug and alcohol court, which the last Government were so good at supporting strongly, is helping many families across the country to get off drugs and alcohol. Children who are at risk are, thanks to this work, able to remain with their parents. It has about a 50% success rate. A judge follows a family throughout a year and ensures that the parents give up their addiction and they can keep their children. I encourage the Minister to consider offering this opportunity to families with children at risk.
I turn to my proposal for literacy and numeracy courses. Perhaps it is a bit hard to define what those courses should be, but the research is very clear. I pay tribute to the work of many years by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and the Workers’ Educational Association, and to the recent report that my noble friend Lady Howarth of Breckland chaired for NIACE, which shows the benefits of family learning. It is so important to educational outcomes that parents be given the opportunity to learn, as well. When they start placing their children in education, they begin to want to learn, too. I am afraid that one can find, especially with very underprivileged families, that when parents are not given that nutrition and nourishment they may get resentful of their children, who are. I remember hearing of one mother—no, I will not go into the details of a rather painful story. However, it is very good to nourish both parents and children.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his careful reply and his kind offer of a meeting to discuss homeless families and the status of foster carers. I note particularly what the noble Lord, Lord True, said about the complications of making such amendments possible. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Childcare Bill [HL]
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(8 years, 12 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
“(1A) For the purposes of securing “high-quality childcare” under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must, within 6 months of this section coming into force, lay a report before both Houses of Parliament setting out her strategy for developing the early years workforce.
(1B) The strategy mentioned in subsection (1A) must include in particular—
(a) a target for the number of graduates in the early years workforce,(b) a target for the proportion of managers of early years settings who are graduates, and(c) a plan for increasing the number of nursery schools to a specified level.”
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, this amendment would require the Secretary of State, within six months of this section of the Act coming into effect, to lay a report before both Houses of Parliament setting out the Government’s strategy for developing the early years workforce. It seeks to secure a commitment from the Minister that the Government will publish a strategy to increase the quality and capacity of that workforce. I shall try to be quick.
I am grateful to the National Children’s Bureau for helping to prepare the amendment. I should like to seek clarity from the Government regarding their plans to ensure that all children receiving 30 hours of free childcare can access high-quality early years education and childcare that promotes both their learning and their development and is delivered by well-trained and qualified practitioners. I would like the expansion of free childcare to be supported by an early years workforce improvement strategy, setting out how the Government intend to recruit and train new practitioners and retain existing practitioners through qualifications and career development support.
Evidence shows that a well-qualified, confident and experienced workforce is central to the delivery of early years services that improve young children’s outcomes. The Nuffield Foundation has recently reported on a strong relationship between the level of staff qualifications, the quality of provision as judged by Ofsted and outcomes for young children. Despite recognition that employing a graduate leader improves the quality of provision, since the graduate leader fund ended in 2011 there has been no dedicated national funding available for local authorities to support the training and qualifications of early years practitioners. In addition, reductions in local government budgets have meant that many local authorities can no longer subsidise training for new and existing practitioners. At present, only 14% of private, voluntary and independent settings employ a graduate, with few opportunities for these providers to fund graduate training.
Measures are also needed to improve the qualifications of non-managerial staff. A significant minority of practitioners are working in the sector despite not holding a level 3 qualification, an A-level qualification, the minimum recommended by the Nutbrown review of early education and childcare qualifications in order to deliver high-quality services to young children and their families. One-third of childminders do not hold a level 3 qualification and 14% are unqualified. In group settings, 13% to 16% of staff do not hold a level 3 qualification and 4% are unqualified.
A lack of investment in the early years workforce, coupled with an increase in staff vacancies and a reduction in childminder numbers, is limiting the capacity of the early years sector to provide high-quality free entitlement places for three and four year-olds, with the greatest impact being felt by providers in poorer areas—areas that are required to deliver a greater proportion of free places for disadvantaged two year-olds.
Between 2011 and 2013, there was a 42% increase in staff vacancies in full-day care settings and a 59% increase in staff vacancies in sessional care settings. During the same period, the number of active childminders fell by 6%, from 48,800 to 46,100. I would argue that a review of the workforce delivering the free entitlement for three and four year-olds should be undertaken in order to ascertain existing and projected gaps in workforce capacity prior to the extension of free childcare to 30 hours. This review would help to ensure that accurate targets for increasing the number of graduates, graduate leaders and level 3 practitioners are set out in the workforce strategy.
