Young Adults: Public Service Funding

Lord Bhatia Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome this timely debate, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, on the funding of public services for young adults. It is now apparent that funding for this work has reduced substantially over the last few years. Local authorities are responsible for the delivery of services to this sector, and the reduction in their grants from central government is the main problem. Local authorities are trying very hard to continue the services they have to deliver.

Let us not forget that we are talking about the future generations of this country: our children and grandchildren. Lack of sufficient funding is leading to all kinds of problems: increasing drug-taking, early pregnancy, delinquency at schools and many other ills. Disadvantaged, poor and single-parent families suffer disproportionately. BAME communities also have increasing pressures. Schools, both primary and secondary, are constantly short of funds. I have heard about children coming to school in the morning hungry and in some cases with dirty clothes. For the first time, the number of BAME young people in prisons has increased in comparison with white people. Facilities such as sports grounds, Sure Start centres and clubs for the young are being reduced or closed.

The root cause of all these serious problems is surely connected not only to a lack of funding but to poverty. An increasing number of poor families in some parts of the UK are dependent on food banks.

I have been involved for many years in early childhood education. I would like to share my experiences with your Lordships today. In 1967, while I was in Tanzania, I was the administrator of many schools, including a number of nursery schools. My colleagues felt that there was a great need to improve the standards of nursery school teachers. We undertook research and found that the Montessori system was one of the best at that time.

I remember meeting the grandson of Maria Montessori, Mr Mario Montessori, in Amsterdam. I was able to persuade him to send a teacher training expert to train the teachers in Tanzania. A lady, Miss Muriel Dwyer from England, was sent to Dar es Salaam for a period of one or two years. Her work was excellent and she managed to train some 40 teachers in the method of the Montessori system. Equipment for the new set-up was ordered from Holland and the Montessori system spread to the rest of the east African countries. It improved the standard of education for the young at a very early age. Science has shown us that a child leams quickly and properly between the ages of three and five.

Many years later, in 1972, when I migrated to the UK, I was invited to join the board of trustees of another NGO called the HighScope Educational Research Foundation, in Ypsilanti in Michigan. I was able to witness the enormous change that made in the lives of the children. HighScope had carried out a 25-year longitudinal study of two groups; namely, those who were trained under the HighScope system and those who were not.

The study proved that for every $1 that the Government of the USA spent on early childhood education, they saved $7 over the coming years. Delinquency and early pregnancy rates were reduced and children were more likely to be highly educated and with higher earning power, and they were better able to ensure a good education from early childhood to university for their own children. I was able to persuade the director of HighScope to establish a similar system in the UK. We must have intervention in our education system for resources for early childhood education in the UK. It will save money in the long term.

My own instinct is that many successful people over the years have sent their children to private nursery schools to prepare them for their education in the long term. But those who are poor are unable to send their young children to a private nursery school.

Science tells us that a child between the ages of three and five learns quickly when given the opportunity to learn from good teachers. The state does not provide early childhood education for all young children as a statutory right. The time has come for the state to introduce early childhood education for all as a policy. Will the Minister tell the House what level of funding is being provided for early childhood education and whether all children aged three to five receive the benefit of early childhood education as a right? If that is not the case, will the Minister please bring in legislation that makes early childhood education compulsory for all?