Nursery Schools

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Stuart]

Well, it will, but not for a Treasury Minister. As the hon. Gentleman will know, every Department comes along and says, “If only you gave me more money, you’d save so much later. No one would go to prison and you’d be saving money all round.” Understandably, the Treasury is a little sceptical. On that basis, we would for ever simply throw more money at the education system, because if we only provided the right start in life, we would have greater economic success and more highly skilled industries, and would live in nirvana.

The greatest thing I can say about the previous Government’s education policy is about how much they spent on education. The fruits are slow to emerge, but that is not to say that there are not benefits to be had if those resources are used well. Given the constraints we are under and the overspending by Government today, let alone five years ago, we are going to have to find the money for early-years provision from re-engineering our education budget. That could be said to be the more mature debate. It is always easy to say, “Oh no, we should just find the additional money.” The truth is that that will be very difficult.

On status, the Committee said in our report that the message that early-years teachers will not be equal to teachers in schools is “strong and unjust”. On pay, we said that it is not enough simply to set out a vision of equality with other teachers: if we accept the premise that the early years are a peculiarly critical time in a child’s development, Ministers need to set out—and this is the key point, whether it is done through finding more money or re-engineering the budget—

“a course of action…to a position where equal pay attracts equal quality”

of applicants. That is the key. We cannot have Government setting out an aim of an integrated work force, with that equality as a premise, and then failing to put in place any of the building blocks to take us there. At the moment, it seems to be all aspiration, with very little evidence of a closing of the gap. Even if it were to take 10 or 15 years, we would at least have a vision of how we were going to create a genuinely integrated work force, in which early-years teachers were given pay and status equal to that of teachers elsewhere in the education system.

At present, figures from the Pre-school Learning Alliance reveal that pre-school staff earn, on average, £17,000 a year, which is only around half as much as primary school staff, who earn an average of £33,000. The former Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk, confirmed that England has the biggest gap in salaries between those who work in nurseries and those who work in schools of any country in western Europe. As all members of the Select Committee here today, and others, know, the key issue in raising educational quality for anyone, at any time, is the quality of the teacher. That is what counts. If we pay people half the rate of what is paid to those working with children who are just a little bit older, is it any wonder that we struggle to bring in the innovators, pioneers and greatest communicators? We need to set out a plan—it would be good to hear the Opposition’s funded plan from their Front-Bench spokesperson—to bring about that outcome.

It can be no surprise that there is a continuing disparity of status between early-years and school-based teaching. The impact of that lower status is felt beyond the issue of attracting high-quality recruits into the nursery sector. Naomi Eisenstadt told us that the perceived low status of children’s centre staff can create a barrier to successful multi-agency working, adding that

“if you do not have status within the community and you ring the health agency, they are not going to ring you back.”

Delivering equal pay for early-years teachers would of course require the extra resources I have talked about.

[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Gentleman will have heard me refer earlier to the nurseries at the North Tees and Hartlepool hospitals, which are scheduled to close. He has talked about staff. The Ofsted report on the nurseries says:

“All staff attend a wide range of training to develop their knowledge and skills”,

so there is ongoing professional development in that hospital nursery setting. Does he agree that that model should be rolled out elsewhere? Does he also share my opinion that those making the decisions on those nurseries might have benefited from the scrutiny and clinical examination that he would have given them had their decision come before our Committee?

[Mr Stuart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I do not know all the details surrounding that case, so I will not rush to judgment on those who made that decision, but he makes powerful points, which I hope will be heard clearly by those responsible for those centres, as they consider what they will do about them in the future.

The issue is that we either find additional money or rebalance the existing budget. Speaking for myself, that gives us yet another demonstration of why it was a poor use of over £1 billion of taxpayers’ money to offer free school meals to the children of middle-class parents who can already afford them, rather than deploying that funding in the classroom, where it could have been used to attract and retain the quality teachers who we know make such a difference to children’s attainment.

In conclusion, the Government have more to do, to ensure the survival of maintained nursery schools, to encourage the development of the network of nursery schools with children’s centres around the country and to set out a strategy to realise their proper aspiration for an integrated nought-to-18 work force.

16-plus Care Options

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Graham Stuart

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, despite his attempt to narrow me to one recommendation. I would hate to tempt the Minister into saying that we can have only one recommendation, because the report contains a coherent set of proposals that hang together, and I know that they fit with the direction of travel on which the Government have already set out. None the less, one should always answer the question, so I would ask the Minister to look at the “other arrangements” and ensure that they are regulated. It is not just those who have left care who are in the “other arrangements”, and the number of 16 and 17-year-olds leaving care has been massively reduced under this Government, on which they should be congratulated. Often young people are still in care when they are in the “other arrangements”, so we are still in loco parentis. The fact is that that accommodation is not inspected or regulated, and we do not think that sampling is enough. That is the one thing that, above all else, must change.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The Chair might have anticipated my question by referring to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The Chair will recollect the series of visits we undertook and the discussions we had with young people, as he mentioned earlier. They felt abandoned in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. One young woman told us about people braying at her door late at night, and another told us that she had been left for weeks on end in unsuitable accommodation. He and I agree, as does the Committee, that bed-and-breakfast accommodation should be banned as soon as practically possible for young people, but does he also agree that local and national Government need to have, and need to provide the necessary resources to have, proper emergency provisions, perhaps by sharing between authorities, and end the practice that so often puts young people at risk?

[Mr Stuart]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his contribution and the passion he brings to these issues and, quite rightly, to challenging the Government and asking for more on behalf of those young people. He is absolutely right. I know that the personal testimony we heard seared his conscience, as it did mine. We heard those young people consistently and articulately describe the awful situations they found themselves in, such as bed-and-breakfast accommodation with troubled adults around them, in one case knocking on the door of a young woman who was barely 16 years old, inviting her to come to their room. She was traumatised and frightened and, supposedly, in the care of the state.