The Department of Health’s health visitor implementation plan set measureable targets for increasing the health visiting workforce and is expected to miss its 2015 recruitment target of 4,200 new health visitors by only 3%. That is a tremendous achievement on the Government’s part.
If I may say so, the Childcare Bill provides an opportunity to increase both the quality and the capacity of the early years workforce through a workforce improvement strategy. Failure to do so would hinder the expansion of free childcare to 30 hours. I therefore have three questions for the Minister. Will he provide assurances that the Government will develop a strategy for expanding and improving the quality of the early years workforce? Can he confirm whether the Government will review the composition of the workforce delivering the current free entitlement in order to ascertain existing and predicted gaps in capacity? Finally, will the Minister confirm whether the Government intend to put in place measures to increase the number of graduate leaders? I apologise for not giving him notice of those questions and quite understand if he would prefer to write to me on them.
I have a couple of other amendments in this group, one of which is on hours of training for staff, particularly emphasising the need to allow staff to have training away from the children so that they can reflect on their relationships with them. Coram, a well-recognised, high-quality provider, provides such time away from the children for staff development. It can be seen as a costly input but it is vital. In teaching we have Baker days and recognise that teachers need time away from their pupils to develop themselves. The same should apply to early years provision. The other amendment is to do with increasing the number of nursery schools, and I was grateful to the Minister for his reply on that particular topic earlier today. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 13 and to support the other amendments in this group which have been very ably explained by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and all of which highlight the need for a high-quality workforce in this sector.
As we know, there is compelling and conclusive evidence that the presence of trained early years teachers in nurseries has the biggest impact on children’s early years development. This was a central theme of Cathy Nutbrown’s report and was echoed in the Select Committee’s report on affordable childcare, where it was identified that the number of qualified staff, and therefore the quality of provision, was higher in the maintained sector than in the PVI sector. Most worryingly, it was identified that provision in the most disadvantaged areas tended to be of lower quality. For example, the report quotes evidence from Ofsted, which described how in the more deprived areas the people who put themselves forward to work tended to have lower levels of skill.
Clearly there has been some progress in this area. The Minister spelled out some examples in his Second Reading response and in the subsequent policy statement. There has, for example, been a welcome increase in those holding a level 3 qualification, although it is by no means universal. But as Save the Children has pointed out, over half of independent nurseries do not employ a single early years teacher and only 13% of staff in independent nurseries have a degree. Meanwhile, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, pointed out, since the graduate leader fund ended in 2011, there is no dedicated national funding to support the training of early years practitioners, which could help the PVI sector. Save the Children has also described how a third of childminders do not hold a level 3 qualification, nor do a sixth of staff in group settings.
In response to these concerns about the quality of staff, the Affordable Childcare Committee report recommends that,
“the Government considers how the proportion of staff qualified at a higher level can be increased in the PVI sector to drive up overall quality. In line with that, we also recommend that the Government reconsiders its response to the Nutbrown Review”.
We believe that this amendment provides a vehicle for the Government to do that. A report of the kind that we outlined would allow an assessment to be made of the progress in rolling out level 3 and early years teacher status. It would specifically enable an analysis to take place of the causes of lower qualifications among black and ethnic minority staff. This was also proposed by Cathy Nutbrown. It would provide a vehicle for analysing the recruitment and retention issues which many in the sector report are a major barrier to growth.
We also believe that low pay rates are at the heart of this problem. A recent survey for the National Day Nurseries Association highlighted evidence of qualified staff leaving to earn more money working in supermarkets. In his Second Reading speech, my noble friend Lord Sawyer gave examples of staff employed to look after dogs being paid twice as much as those who are looking after babies. All these examples demonstrate an urgent need to investigate levels of pay, comparators with earnings in other education sectors, the scope for paying at least the living wage and the contribution that a national pay structure can play in easing recruitment challenges in the future.
I hope that noble Lords will feel able to support this amendment which reflects many of the concerns of the Affordable Childcare Committee and would enable the Government to identify the further drivers which could help improve quality and retention in this sector.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 13, 17 and 36, on the early years workforce. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for bringing forward these amendments. They are wide-ranging and cover a review of the workforce and workforce strategy, together with specific issues such as training, qualifications and pay.
I am sure we would all wish to pay tribute to the commitment and dedication of the early years workforce. Their hard work and devotion does not go unnoticed, and the support they give to children in the most important years of their lives is critical to ensuring that every child gets the best start in life. The Government are committed to ensuring that childcare hours are of high quality and, of course, the workforce is key to that.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has moved an amendment requiring the Secretary of State to,
“lay a report before both Houses of Parliament setting out her strategy for developing the early years workforce”.
