Childcare Bill [Lords]

James Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). He says that this is a Labour policy. I do not remember its being chiselled on to the Edstone, but perhaps the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) will refresh my memory. Anyone who saw the photographs of the visit by the Prime Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) to Advantage children’s day nursery in Tolworth, in my constituency, will know that the policy literally had blue fingerprints all over it.

I am pleased that the Childcare Bill was one of the first that the Government introduced following the Queen’s Speech. By doing so, they made it clear that promoting social aspiration is on all fours with the heart of their agenda. Ensuring that young people are given the very best start in life, regardless of their background, is at the core of the progressive, one-nation Conservative mission. For me, it is one of the core duties of any Government. It is certainly what I hope to try to achieve as a Member of Parliament, and it is certainly what my parents worked to achieve throughout their lives in the teaching profession.

The policy of providing 30 hours of free childcare has two principal objectives. The first is to ease the burden on parents who want to go back to work, but who are either prohibited or restricted in that ambition by the gap between their low pay and the high cost of childcare. It is absolutely right that the provision of 30 hours of free childcare formed the central plank of our offer to hard-working families at the time of the general election, and we are working to deliver it now.

The second objective of the policy is to improve significantly the life chances of the next generation, and it is on that objective that I want to concentrate this afternoon. For too long, early-years education has been the Cinderella of schooling policy, but, during all that time, more and more evidence has pointed to the fact that the emotional and physical health, the social skills and the cognitive linguistic facilities that we develop in the early years are the principal prerequisites for attainment at school, in the workplace, at home and in the community. It is not surprising, therefore, that research suggests that early-years education is the critical ingredient in the process of closing, pre-emptively, the educational achievement gap between children from low-income households and those from high-income households before they start primary school.

Investment in early-years education is also cost-effective. More than one study conducted in the United States has found that the average benefit to the public purse for each child who underwent a quality pre-school programme was nearly $200,000. Recent Department for Education figures show that in England one in four children are starting primary school without the expected level in early language skills. Last week, Save the Children carried out a survey that found that 75% of teachers see British children arriving in reception class struggling to speak English properly. Sixty-five per cent. said they see five-year-olds struggling to follow simple instructions. That is simply not good enough.

Children in my local authority, Kingston upon Thames, perform above the average in speech and language development at age five, thanks in part to the excellent teaching in the borough. However, the poorest children are almost twice as likely to fall behind and are around a year behind their peers by the age of five. The implications for children failing to master these basic skills are patently clear. It is little surprise that those children who start behind tend to stay behind, with fewer opportunities and limited chances of success throughout their lives at school and beyond. As those from deprived backgrounds are most likely to start behind, the cycle of poverty is perpetuated by the education attainment gap.

In order to help children to escape the cycle of poverty, we must ensure that, when children arrive for their first day of primary school, they have been equipped with the basic skills they need to be ready to learn. For our part, we must apply some of the same rigour that we have applied to schools in the past five years to the education that children receive during those most formative years of their lives, at nursery.

One of the most progressive policies of the last Government was the pupil premium. Children who are eligible for the pupil premium at primary school will get the best out of the extra support it offers at primary school only if they arrive with the tools to learn and to benefit from it. There is evidence that the presence of trained early years teachers in nurseries has a huge impact on children’s early development. That is particularly the case for boys and children from disadvantaged backgrounds who are most at risk of falling behind in early language development. Yet at the moment almost half of independent nurseries do not employ a single early years teacher. Therefore, I ask the Minister to look at ways to support graduates and apprentices working in early years, including in nurseries.

The Bill presents us with an unprecedented opportunity to deliver more early education, to deliver better early education and significantly to improve social mobility, ensuring that children are able to benefit more from education and from the opportunities even if they come from the poorest households. We must grab that opportunity with both hands. That is why I am proud to support the Bill.