Nursery Schools

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Pat Glass]

I absolutely agree, and I will come to that. I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention.

What is happening to nursery schools now and why should that matter? As I said at the beginning, all Governments—this Government, the previous Government and no doubt the next Government—periodically state that they want good schools for every child, the best possible start in education, particularly for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, and good outcomes. Yet successive Governments have failed to recognise that that is exactly what they have in nursery schools.

Every Government say that they are not in the business of closing good schools, and yet that is precisely what is being allowed to happen through the neglect of this sector. Historically and currently, nursery schools have provided the best educational outcomes of any model in the early-years sector for all children, particularly those who would be described as vulnerable or disadvantaged. That is why what happens to nursery schools now matters and why it is important that we intervene.

Everyone is talking about school readiness as the silver bullet to improved early-years outcomes, but Ofsted’s evidence to the Education Committee’s recent inquiry into early years and child care showed us very clearly that when it comes to school readiness, nursery schools are the most successful delivery model. They are also the most successful model when it comes to integrating pupils with SEN, including the most severe SEN, into mainstream schools, and I will talk a little more about that later. Furthermore, they are the most successful model for narrowing the gap in the early years, for helping to get vulnerable children and families into a more secure place and for long-term outcomes for their small pupils.

I do not just rely on Education Committee evidence. Ofsted evidence clearly demonstrates that 90% of nursery schools are judged to be good or outstanding. That goes way, way beyond any other form of early-years provision in the system—here or in any other developed country, so far as I am aware.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is explaining that stand-alone nurseries are the best form, and all the evidence points to that. Is the key factor in that the quality of the staff? By improving quality and standards and providing qualified teacher status for all lead staff in all nursery settings, can we have the same standards in other nursery settings or does she think we should be moving towards having a greater number of stand-alone nurseries?

[Pat Glass]

I will discuss leadership in nursery schools shortly, but the Education Committee model suggests that nursery schools should stand at the centre of the hub-and-spokes model, providing good practice out to nursery classes across their region.

I expect the Minister to tell me in his response that primary schools are judged as a whole, that there is no separate Ofsted inspection of nursery classes in a primary school and that nursery classes cannot therefore be judged against nursery schools, but I remind him of what I just said: 90% of nursery schools are judged to be good or outstanding, with the same results in disadvantaged and affluent areas. That goes beyond what we can say about the primary sector across the country.

Of nurseries inspected between 1 January and 31 March 2014, 55% were judged outstanding in comparison with 8% of primaries and 14% of secondaries. The disparity is huge. I also remind the Minister that I do not have to rely solely on statistics to support my case; I can draw on 25 years of direct experience in education, and I know what I have seen over and over again in nursery schools.

Of nursery schools judged by Ofsted up to 30 June 2013, 58% were rated outstanding in leadership and management, which compares with 20% in primary, 29% in secondary and 39% in SEN. Nursery school provision is extremely well managed and is recognised as such by Ofsted. I ask the Minister to consider that 62% of nursery schools are in 30% of the most disadvantaged areas in England, so we are getting outstanding results and leadership despite the fact that the schools largely operate in such areas. There are a higher proportion of nursery schools in the north-east—it appears that there may be slightly fewer in future—than we would see nationally, and those nursery schools are concentrated in the most disadvantaged areas of the most disadvantaged region. Yet we are seeing incredibly good results.

Nursery schools admit children from many different backgrounds and give priority to children in social and medical needs categories. That is confirmed by the Department for Education’s survey statistics: at least 11% of children at 47% of nursery schools have special educational needs. No other category of school, except special schools, comes anywhere close to that level of admission and yet no other category of early-years provision comes close to the outcomes that nursery schools achieve with SEN pupils. Ofsted has highlighted that nursery schools have particular expertise in the teaching of young bilingual children. Children from BME backgrounds make up 33% of nursery school pupils and yet have outcomes that outperform BME children of a similar age attending nursery classes, even in the most affluent areas. The statistics really highlight the quality of the provision that nursery schools provide.

A significantly higher proportion of maintained nursery schools offer wrap-around day care provision than any other form of maintained early-years provision—just the kind of provision that the Government say that they want to support working parents and parents training for or looking for work. Nursery schools often provide it much cheaper than can be achieved in the non-maintained sector, which is one of the reasons why parents like them so much. Why on earth have successive Governments not recognised the value of nursery schools and stopped the threats to their future? It is beyond me. The Government say that they want good schools and these are the best in their sector by far.