We covered this issue in an earlier group of amendments. I set out that strategy and some of the initiatives that the Government have introduced, so I do not propose to repeat those.
The noble Earl also moved an amendment to make explicit requirements for the use of graduates in early years settings. We are committed to continuing to raise the quality of the early years workforce. We have already set the bar high for the qualifications of people working in childcare, including early years teachers, who must meet the same training course entry requirements as primary teachers. Since 2007, 15,422 early years teachers have been trained. I also assure the noble Earl that we will continue to support expansion of the graduate workforce through the provision of early years initial teacher training routes and through providing funding support for trainees.
Regarding the noble Earl’s amendment to develop a strategy to increase the number of maintained nursery schools, we recognise that they have been shown to deliver high-quality early years education. However, we must of course also recognise that many private, voluntary and independent providers also deliver quality. At 31 December 2014, the proportion of all providers on the early years register rated good or outstanding by Ofsted was 83%.
While we agree that many nursery schools offer high quality, we also think that the diversity of the childcare sector is one of its strengths as it offers choice and flexibility to parents. We want maintained nursery schools to play their part in a diverse early years sector in years to come, delivering high-quality, sustainable provision that is responsive to the needs of parents in their local area.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that I have indeed read the report to which she referred and we will certainly reflect on some of the findings laid out in it.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has also tabled an amendment which would require early years settings to provide a specified number of training hours per year to each member of staff. While I entirely understand the intention behind this amendment, to support staff training and development, we think this is a matter for individual employers and the sector to lead on. We will continue to support the sector in doing so, but do not believe that specifying a one-size-fits-all model would be helpful. Given these reassurances, I hope the noble Earl will withdraw his amendment.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has tabled an amendment which would require a review of the qualifications and pay of staff. It specifically addresses the assessment of progress of level 3 qualification standards, the assessment of progress in introducing early years career paths, recruitment and retention, pay levels and the number of black and minority ethnic staff at different levels of the profession. I will take each of these briefly in turn.
We have a robust set of standards for level 3 early years educator qualifications. The quality of the workforce is increasing year on year. We know that the proportion of paid staff with at least a level 3 qualification increased between 2011 and 2013. The sector shares the Government’s ambition to see staff in key positions holding good GCSEs in English and Maths, as this can only be to the benefit of the children with whom they work and the status of the profession.
We recognise the importance of clear progression routes within the sector to attract and retain good-quality staff, and will be looking further at how to ensure that the current and prospective early years workforce can take advantage of the varied and rewarding careers that are available to them. I know that the Minister for Childcare and Education is looking closely at the qualification frameworks and rules to ensure that they are enabling the development of a high-quality workforce.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, also raised the important issue of recruitment and retention. It is important that experienced and skilled early years professionals want to stay in the profession, a point made by the noble Baroness. The Government recognise that settings, the majority of which are private businesses, manage this themselves in the context of their staff employment and deployment responsibilities.
There are many reasons why staff turnover may increase, including local economic factors which are beyond the control of providers. Making staff turnover information available at a local level to parents could lead to the information being misinterpreted and lead a parent to dismiss out of hand a good-quality setting that is doing good work to support staff. That is not what anyone would want.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, tabled an amendment on local authorities publishing turnover rates of early years staff. We already collect and publish information on staff turnover through the Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey, which was last published in 2013 and is publicly available on GOV.UK. We think this is the right level of information about turnover, and that it is not appropriate or necessary for local authorities to publish further information.
As regards the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on reviewing pay, all private, voluntary and independent providers are free to set their own pay scales. This means that those working in the sector can be paid as their employer sees fit. Only those defined as “school teachers” under Section 122(3) of the Education Act 2002 are legally entitled to the pay and conditions specified in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document. With respect to the noble Baroness’s amendment to assess the numbers and qualifications of black and minority ethnic staff, it is the responsibility of early years training providers and employers to ensure that they do not discriminate when recruiting trainees and employees, and they must comply with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010. Information published on the representation of ethnic minorities reveals that school-based providers in nursery schools have the highest level of BME staffing, at 17%.
