Education: Early Years

Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for bringing forward this debate. In doing so, I declare an interest as the vice-president of the Foundation Years Trust, which is involved in this area. Unlike other speakers, this is not my special area. However, it is something that I am very interested in and I feel very humble in taking part in this debate. I feel strongly about this issue, but I speak as an amateur—as a parent and a grandparent. Any parent thinking about this subject realises the challenge involved and the fact that we all fail. Incidentally, the name on the annunciator is wrong; I am Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, not of Burry Port, as it happens.

Every child in this country deserves the best possible start in life. The early years, which I take to be from pregnancy to the first day of school, have a powerful influence on the rest of a person’s life. The conclusion of the social mobility report, which has just been published, is that learning and development at this stage matters more than any other area. Children from backgrounds with reduced life chances because of their families being more at risk, living in disadvantaged areas or just being poorer have, compared with their peers, worse development outcomes in the early years in terms of vocabulary, reading, numbers, creativity, speech, confidence-building and so on.

The attainment gap between children from low-income families and their peers is slowly closing, but the calculation in the report I have just mentioned is that it will take 40 years at the present rate to close that gap. That means, given the rate at which technology is changing at present, inequality in our society is bound to increase. The good news is that support and good provision really work. Again I quote from the social mobility report:

“Disadvantaged children in the best areas are twice as likely to reach a good level of development at age five, compared with similar children in the worst areas … Poor performance is not concentrated in any type of area, and similar places perform very differently—likely reflecting the role of local authorities and the importance of parenting”.


On the question of parenting, the role of the parents is one of the most important in addressing the early years but also one of the most neglected. All parents want the best for their children. They know more about their children than anyone else. They have responsibility for their children’s development and their role is vital in the early years. Research suggests that of the many drivers of early years development, three which are important are the mental health of the mother, the attachment between parents and their children and the home learning environment, including playing and having fun. A nursery can help—I am all in favour of nursery education; all my children went to nurseries—but it cannot do what a parent can. A nursery will never find the time to do it.

Parents are a child’s first teachers. In that respect, a study published last year from Cambridge University found that the children who had most fun at home were the ones who talked about it and ended up with good development results. It also found that what parents do is far more significant than who parents are. The fact that they are parents—they may not have degrees or may have left school early—and that they have such an interest in their children is extremely important.

The second thing that hits me about this subject is that all parents need support. Some are very fortunate because they have grandparents, step-parents and relatives. Loving, feeding and protecting a child comes naturally to most people but, by contrast, parenting does not come naturally to some and is learned, perhaps, from the example of their parents, from reading or from watching a video or television. There is a need to support parents universally and right throughout the class system. It is potentially difficult to say that parents need support because it may easily appear that you are preaching at people. It may be professionals teaching amateurs, and the amateurs feeling one down to the professionals. There may be a feeling among those who know they are not succeeding that they are stigmatised because of their background. Support should be a natural conversation. It should build on the strengths of the parents, not their failures, and the most effective support comes from their peer group.

The week before last I visited in Birkenhead three projects with early year carers in a charity founded by Frank Field, the Member of Parliament for Birkenhead. All three were different learning environments, but the way the staff related to the parents and their children because the staff were peers with them was remarkable. They were not coming in as professionals, possibly from a different class—probably from a different class—and looking down on them. What surprised me most of all in this group of carers supporting parents was individual mothers saying to me, “This is the only place we ever go to out of the house except for shopping”.

Parenting is extremely important. I am not decrying the need for money and resources, and I go along with what is being said, but this whole area is something we neglect at our peril.