Early Years Educators

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Before we start this afternoon’s proceedings, I remind Members that Mr Speaker enjoins us to wear our masks when we are not speaking, to maintain social distancing and to do all of those things that I know Members want to do anyhow.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of early years educators.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gray. Looking around me, I also see many friends and supporters of our early years sector. I thank them for taking time out of their schedules to come to debate this issue; I know that there are a lot of important competing issues in Parliament today.

I start with two declarations of interest. First, I am married to a hard-working early years educator, who will be arriving home very shortly to pick up the school run and then juggle all the different things that working mums do while working dads are in Parliament—or vice versa. Secondly, for the last couple of years it has been my pleasure to chair the all-party parliamentary group on childcare and early education; we held our annual general meeting in the last hour, actually. I want to extend my thanks to parliamentary colleagues who have supported our work over the last year and have committed to do so for the year ahead. I was somehow re-elected chairman of the group for the next year. I also thank many colleagues old and new who have agreed to serve as officers for the coming year: we have much to do.

This afternoon’s debate is timely. It rather wonderfully coincides with the all-party group’s annual childcare and early education week, which celebrates and promotes the hard work of our early years educators and sector. Our theme for this year is celebrating the role of the early years workforce as educators, which is what I wanted to place at the heart of my chairmanship of the group, and seeking to explore the challenges that the workforce faces and celebrate the good work that it does.

Last week, the all-party group held a forum for parents to share their experiences of early years educators and settings. It was chaired by the brilliant Professor Kathy Sylva of Oxford University. Professor Sylva is at this very moment providing an update to the meeting of our all-party group, which is being chaired in my absence by the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley). The session is being recorded, and I urge any colleagues who would like to catch up on it to follow our social media channels. Parents provided some incredible examples. I see this as an example of the very best work that we can do in Westminster, and I am sure that Professor Sylva will not mind me touching on some of the things that were said. One parent spoke about the empathy, patience and humour an early years educator shows when working with both her and her child, who has significant special educational needs. Another reminded us of the little freedoms that early years settings empower families to have. One lady said she occasionally has lunch with her partner; that may sound frivolous, but one the best things that we can do for our children is provide them with a loving, secure home environment—and making sure that mum and dad stay mum and dad is rather important, too. One phrase that touched me was from a parent discussing the key worker in their child’s early years setting, who said:

“Simply, we would be lost without these people. They are truly amazing.”

Of course, there are areas for development in the early years workforce as we strive for its continued betterment. At our forum, parents raised the issues of settings’ opening hours and, overwhelmingly, the need to ensure that early years educators are properly paid, a subject to which I will return.

I commend the Government for acting on this issue in the spending review. Following a meeting that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) and I had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), he placed early years at the centre of some of his announcements in this area in the Budget. He quadrupled the funding for early years settings over the next three years. That was most welcome, and an important step towards shoring up a sector that has been heavily hit, it is fair to say, during the pandemic.

However, as I have said before, this is not just about money. The early years sector faces an existential crisis as settings are being forced to close, and the valued early years educators that we are talking about are then lost to other lines of work, often due to remuneration. Most worryingly of all, bright young prospects are put off a career as an early years educator. At a meeting of our all-party group in December, two apprentices spoke compellingly about their work with children under five. However, those brilliant talents were pursuing careers in social care and not in early years. Social care is an important vocation, but they are a great loss to the potential early years workforce of tomorrow, and we need them. So more must be done to draw the early years educators of tomorrow towards the profession, and not push them away.