In conclusion, while we sympathise with the intention behind these amendments, we do not think they are necessary. Work is already under way to look at how to support the continued improvement of the early years workforce. I therefore urge the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to withdraw their amendments.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her careful reply and for what she said about the availability and additional funding for early-years initial teacher training. However, I must say that I still do not feel reassured. The noble Baroness stated that it was important to leave parents to choose what suits them, to allow them the flexibility to decide what needs to be done. I am afraid that research I have seen indicates that parents tend to choose price over quality. We are putting them in a difficult position: they are desperate to get out to work, and we are saying, “We will leave it to you to choose. You have to make the choices, without necessarily having all the information”.
I understand what the noble Baroness says about not publishing the turnover figures. Will she be good enough to write to me with a breakdown of turnover levels, ranging from the turnover of staff in nursery schools to group settings in children’s centres, and looking at privately, voluntarily and local authority-run settings? I would be grateful to see the range that is available.
I understand that there is always a balance. The Government do not wish to be overly prescriptive, to unnecessarily hinder businesses from doing a good job, or to interfere too much with the market. On the other hand, I am not sure that the balance is right here. It is so important that children get the high-quality care that they need; the Government may have to go further to persuade noble Lords that the additional care offered will be of the necessary quality. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s response and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Childcare
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(8 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is quite right; I have seen that report, and I am very grateful for it. We will have the opportunity to debate it in great detail tomorrow in Committee, when I will be saying more about that. We will be considering the report extremely carefully and making any necessary appropriate amendments.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the decline in numbers of the highly regarded nursery schools attached to primary schools? Is he looking at how those numbers can be increased in order to develop capacity in high-quality early years provision?
Lord Nash
I am not entirely sure that the noble Earl is right about declining numbers; I will clarify that for him. I think that provision has in fact been increasing, and we have been making every effort to expand that high-quality provision. We know that it is of the highest quality and tends to have higher-quality staff. We have reduced the bureaucracy to enable primary schools to open nurseries, and we have now allowed free school applicants to apply to open nurseries attached to their primary places. We have been working with a number of schools that are already doing this to learn from the practice so that we can share that practice with other primary schools that want to open nursery provision.
Childcare Bill [HL]
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(9 years ago)
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill and for his kind words about those of us who worked on the Childcare Bill in 2006. At that time, we reflected that we were 30 years behind Scandinavia. I think we can all agree that huge progress has been made since then, which the Minister pointed to in what he said.
I also had the pleasure of working with the Minister on the then Children and Families Bill. As noble Lords who worked on that Bill know, the Minister is very prepared to work with Members of your Lordships’ House. He was very open-minded and very helpful, particularly with regard to noble Lords’ concerns about children staying put in foster care. I encourage noble Lords to take every opportunity to work with him on specific items regarding this Bill. I think he would be pleased to do that and that we will see a good outcome if we do.
I also thank my noble friend Lord Sutherland and his colleagues for their important report. I should like to highlight what they said about the importance of nursery schools.
I welcome the principle of the Bill, but I share the deep concerns that many have expressed that whatever is offered must be high quality. It is perverse to offer more of what is not that good. That is not helpful. It would be worse to encourage parents to place their children in poor-quality care than to do nothing at all. We have to get the quality right.
There has been some concern about the need to deal with so much of this area in secondary legislation. I would be grateful if the Minister could reassure the House that he will be directly involved in a lot of that secondary legislation as it comes through the House. It would be helpful certainly for me to know that he would be involved in that.
I welcome the principle behind this, which is, in part, to help parents into work. We know that this will be a helpful factor in helping children out of poverty. It is also helpful for adults’ mental health to be in work. Obviously, caring for a young child is a job in itself; it can be quite isolating. It is good that we are giving parents a choice between being full-time parents, which is a very important job, or going out into the wider workforce and working. Probably the optimum mix for children aged three years is a few hours of group care and spending time with their principal carers.
The chief ask that I have for the Minister and for your Lordships’ support is an opportunity to stand back and look at childcare as a whole. We were grateful to hear from the Childcare Minister last night, and I thank the Minister for agreeing to that. The Childcare Minister said that childcare provision as it has evolved today has been a very British process, in that it has evolved piecemeal—I do not think that he quite used that word—over time. He also said that the childcare we have in this country is significantly more expensive and that we get less value for money for what is offered than on the continent. I know that the Minister has been concerned about this in the past.
I ask the Minister and colleagues to think about some kind of opportunity to step back a bit further—even behind the welcome consultations on funding and on the workforce—to think about how this market works and how it might be made to work better. It is very depressing that we all agree that nursery schools provide the best qualified and most stable workforce in this area, yet, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, this has been declining over the years. I have met with nursery school teachers who have told me that. Something seems not to be quite right in the overall policy, and we need to address it.