In her last appearance before the Education Committee on 18 June, the previous Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), appeared to give just two reasons why she was not wholly supportive of nursery schools. She told me that

“49 local authorities do not have any maintained nursery schools at all”

but I reminded her that that meant that 153 or 154 local authorities have at least one and that many have more. It seemed sensible to the Select Committee that local authorities and the Government should use these highly-specialised beacons of excellence to build good practice across authorities. The Minister also told me that nursery schools are expensive, and they are—this is where things do become slightly political, because it is about priorities—because they employ a head teacher, a higher proportion of graduate staff and qualified teachers. That, too, is why they are so successful.

Yes, these tried and tested, highly successful schools may be slightly more expensive than nursery classes, but they are nowhere near as expensive as the experimental, untried and untested free schools programme that the Government are pushing so hard and that has a budget overspend, at the last count, of well over a billion pounds. It is not only me who recognises the value of nursery schools and is concerned about Government policy. The British Association for Early Childhood Education described them as “beacons of high quality” and as playing

“a leading role in developing the early years work force”.

The Ofsted chief inspector’s first annual report in 2014 on early years noted:

“The only early education provision that is at least as strong, or even stronger in deprived areas compared with wealthier areas is nursery schools”.

If we are concerned about narrowing the gap and, like the Education Committee, about outcomes for white working-class children, nursery schools in deprived areas seem to be the most successful model.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and to follow the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), who is a distinguished member of the Education Committee. As she showed in her powerful and passionately argued speech, she is deeply informed about education and the welfare of young people.

The future of nursery education is an important issue, and one at which the Education Committee looked closely during our inquiry into Sure Start children’s centres last year. As I touched on, we visited the Pen Green centre for children and families in Corby, run, as the hon. Lady said, by the brilliant Margy Whalley. We also visited the Netherlands and Denmark in February 2013 to compare provision for early years in those countries with that in England.

The clear message we heard is that education is too important to wait until children reach school age. In particular, we concluded that if we are serious about closing the attainment gap for disadvantaged children, it is imperative that Ministers should set out coherent, long-term thinking on early years and children’s centres. It is worth asking the Minister—a central message from many of us today—not to let coherence or a desire for uniformity and equity to allow or excuse the destruction of rare, peculiar centres of excellence that do a brilliant job and that are found to be doing so by everyone who looks at them.

The Government have a vision of doing more through schools, utilising the resource, and we heard during our hearings on the children’s centres that perhaps the previous Government made an error in building entirely new things, rather than better utilising the infrastructure that they had. None the less, it is possible to allow infant schools to do more for younger children and to provide good or, I hope, excellent provision in an area, without destroying those often long-standing nursery schools that are brilliant today. That is the appeal to the Minister: not to get so caught up in coherence and uniformity that we end up, inadvertently, destroying jewels that might not be everywhere, but certainly are present and deserve to be preserved. At that point, I could sit down—

[Bill Esterson]

rose—

[Mr Stuart]

And I will, to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Bill Esterson]

I am giving a chance for a pause for thought. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Denmark and Holland—I went on those visits—and much higher spending is clearly committed to early years in those countries, as part of the contribution of having such well-trained and excellent staff. Does he agree that that is the route we need to go down in this country? To do so, to make the case and to be accepted by Governments of whichever colour, do we need to demonstrate that that would be not only a cost, but a long-term saving?

[Mr Stuart]

I will come on to funding and raising the status of early years. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will come back to that, but he is right.

Nursery schools do a particularly good job of supporting children from poorer homes—that is worth saying. The Government’s educational reforms have two main aims: to raise standards for all and to close the gap in attainment. If we have things that do a peculiarly good job in looking after the interests of disadvantaged children, we should be extremely wary before risking, inadvertently or otherwise, their destruction.

Ofsted’s early-years report, published in March, stated that only just over a third of children from low-income backgrounds reach a good level of development in the early years. In some local areas, that figure is less than a fifth. Crucially, some types of provision, such as childminders, are considerably less likely to be good or outstanding in deprived areas. By contrast, Ofsted found that children from low-income families make the strongest progress when supported, as has been said, by highly qualified staff, in particular with graduate-level qualifications. Where are such staff most frequently found? In nursery schools.

To quote Ofsted’s report:

“Nursery schools have high levels of graduate level staff and perform as strongly in deprived areas as in more affluent ones.”

Of how many types of educational provision can we say that they perform as strongly in deprived areas as in more affluent ones? I cannot think of one, actually, but we have nursery schools managing to achieve that, to achieve what the previous Government and this Government want to do for social justice, delivered through education. I again make the case: let us ensure that we do not inadvertently lose them.

