Children: Parenting for Success in School

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to follow the thoughtful and reflective maiden speech of the right reverent Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. I serve with Bishop John on the council of St John’s College, Durham University, of which he is president, so I am particularly pleased to be able to introduce him to the House. Bishop John started his ministry as a curate in St Martin’s in the Bullring in Birmingham. He has also served in Bath and Wells, in Taunton, and for five years as Archdeacon of Canterbury. I understand that being an archdeacon is rather like being a Whip. It is a nice mix of the pastor and the guidance, so that may stand him in very good stead in this House.

I live in Durham and the first I ever heard of Bishop John was when I had just arrived and was crossing one of its many bridges—its highest one which has an enormous flight of stairs down to the river. I asked the person who was with me whether anyone had ever walked down them and she said, “The Bishop of Jarrow ran up and down them 20 times a day preparing to climb a mountain in the Himalayas”. I encourage noble Lords that if you want to speak to him about something in the corridor move quickly as you may find that he is out of your reach in no time. Bishop John, for anyone who knows him, has a lot of learning which he wears very lightly. He has wisdom, is articulate and everyone I spoke to talked of his good humour and bad jokes. Somebody offered me a photograph—I think a pantomime was mentioned—but I decided to leave it to them. They may be prepared to give it up in return for a decent dinner in the Peers’ Dining Room some time. I will pass on the name later.

As he said, he now chairs the board of education for the Church of England and will speak on education from the Bishops’ Benches, so I know that we will hear a lot more of him and I look forward very much to that. His skills, knowledge and talent will enrich the House, and he is most welcome.

Turning to today’s subject, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for introducing the debate, and I pay tribute to his long-standing commitment to children and families. I shall not rehearse the evidence, as others have done, about the importance of early childhood in brain development and in ensuring that children can attain their full potential, as well as educational attainment in later years. I am concerned about the degree to which we pay careful attention to the research because, as we heard earlier, it is complex. A large number of factors are at play. Social class interplays with parenting style, income, parental status and family structure, and it is hard to separate out causality from correlation, so we need to be careful in using evidence. However, it has been demonstrated that parenting is in itself a significant causal factor, even when one controls everything else. I am pleased that the debate has begun to separate out the idea that this is not about parents’ involvement in education, important though that is, but it is about parenting in the home and parenting itself, and how much difference that can make to children in later years.

I want to draw attention to two things. First, I shall pick up where the right reverend Prelate left off about the importance of couple-relationships. I have worked for some years with single parents, but I also know that most of them did not start out as single parents and never intended to be. Most children were born with both parents either married or resident at the same address, and then life had a way of intervening. One thing that tends to intervene is the arrival of children. There is a lot of established evidence that the arrival of children can place enormous pressure on the relationship between the parents, and conflict within the home can in turn have a significant effect on the child. A wonderful charity, One Plus One, uses a lot of research evidence to develop programmes to support families. Penny Mansfield, who runs it, said:

“This is where there’s a paradox. While a strong relationship between their mum and dad is good for babies, it seems that their arrival can disrupt or even weaken the relationship that should cradle their early life”.

So, support for couples is just as important as supporting children directly. I should be grateful if the Minister will say what steps the Government will be taking to support this important area of work.

Secondly, I welcome the growing acceptance that parenting skills can be learnt. So often, one talks to parents who assume that they should be able to do this naturally but when they get there, they struggle and are embarrassed to admit it and ask for help. It is as though asking for help is acknowledgement of failure as a parent, whereas if you were good you would somehow know how to do it. It is no accident that for a long time one charity had a strap line saying, “Because children come without instructions”. How best can the Government support people in getting that information across? One Plus One developed a brilliantly simple online tool called Baby Clues that parents can use to help them understand better how babies communicate and how they communicate with each other. Babies cannot talk, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, pointed out, but they can communicate. Being able to read the cues that babies offer can be crucial. If a father picks up his baby daughter and she pulls or turns away from him, he may interpret that as her not wanting him to hold her. In fact, she may be signalling that she is overstimulated. Knowing that one piece of information can make a difference to how he interprets the cues coming from the baby and how he in turn feels and reciprocates.

The online nature of that service is sometimes very important. One Plus One provided that along with the Couple Connection. They found that almost half a million parents used it. One quarter of them were men, but half of them said that they would not have used a face-to-face service.

Sometimes the state is not best placed to do that. I strongly urge the Government to think about how they can support the voluntary sector—organisations such as Home Start, One Plus One, Family Lives and a range of other voluntary organisations, many of which are now struggling considerably with their finances. How will the Government support voluntary organisations in supporting parents to do the things that they can do best?