Children: Welfare, Life Chances and Social Mobility

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, we are all indebted to my noble friend Lady Massey, so long a champion of the disadvantaged, for securing this debate, which has produced some very high-quality contributions.

Social mobility is a term thrown around rather too loosely these days for my liking. We all imagine we know what it means—basically, each individual being afforded the opportunity to maximise their abilities and to move up the social ladder, achieving a standard of living and perhaps a status above that of their parents. That at least has been the theory, but now millennials are set to become the first generation since records began to have a standard of living likely to be lower than that of their parents, with house ownership often not a realistic aim. I am clear that the most crucial stage of life is early years. It is not so much concerned with social mobility, but more about social justice, a term I prefer when we talk about social mobility in its wider sense.

Of course, it is possible to effect that wider social mobility at later stages of life by improving the quality of primary education, through the UTCs—again nobly espoused by the noble Lord, Lord Baker—increasing the availability of high-quality apprenticeships for key jobs, or increasing equality of access to higher education. But, for any Government, prioritising investment in early years early intervention should be an obvious step, not purely for the benefit it brings to disadvantaged children and their families. Studies have shown that early preventive interventions prove much more cost effective than later reactive ones.

The noble Lord, Lord Russell, rightly commended the work of the Sutton Trust, which produced an excellent mobility manifesto in 2017. It has brought to noble Lords’ attention that increasing the UK’s social mobility to the average level across western Europe would increase annual GDP by 2%. That, at 2016 values, equated to around £39 billion—by coincidence, almost exactly the same as that year’s entire education budget. Even increasing social mobility to the level of the next best-performing country, the Netherlands, could produce an increase of around 1.3% in GDP. I believe that this is what my noble friend Lady Massey had in mind when she talked about the economics of early intervention. These are huge sums that could make a huge difference to the resources available to Government to improve the lives of not just the most disadvantaged.

A year ago, the Department for Education published its plan to improve social mobility through education, Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, referred. It contained a pledge to form a partnership with Public Health England to enable health visitors and other early years practitioners to identify and support children’s early speech, language and communication needs. The plan stated:

“We will develop training and guidance to support these professionals in targeted areas. And we will also develop an effective early language assessment tool for health visitors and early years practitioners to help to check children’s early language development”.


That is a worthy aim, but where does that pledge stand today in terms of its rollout?

Many noble Lords have highlighted that how children develop at an early stage in their lives is crucial for their future health and well-being. The parent-child relationship is vital to children’s development, learning, achievement and wider well-being. Poor parenting is a risk factor for mental health problems, while good parent-child relationships reduce the risk of children adopting unhealthy lifestyle choices. It is impossible to overemphasise the impact on the youngest children that high-quality early intervention can have on later life chances. A child’s development score at just 22 months can serve as an accurate predictor of educational outcomes at 26 years.

Of course, the main aim of the Sure Start programme, introduced by the Labour Government 20 years ago, was to help parents to provide children with the best possible start in life through improvement of childcare, early education, health and family support, with an emphasis on outreach and community development. When Labour left office there were over 3,600 children’s centres, reaching 2.8 million children and their families. It was a remarkable achievement for families, providing parenting support, childcare for children and job training for adults, as well as healthcare and advice.

Under the coalition and Conservative Governments, 1,200 Sure Start centres have been lost. The charity Action for Children found that budgets for children’s centres across England have dropped by £450 million in the last five years—a decrease of 42%. The Sure Start programme was hugely successful in integrating early learning and childcare for a minimum of 10 hours a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year. It is deeply depressing to see it withering on the vine under this Government—a symbol of their failure to support disadvantaged families. As my noble friend Lady Massey said, the Government’s alternative of family hubs is a much less-focused offering, often outwith the community in which a family is based, which naturally restricts the extent to which they are used. The policy driving these hubs is cost saving—the austerity to which my noble friend Lady Young referred—not early intervention.

Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential contained five core ambitions, the first of which was addressing early years and closing the “word gap”. That is a crucial task, because children who are behind in language development at five or six are less likely to reach the expected standard in English at 11. They are much less likely to achieve the expected level in maths. Children who arrive at school in a strong position in terms of their development will find it easier to learn, while those already behind often find it impossible to narrow, far less close, the gap.

In that document, a commitment to a £100 million investment to help close the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers was set out. That is a very modest sum. In fact, it is merely a quarter of the amount the Chancellor announced, some might think rather patronisingly, three days ago for “little extras” in schools. Does the Minister seriously believe that £100 million will have any appreciable effect on closing that gap? If so, it would be enlightening to hear what little extras he envisages that money might fund.

Getting the right workforce is key to the delivery of childcare in early years, to provide the interventions that can make a real difference to a child’s development. Earlier this year, a report by the Education Policy Institute found that there are risks to the quality, capacity and sustainability of providers in that sector, where pay is typically lower than in other sectors of the economy and much lower in PVIs—the private sector—than in school-based settings. The workforce still suffers from low status in society and in the education system itself, making it difficult to attract qualified staff.

We certainly endorse the Sutton Trust’s recommendation that the Government should move towards early years teachers having qualified teacher status, with the increase in pay, conditions and status that would entail. That point was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. Labour believes that the workforce will need to be expanded if we are to move to a system that offers not just childcare but high-quality early years education, a workforce with high qualification levels, and graduate leadership in settings. Our aim is to bring about a transformation in the early years workforce, with all staff qualified to level 3 or working towards that level of qualification, and a strengthened role for level 4 and level 5 qualifications to create clear progression routes for staff. The target is a ratio of one graduate per 10 children for two year-olds and under, and one graduate per 17 three and four year-olds. A Labour Government will introduce a national education service, with one of its key developments a focus on early intervention, with a funding rate allowing childcare providers to invest gradually in upskilling their workforce as more staff gain the necessary qualifications.

As my noble friend Lady McIntosh said, warm words and good intentions are not enough from the Government. As far as Labour is concerned, it is a question of political ambition. We state clearly that we have that ambition; if the Government have it, they do a passable job of keeping it hidden. The Minister’s Government like to talk the talk on social mobility and early intervention. It is long past time they began to walk the walk. I am happy to echo the words of my noble friend Lord Pendry, who said that if they cannot demonstrate that they are a caring Government, they should make way for one who will.