Social Mobility

Baroness Prashar Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, my remarks will be confined to early years. I want to draw attention particularly to the literacy skills gap, which starts at the age of five, and its long-term implications for and impact on social mobility.

Children from the most disadvantaged communities start primary school up to 19 months behind their better-off peers. This is a deficit from which most never recover and one that is predicted to take 40 years to close at the current rate of change. The number of children living in poverty is expected to reach 5.2 million by 2022, so this is a problem we cannot afford to ignore.

Last year, 180,000 five year-olds in England started school without literacy, language and communication skills, and disadvantage continues to hold them back throughout their life. For example, children with poor vocabulary at the age of five are more than twice as likely to be unemployed when they are 34. For language development at an early age, parental influence, home environment and skills for the early years workforce are significant factors, as has already been mentioned. Both the reports we are debating recommend extension of the eligibility for the 30 hours offer by lowering the lower-income limit to earnings equivalent to eight hours per week, taking steps to promote the revised offer and targeting low-income families.

The Sutton Trust report and the State of the Nation report also recommend tackling the decline in children’s centres, speeding up the review of children’s centres and ensuring that investment in the home learning environment reaches disadvantaged and vulnerable families. Furthermore, excellent programmes for training early years staff and volunteers to work with families are run by the National Literacy Trust and other voluntary organisations. They need support and scaling-up. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister what progress is being made in response to these recommendations and how effectively the Government are working with local authorities and voluntary organisations to respond to these urgent issues.