Despite that, the Government’s policy seems a little confused. The Education Committee expressed regret that the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Childcare and Education, now the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, showed little enthusiasm for maintained nurseries, many of which have closed over the past decade. Likewise, my Committee expressed concerns about how the Government’s ambition to create an integrated nought-to-18 teaching work force will be delivered successfully. It is important to focus on that, although it sounds like a soundbite. An integrated nought-to-18 teaching work force is the Government’s stated policy. The then Minister told us that she wanted

“to see a much greater consistency across the teaching workforce and much less of a silo between the early years and primary school”.

Who can say, in any party, that she was not right to do so?

With that in mind, Ministers have set out their plans to reduce the number of different early-years qualifications, to improve the quality of training and to raise the status and quality of the work force by replacing the current early-years professional status qualification with new grades of early-years teacher and early-years educator. Early-years teachers will be graduates and will need to meet the same entry requirements and pass the same skills tests as trainee school teachers. So far, so good: there is an inspiring vision of integrated nought-to-18 teaching work force, with an upgrading and re-engineering of the training, requirements and qualifications of those working in that sector. They will not, however, be accorded qualified teacher status in the same way as primary and secondary teachers. That is not to visit the obsession of the shadow Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), with the tiny number of people who are not qualified teachers, which seems to be a sideline in the overall education debate; it is to go to the heart of the status of those people in relation to those who work in primary schools.

My Committee concluded that the Government are right to want to increase the qualifications of the early-years work force. As Susan Gregory of Ofsted reminded us, the historic situation is that

“you need a higher qualification at entry level to work with animals than you do to work with young children.”

[Mr Stuart]

I agree with the hon. Lady that that is an anomaly in the Government’s vision for the future. There is an inconsistency. However, I would gently chide her by saying that the money has to be found from somewhere, because there are real cost implications. If we are going to will the ends, we have to will the means, and that will mean taking tough decisions—unless people think that there is an infinite money tree somewhere. We will have to take the existing budget and orient it more to the early years. It could be said that this Government have done that in a number of ways, from abolition of the education maintenance allowance—that act was enormously unpopular—at one end to the introduction of the offer for two-year-olds and its extension from 20% to 40% at the other.

The truth is that considerably more money is being spent on early-years provision, despite overall constraints on spending. I would imagine there will a combination of some re-engineering—a lot of which will be unpopular, as anyone we take the money away from will hate us for it—and potentially finding additional funds. However, given that this supposedly austere Government are still spending over £100 billion a year more than they have coming in, I am not clear that additional funding outside the budget could easily be found.

[Bill Esterson]

I probably did not make myself clear enough in my earlier intervention. The point I was driving at is how we make the case for using money further upstream. It is about the costs of social failure that are avoided by getting early-years provision right. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the case can be made for saving money later in life by getting early-years provision to the highest standard possible, that will deal with the point he is making?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

I suggest that the hon. Gentleman write to me, and I will then respond accordingly and get my officials to look into the matter.

I am conscious of the time, so I shall race quickly through my remaining points. Closures have been mentioned several times. The small number of closures that have happened are not necessarily a sign of a long-term trend or a decline in the number of maintained nursery schools. Some have merged or federated with neighbouring schools, so some of the reduction in the overall numbers from 468 10 years ago to 414 now is down to sensible restructuring based on assessment of local need. Despite that reduction, I can reassure all hon. Members that the number of pupils attending maintained nursery schools has increased over the same period, from 39,000 in 2004 to 40,000 in 2014. The hon. Member for North West Durham would describe that as static, but it is a modest increase, and it does not seem at all like a decline to me.

There is as much protection for maintained nursery schools as there is for any other school, if not more. Local authorities cannot close maintained nursery schools without following due process. In fact the current school organisation guidance, published in January 2014, states clearly that

“there is a presumption against the closure of nursery schools”.

That does not mean that a nursery school will never close. Indeed, it cannot be right to guarantee that maintained nursery schools will stay open at all costs, without ensuring that they provide sustainable, high-quality provision that meets the needs of local parents and children. Nevertheless, the case for closure should be strong. The guidance requires that

“any proposal to close should demonstrate that: plans to develop alternative provision clearly demonstrate that it will be at least as equal in terms of the quantity as the provision provided by the nursery school with no loss of expertise and specialism; and replacement provision is more accessible and more convenient for local parents”.

[Bill Esterson]

The Minister’s predecessor made it clear that her preferred route was for nurseries to open in schools, at the expense of stand-alone nursery schools in the maintained sector. Will the Minister clarify his position?