Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Bousted

Monday 7th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

We had a lengthy debate about this in Committee on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. I certainly agree with the noble Lord that supporting parents to read with their children, for example, rather than simply giving them screens to look at—that is part of this initiative—and finding ways to help parents to understand the impacts of screen time, which we talked about in considering those amendments, are important. In that debate, I undertook to ensure that we continued the work we are doing on gathering evidence around the impact of screen time and making sure that we are providing strong and positive alternatives for children and support for parents.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for an excellent Statement, which I really welcome. Best start, it seems to me, builds on the legacy of Sure Start. I noticed the telling research from EPI in 2016, which found that 40% of the attainment gap by 16 is created before children start school. I am glad that she did not resile from the words of the Statement: the demise of Sure Start was devastating, particularly for the poorest children. That degree of disadvantage makes it much more difficult for teachers. Sure Start was a universal entitlement. Does the Minister envisage that best start will start with the most disadvantaged but develop into a more universal entitlement for all parents and their children?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very important point. We have seen the evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and others about the long-term impact of Sure Start, which is what makes the gap in the past 14 years so distressing. That is why this Government are committed to building on Sure Start, developing the best start family hubs and providing over the course of this spending review period a trebling of the investment in them, and making sure that every local authority—not just the 88 that currently receive funding—has access to funding to develop that sort of provision.

Pupil Absenteeism

Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Bousted

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, the Institute for Government recently published a report, Reducing School Absence, which concludes that under the last Labour Government, absence rates for secondary school pupils fell by 42%. Its key recommendation is that the most effective way to tackle absence is to bring all parties together—adolescent health, special needs, school disengagement and family support. That is what the last Labour Government did under the Every Child Matters agenda. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that this is the best way to reduce absenteeism, which under the previous Government ballooned to 1.5 million pupils being persistently absent in 2023-24?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that we have seen big increases in the number of children who are missing school, both those who are persistently absent and those who are severely absent, as I said in my earlier response. My noble friend is right that, particularly to deal with children who are severely absent, you need to bring together a range of properly resourced agencies to work on the individual plans I talked about in the previous answer. That is one of the reasons why we are investing £500 million in children’s social care and in prevention, so that we can ensure that severely absent children are routinely assessed for family help, bringing together those services in the way she outlined.