I turn to quality, which has been talked about so much today. Professor Jay Belsky and others pointed out in the EPPE research—I am sorry to use that acronym as I cannot remember the details of it; maybe someone will help later on—that high-quality childcare can be shown to have beneficial effects to the age of 16. Professor Melhuish pointed out that children who had had high-quality early years care would still be doing well through primary school to the age of 11, even if they went to a poor primary school, because the high-quality early years care provided a protective factor against a poor primary school experience. So we know that high-quality early years care makes a difference in outcomes for children, which we very much want.
Many of our concerns are about quality. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, put this very well, as did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. In all this we must not forget the children; we must put them first. I am afraid that the report from the Children’s Society’s Good Childhood inquiry highlighted how we have forgotten children as a society. The OECD report of 2011 highlighted that about 22% of our children were living without a father in the household, compared with 25% or so in the United States and 15% in Germany, but we are set to overtake the United States. The Good Childhood inquiry suggested that this is because very often parents, understandably, put their own concerns before those of their children. There are cases, obviously, where children do better without unhappy parents together, but we need to put the interests of children first.
The Minister was reassuring to some extent about the workforce and highlighted the fact that we had moved from 75% to 87% of the workforce having at least one NVQ level 3. That is encouraging and there has been much progress, but that is only one O-level. What percentage of the workforce is now comprised of graduates and what percentage of group settings are managed by graduates? I do not expect him to answer that now, but I would be grateful for a response.
In my experience, one often finds that very young people move into this field who may have been subjected to poor parenting experiences themselves. The youngest and most inexperienced are often put in charge of the baby rooms. This seems to me a recipe for a not very good outcome for those children. I consider that the concerns expressed by noble Lords around the House in that regard are valid.
What is needed is a strategy for the workforce, as I have hinted at already. In schools, there are “Baker days”, which provide time for staff to be away from their pupils to enable them to think about the work they are doing. Coram schools are the best examples of this provision and have for many years allowed early years practitioners time away on a regular basis to sit and talk about their relationships with their children. For instance, one could think about having one teaching qualification so that teachers going into primary, secondary or early years teaching would all have the same qualification. If one gets qualified as an early years practitioner, one can move into primary teaching. That would raise the status of early years care tremendously. A lot of good things could be done in terms of the workforce.
We need to build up nursery schools. It was good to hear that the Chief Inspector of Schools has called for statues to be put up of head teachers of schools. I am told that a very good candidate would be a Ms Curtis, who is the manager of Everton nursery school in Liverpool. I hope that we might see a statue erected to her some time soon.
I do not wish to detain your Lordships too much longer. As I say, I am concerned that we should stand back and look at the market to see whether it works efficiently enough, given the money we invest in it.
In addition, I hope that the Minister and your Lordships might be open to thinking about whether homeless families who are not in work might be able to benefit from this free early years childcare. Their children are living in an uncertain environment and being moved around so will face particular developmental difficulties and would benefit from the high-quality 30 hours a week free childcare offered in the Bill. I hope that some thought will be given to giving those homeless children this opportunity. There are 90,000-plus homeless children in England, Wales and Scotland and there were more than 2,000 families in bed and breakfast last year. It is a very serious problem and hard to see how it will be dealt with. The least we can do is try to mitigate the harm to the children in those homeless families by giving them all the support that we can.
I look forward to working with the Minister and look forward to his response.
Childcare: Early-years Funding
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(9 years ago)
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
Does the Minister recognise that the research clearly shows that high-quality early-years education has long-term benefits in terms of educational and other outcomes for children? In his proposed changes, and particularly with the concerns about funding, will he ensure that we continue to give the highest-quality childcare to our young people?
Queen’s Speech
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(9 years ago)
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Freud, back to the Front Bench. Perhaps there is no more important mission than getting as many of our people into work as possible. I remember that the primary mechanism for the success of Louise Casey, when she was the tsar for rough sleeping, was getting those people into purposeful activity. It is so important for all of us to feel that we are doing something purposeful and useful.
I declare my interest as a landowner. From the age of 15 I remember visiting my tenants. The property that I was to inherit was held in trust for me until the age of 21, but I had been visiting it since the age of 15.
I welcome much of the Queen’s Speech. I particularly welcome the legislation on psychoactive drugs. More and more of our children are growing up without fathers in the family; we will soon overtake the United States in the numbers of boys and girls who grow up without a father in the home. It really cannot be helpful to young people to have powerful drugs easily available to them and then to say, “Well, they’re legal”. It is hard for them to know what to do when perhaps they are not getting the guidance at home that they need.
