Child Care

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) for her detailed analysis of child care in her constituency. I congratulate her on the work she has been doing with parents and nurseries to get under the skin of the issues they face. She has identified a number of issues that the Government are working on to make life easier for both high-quality child care providers and parents.

My hon. Friend was absolutely right to open her speech by talking about the dual significance of child care and early education. First, it is important to ensure that children get the best start in life. We know that, at the moment, children from low-income backgrounds begin school 18 months behind in terms of language and vocabulary skills. It is hard for those young children to catch up during their school career. High-quality early education can make a difference. All the evidence suggests that high-quality teachers who help children to develop things such as sentence structure and vocabulary through songs, stories and nursery rhymes and by using other techniques such as counting bricks can make a difference. They will help to close our educational gap.

Secondly, child care is important to support working parents. In the majority of families across OECD countries, both parents go out to work; it has become an economic necessity. However, we do not have to compromise on quality to get affordability; we can achieve both. That is what the Government are working on.

My hon. Friend asked a question about the programme for two-year-olds in Norfolk. The issue might be about the eligibility that is coming onstream this September: 3,600 children in Norfolk will be eligible for the places available currently. The proportion of children in Norfolk taking up places is a high 92%. I understand that the Family and Childcare Trust survey was conducted last autumn, so those data are less recent. I will write to my hon. Friend to confirm the data and their source so that she can have all the information. It would be useful to obtain Norwich city’s data if we can, but as she knows, they are held by Norfolk county council. We will see what we can do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) made some interesting points about affordability. I, too, struggled, with the affordability of child care, as I know many parents do. We have seen rising costs. Under the previous Government, child care costs rose by 50% as they piled more and more red tape on providers, but it was all about ticking boxes and not necessarily about getting better outcomes for children.

I am pleased to say that, after 12 years of rising prices, we saw a drop in prices, after taking inflation into account, for the first time in England this year. That is in contrast to Scotland and Wales. If we look at a nursery place for over-twos, English prices did not go up—in fact, they fell in real terms—whereas prices went up by 8% in Scotland and by 13% in Wales. The Government have taken action to make it easier for high-quality providers to expand. Previously, providers had to jump through hoops from both local authorities and Ofsted. Now, we have said that Ofsted is the sole arbiter of quality, and if someone is a good-quality provider, they are able to open new premises on that basis.

We have also got rid of planning restrictions, so nurseries now have the same planning freedoms as schools. They may convert commercial premises into nurseries without having to obtain planning permission. I have spoken to a lot of nursery owners who are pleased about that new freedom, which means that good-quality nursery chains can expand. We are also funding high-quality child minders, so good and outstanding child minders can automatically offer two, three and four-year-old places. Previously, only 1% of places were with child minders, so the change should enable a big increase in the number of such places.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North made some interesting points about Magdalen Gates pre-school, and I was delighted to visit that high-quality nursery. I was struck by the fact that the nursery is on the same site as a school and by what could be done to use the facilities and resources in the school better, working with the local council. One of the things that we are keen to see is teaching schools reach down the age range and collaborate with private and voluntary-sector nurseries. Schools and private nurseries are developing expertise in how to offer flexible sessions to parents and high-quality early years education. In that particular case, there is a strong incentive for better collaboration with the school and the local council to see how the facilities can be used. The Government fund local councils to give capital grants to increase the number of two-year-old places.

We have also made it easier for school nurseries to open from 8 am to 6 pm. At the moment, 25% of places in Norfolk are in school nurseries. The figure is higher across the rest of the country; a third of all places are in school nurseries which, typically are open only from 9 am to 3 pm. However, if they were open from 8 am to 6 pm, that would enable providers to offer the 15 hours in more flexible allocations. Rather than three hours over five days, they could offer five hours over three days, which works much better with a part-time job.

Our feedback to the provider mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North is that providers are able to charge parents for additional hours. They can come up with different packages. For example, I visited an innovative nursery in the north-west that offers a three hours-plus package, where children get three hours three mornings a week, then they get lunch for £1.40 extra, which is affordable for many parents on low incomes, and which means that the child is getting a high-quality lunch of, in this case, Lancashire pasties and homemade pastry, which I tried myself.

There are all kinds of innovative things that providers can do. We have case studies and models that we can send to my hon. Friend and nurseries in her constituency about how to schedule and roster services, and how they can offer parents different packages that suit their lifestyle. The days when every parent was able to drop their child off at nine and pick them up at 12 are pretty much over. That model does not fit with a lot of parents’ lifestyles and we need to make things easier for them.

School-age children—the over-fives—also need child care. There is a very good example in the constituency next door to my hon. Friend’s constituency. Free School Norwich offers a package of care for parents from 8am to 6pm, with an excellent after-school club—the Squirrels club. Again, that is an example of collaboration between the school and the private sector nursery, because the private sector nursery provides the nursery nurses to staff the after-school club as part of their roster. It is all about getting better use of the really excellent buildings and facilities we have, using them more flexibly so that parents can benefit from them, and ensuring that there is high-quality training of staff.

We are also piloting the extension of School Direct to early years teaching, so that high-quality nurseries can train staff, including early years teachers and early years apprentices, as part of their programme. Expert practitioners in nurseries and school nurseries are leading the training of the next generation of staff.

