Early Years Intervention

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)]

My Lords, I would suggest “child carer” as an alternative to “childminder”, but that is for further discussion. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for securing the debate on this very important topic. I also pay tribute to her for what she does in this area, which is much appreciated, in this House and far beyond.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I have the privilege of chairing the Select Committee which will report on this—we hope in good time in February—but my remarks today will not specifically be related to that report. There is another theme, or hobby-horse, that I want to ride, which is what I shall do today. To give your Lordships forewarning, that is the hobby-horse of language. The focus of what I have to say will inevitably be on early years intervention related to education in some way, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, made plain, there are many elements to early intervention which have to come together, such as health, sociability and so on. I shall focus on the provision for issues related to language.

There has been good progress in school education over the last two years in relation to STEM subjects, which has been very welcome and much appreciated across the community. There is a growing awareness of the importance of language in the sense of learning a second language, be it Mandarin or Spanish. That is progress and should be encouraged. However, my focus today is to add language in the broader sense to that list where there has been progress. If you talk to primary school teachers, particularly those in reception classes and certainly those who are now dealing with three and four year-olds, you will discover very quickly that they have a distinctive set of issues and problems to face. Their work is very rewarding, and some of them are exceptionally good and patient at it—I stress the word patient—but they face difficulties which are not so apparent later in the system. I do not just mean toilet training or teaching children to tie their shoelaces or button their coats, although all that is part of early intervention at an educational level.

At the core of all this, I argue, is language. That includes, but should not simply focus on, second-language families. That is part of it and is an additional issue today, but this is about the question of learning the basic skills of communication, being sociable, asking and answering questions, making interventions or comments and securing the attention of the teacher when one is in difficulty. It has to do with commenting on and responding to what goes on in the classroom and what other pupils say. It has to do, basically, with getting away from the law of the jungle, which by and large most two year-olds inhabit, and if you have not got out of it by the time you start formal education you are in difficulty, as are your teachers and fellow pupils. It has to do with being part of a community or a tribe, not living just on the basis of what you can grab.

This is a very subtle issue. For many children, this is not a problem. For many children, this is what they learn in the rough and tumble of the family, from having siblings and from playing with the kids next door. For many, it develops in due course through education. But I ask the Minister whether he perhaps might return to the department and ask questions about how we are focusing on the acquisition of the ability to communicate—language in that broad sense.

The ways in which I think progress should be made were spelt out more than 250 years ago by David Hume and Adam Smith. Your Lordships might find this a bit esoteric and think, “Well, he did teach philosophy and we have to restrain him”, but Hume saw this process of socialisation as fundamental. It is not an add-on for as many human beings as you can manage; it is part of being a human being—being able to socialise, communicate, share and understand what others say but also what they desire and what they can reasonably expect. I will quote from one of the recent commentators on Hume’s close friend, Adam Smith. Nicholas Phillipson writes that Smith,

“held that all our sentiments”—

that is, emotions and beliefs—

“– moral, political, intellectual and aesthetic – were acquired, developed and refined in the process of learning to communicate with others”.

You do not learn language and then learn how to feel; the two go hand in hand, and unless adequate attention is paid to the development of communication, these things will also fail.

This may seem very fluffy. It is not. It is fundamental. Look further up the system. In terms of social mobility, if you measure the number of people in prison who have deficient literary and mathematical skills, that is what you will find. It starts at this age.