I take this opportunity to thank the coalition for what they did for looked-after children and care leavers in the last Government. It was extraordinarily good work. We have heard today about the work around adoption. In particular I praise the encouragement of the voluntary adoption agencies, which have been so powerful. Edward Timpson MP, the Minister, introduced virtual school heads to promote the education of looked-after children and put it on a statutory basis. We had pupil premium plus. All these things are so important for these young people.
The Government introduced Staying Put, which enables young people in care to remain with their foster carers past the age of 18 to the age of 21, where they choose. Until recently, one-quarter of young people in care were leaving care at the age of 16. That went up to one-third fairly recently. The Government realised the importance of making a change to enable them to stay past the age of 18. In the first year of their attempts, only 5% were staying on and the figure was the same the next year, so clearly something had to be done and the coalition Government did it. I commend them, particularly Edward Timpson, the Minister for Children, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, who took the Bill through the Lords, and the Secretary of State at the time, Michael Gove.
I have some concerns. Last night I read with great interest the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Best. He called for the Government’s plans around housing to have a pause and for them to think deeply. I second his concern. Housing has been overlooked for so long in this country—I say this as a landlord—and the need for affordable and social housing means that the issue must be carefully thought through, so I support his call. I ask the Minister to take my request back, if he would, to the Minister responsible.
A recent case of a woman, which I have been following for the past year, brings this home to me. Her daughter was raped at the beginning of her adolescence, about a year ago. The man who raped her lives nearby in the local high street. The police have said that she and her daughter should be moved, as has their psychologist. The baby has been born and still they have not been moved. There is a severe shortage of social housing; in some boroughs it could take decades to get back to the supply that is needed. I welcome what the Government are proposing with regard to 275,000 units of new affordable housing but often, although the aspirations are large, we need to triple, quadruple or even quintuple the effort to get the affordable and social housing that we need.
In past visits with health visitors, I have been dismayed at seeing water running down the walls and mothers sharing a bed with maybe two young children in the most insanitary conditions. The landlords are clearly neglecting their care. There are no places for the children to play. They have to share facilities with several other families, sometimes arriving to find that the front door is open. There is isolation: a young mother with her first child, her husband or partner not in this country, can hardly speak the language, and the only people she knows are the local church people who visit her from time to time. The health visitor has to try to help her in the few minutes that she has while the mother is crying. I praise the Government for resurrecting and investing in health visiting—that was a triumph of the coalition Government.
I ask the Health Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Prior, if he might be prepared to consider visiting with a health visitor and myself, and seeing these conditions. A recent report on perinatal mental health emphasised that it costs the nation £8.1 billion a year not fully to address the mental health needs around perinatal care—£10,000 per birth. There is clear evidence that poor housing and homelessness impact on the mental health of mothers. I would be very grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Freud, would take that invitation back to the noble Lord, Lord Prior, or indeed any Minister. These housing issues have a strategic impact on all departments, and I would very much welcome the opportunity to meet with any Ministers and take them along with a health visitor to speak to these mothers about their experiences.
If I saw the conditions that I have seen and I were the landlord, I would want to shoot myself. If my mother were in such a situation, I would be heartbroken. I urge your Lordships to listen to the request from the noble Lord, Lord Best, for deep thought before progressing.
School Curriculum: PSHE
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Nash
The noble Baroness feels very strongly about it, but the Labour Party had 13 years to make it statutory and did not do so. We are currently considering the findings of the Education Select Committee report. We have launched a communications campaign to promote the selection of high-quality resources via our social media sites. They include PSHE Association programmes of study, “Sex and Relationships Education for the 21st Century” and various other products.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
Will the Minister praise the previous Government’s success in reducing teenage pregnancy to its current low, while recognising that compared to the continent we are still well behind? Will he keep a very open mind about this issue of a statutory requirement for PSHE? After all, the Education Select Committee in the other House recently recommended in its report that there should indeed be statutory provision in this area.
Schools: Academies
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I do not recognise the example to which the noble Lord refers. I would be grateful if he would write to me as regards his specific example. The pressure on pupil places has been considerably relieved by the amount of money that this Government have spent on them, but I would be particularly interested to hear about this case.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister concerned to hear that a head teacher said at a recent seminar that she was having to pay rent arrears and pay for food in her impoverished community to enable children to get to school, to be able to concentrate and to do well? She was embarrassed to do this but she felt that she had to.