My hon. Friend asked me about early years teachers. It is absolutely true that we have seen a 25% increase in the number of early years teachers being trained this year. We have set higher standards, which seems to have attracted more applicants. Next year, we will introduce the full early years educator qualification, for which students need a C in English and maths, and we are offering a bursary for an apprenticeship in that area worth £3,000. School nurseries and private sector nurseries should be aware that they can hire really high-quality people. Once they have been in the position for three months, those people can receive a bursary, which again will help to train up highly qualified staff.

My hon. Friend asked if there is extra advice for schools that are taking two-year-olds. Again, a pilot programme has been running with an evaluation. There are 49 schools participating, and we are learning a lot of lessons from what schools have told us about how two-year-olds fit in with three and four-year-olds in nurseries, including the best way of organising and staffing such nurseries, and the best way to offer parents flexibility. I am very happy to send her that data, so that she can discuss with local schools and nurseries in her constituency the findings of that programme.

We shall soon introduce in primary legislation a measure under which school nurseries will no longer have to register separately with Ofsted to take two-year-olds. As I have mentioned, the communication and language benefits of teacher-led care are very high, and we want more schools to provide that care. In fact, academies and free schools are able to open nurseries as well as local authority-maintained schools. Where there is the capacity in schools, that is a good opportunity, and as I have said, there is an opportunity to collaborate with local private sector providers too. We do not want a Berlin wall, as it were, between private sector providers and school nurseries. They are both trying to do the same job, which is achieving really good outcomes for children, and they can learn from each other.

I will give my hon. Friend an excellent example of child care that I saw when I was in Warrington last week. The Evelyn Street pre-school takes children from the age of two on a free programme. The parents of some of those children pay for extra hours; some do not. The pre-school also takes three and four-year-olds. It opens from 8am to 6pm, to suit working parents. It is led by a high-quality teacher with an apprentice training up as an assistant, so it really does all the things I have talked about, and it also offers child care at a very affordable price for parents in the north-west. Some of the evidence that we have received shows that the child care it provides is two thirds cheaper than the average market price for child care, so it is possible to have really high-quality teacher-led care with an affordable price tag. That is an important message to send out.

My hon. Friend also discussed the work that the Government have done to extend tax-free child care, which is now up to £2,000 per child. That is a major extension of the scheme. The previous scheme—the childcare voucher scheme—was open to only a fifth of employees. Now, if someone is on a low income, they will be able to access child care through tax credits or universal credit. If someone is on a mid to high income, they will be able to access child care through tax-free child care, whether they are self-employed, working part-time or working full-time; it does not depend on their employer being part of the scheme. That is a much more widely available scheme. It will be easy to use; people can apply for it on the internet and the money is paid directly to child care providers.

My hon. Friend mentioned the issue of funding. We have had a historical issue, similar to the issue with schools, whereby different local authorities have been funded on a different basis. We want to sort that issue out in the longer term; I have made a commitment to do so. One thing that we have done is to ensure that local authorities are passing as much as possible of the money they receive to the front line, because that money will help to pay for high-quality staff, high-quality materials and high-quality facilities in those nurseries. One of the advantages of slimlining the inspection regime and making Ofsted the sole arbiter of quality is that more money can be used by local authorities, which can put it straight through to the front line rather than using it to duplicate the work that Ofsted is doing.

We have just announced the early years pupil premium, which we will soon consult on. It is worth £50 million, and it will go on a per-head basis to the most deprived children aged three and four. If nurseries focus on those two-year-olds who are going up through the system they will receive extra financial support on a per-head basis. That might address some of the funding issues that my hon. Friend raised.

This has been a helpful debate.

[Chloe Smith]

Before the Minister concludes, would she comment on the point about volunteers in community settings?

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

Before the Minister responds, I gently say to her that for her complete speech I have been looking at her back, and that would not necessarily be acceptable to the Speaker or another Chair. The microphone is trying to catch her remarks as well, so it would be helpful if she looked this way.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I apologise, Mr McCrea, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship—

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

Dr McCrea.

[Elizabeth Truss]

Sorry—Dr McCrea, I am very grateful to serve under your chairmanship and I hope that I have not caused any offence. I am afraid that I got so over-excited by the examples that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North was giving and by the excellent comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport that I made a terrible error. However, I apologise, and I will address the remainder of my remarks to you, Dr McCrea.

We have had a very useful discussion. Quite often in debates about child care and early education, we can get stuck talking about the high-level numbers. What is really important, however, is what is happening on the ground. It is the quality interaction between well-trained teachers, apprentices, teaching assistants, early years educators and the children that is really important.

What we as a Government want to do is make the structures as simple as possible. Yes, we want good accountability and high-quality Ofsted inspection. One thing that I have done as a Minister is give Ofsted more money to recruit high-quality inspectors to the early years sector. However, we also want to ensure that the professionals who work in this sector have the opportunity to exercise their own professional judgment.

On the subject of volunteers, I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North that there are some very interesting models indeed of nursery co-operatives in which parents are used to help support children in the nursery, and encouraging volunteers and volunteer structures is an important part of what nurseries do. Again, the system needs to be as open as possible, to enable people to participate. Yes, we need high-quality training and standards, but we could do more for the voluntary sector, the private sector and maintained schools to enable them to work together to get the best quality outcome for our children.