Disadvantaged Children

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

When I was first elected to the House and we talked about educational achievement, the conversation was nearly always about A-levels and universities. One of the great things about the Government of whom I was pleased to be member was that we shifted the debate from educational achievement by young adults to one about educational achievement at the beginning of education—children learning to read, for example. What is wonderful about today’s debate is the focus on the very beginnings of education and children at the stage when they are learning to talk and listen. These basic skills are the building blocks of our personalities and future abilities to cope with the world.

[Mr Frank Field]

May I also draw attention to the fact that, not only has there been this wonderful change, but it must be the first Parliament in which more Members want to debate this than the horse racing levy? [Laughter.]

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The laughter following that remark shows that my right hon. Friend is supported in his view. It is a positive shift. My suspicion is that it reflects the greater participation of mothers in politics—but I will not push that point too far! We know that disadvantage starts earlier, well before school, and unfortunately gets worse during formal education. Despite the efforts of the previous Government, which I helped with, the gaps in achievement remain stubbornly wide, although we managed to narrow them in some respects. At five, 35% of children who qualify for free school meals achieve a good level of development, compared with 55% of children who do not qualify. The children on free school meals are more likely to be bullied, twice as likely to be permanently excluded, half as likely to get good GCSEs and, despite progress, less likely to go to university.

We need to make it clear that disadvantage is directly associated with poverty in education. There is a further disadvantage, however, to do with boys. The second lowest achieving group of pupils in schools are white British boys. They are exceeded only by Gypsies and Travellers. People have said that it might be because there are too few male teachers in primary schools. As someone who used to educate primary school teachers, I think it is partly because too few young men are interested in small children, and therefore have the skills and qualities that would make someone like me, interviewing students for teacher education courses, consider them capable of becoming good teachers. Perhaps it tells us something about how we bring up young men that they do not know enough about the lives of children.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady think that, unfortunately, our society is suspicious of men who are interested in getting involved with and supporting young children? Indeed, some men might feel that they are making themselves vulnerable if they decide to volunteer to work with young people.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

In my view, the red top newspapers have created that approach much too much. If men had more experience of the lives of children, they would be robust and resilient to those unfounded accusations.

Most speakers in this debate have called for effective early intervention to tackle such inequality. I would strongly urge us to draw on good evidence of what works. For example, in my constituency a family nurse partnership working with teenage mothers has gathered powerful evidence of how it has helped young women not only to bring up their children but to take up education opportunities and build successful and happy lives. We know from research by the HighScope Perry project in America that a structured, play-based early curriculum can make a huge difference to children. I am sad that cuts in child care tax credits will mean that fewer parents will be able to afford access to high-quality provision for their children, despite welcome additional early-years provision for some of the poorest two-year-olds.

Unfortunately, we tend to grab on to things in politics that we think will be popular where there is not necessarily the evidence to sustain them. Our Government were occasionally guilty of that, and the current Government’s proposed marriage premium is also an example. It will skew income distribution to those who are more prosperous and from those who are less prosperous. However, one of the things that we need in this debate is really good evidence. The last time we had a Tory-led Government, they stopped the cohort studies, which tracked the progress of children and young people every seven years, and we now have two cohorts missing. I would strongly urge those on the Treasury Bench to do what they can in this era of cuts to ensure that that mistake is not repeated. Unless we have good quality evidence about what works, we will carry on making mistakes.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the important issue of tracking and research. I, too, would ask those on the Treasury Bench to respond to that point, because it is important that we sustain such tracking. It is not good enough to look too early at how a particular cohort of children is performing. The advantage of cohort studies is that we can track people all through their lives.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, although I will not take any more, because they are now beginning to eat into my time. We need good quality evidence. If we do not have it, the odds are that we will make more mistakes. There will be debates in Government about such matters, and although investing in a cohort study is not very sexy, I would strongly urge those Ministers in the Chamber to do what they can to ensure that such evidence is collected.

I want to be brief and talk about the things that need to happen. We know that it is not just teachers who make a difference to children—many Members have spoken about the contribution that parents make—because their peers make a difference too. That is one of the reasons why poor children in prosperous areas overachieve compared with poor children in poorer areas by a factor of 18%. That is why I have some suspicions about the much-trumpeted pupil premium, which does not take into account the fact that poor children in prosperous areas already do much better than those in poorer areas. I would also strongly echo the support that others have given to parenting education. We introduced quite a lot of parenting education, but, unfortunately, the people in my constituency who got most of it were, to be brutal, those who were in trouble with the law or whose children were in trouble with the law. Those people found parenting education quite transformative, as did the parents whose children went to a Catholic infant school in my constituency that offered it. I strongly believe that parenting education can make a huge difference.

Other Members have referred to the problems of children in care. I cannot compete with Members who talked about the poverty of their childhood—mine was very prosperous—but I remember well how shocked I was at how few things, such as books, CDs and clothes, children in care possessed.

I want to mention one more way in which the Government could make a real difference to disadvantaged children. Most of my educational advantages and most of the things I learned were the result of being able to read. I got into books and I discovered whole new worlds that would otherwise have been completely beyond me. When I went to university to do English, I remember asking one of my fellow students what she had read as a child. I was shocked when she said that she had read The Beano, and that was it—yet she had managed to get to university.

Children can transform their lives through books. One of the most depressing pieces of news that I heard recently was the decision to axe the Booktrust. It has a scheme that gives books to babies and gives every mum a book bag. My constituency is full of mothers who do not read English, and for them those books are transformative. They mean that their children can go into school knowing at which end of a book to begin reading. Members of Muslim families might be readers, but their books are often in Arabic, and start at the back. I urge Ministers to do what they can to revive the Booktrust scheme.