Children: Welfare, Life Chances and Social Mobility

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on securing this important debate. I am grateful for this opportunity to set out the Government’s actions to improve children’s social mobility and life chances through early intervention. We have had many serious contributions today and I will attempt to answer the many questions that have been raised, but if I am not able to answer them all I will, of course, write to any noble Lords I have missed.

The Government are committed to early intervention and building the evidence base to underpin it. Early intervention means effective prevention, identification and evidence-based intervention across multiple professions, which places the child at the centre. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, are right that early intervention saves money and saves wasted lives. We can all agree on that. I welcome my right honourable friend Andrea Leadsom’s ministerial working group, which will review how to improve the support available to families in the first two years of a child’s life. Early intervention is a cross-government concern.

Research suggests that there are short and long-term educational and socioemotional benefits of attending early childhood education and care. This Government have prioritised investment in early education. This includes 15 hours of free early education per week for all three and four year-olds and an additional 15 hours per week for three and four year-olds of working parents. Since 2013 we have invested over £2 billion in early education for disadvantaged two year-olds and nearly 750,000 children have benefited from this. I take on board the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, about the high salary entitlement that can trigger this support and I will certainly refer this to the Treasury for the next spending review.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Russell, asked questions on early years and I hope I will be able to address their points. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, asked what assessment will be made of whether new spending on preschool children is improving social mobility. The free entitlements are just one part of the overall package for social mobility in the early years. We announced a range of initiatives to support disadvantaged children in our social mobility action plan, Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential, investing £100 million across early years programmes, and we will be evaluating the impact. To answer the question of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, we are in the process of raising a tender exercise for that at the moment.

We are determined to close the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers and the early years are crucial to getting this right. The gap for children achieving a good level of development continues to narrow, from 19 percentage points in 2013 to 17 percentage points in 2017. We continue to monitor the progress of children in early years through the publication of the early years foundation stage profile. The study of early education and development also began in 2013 and is following almost 6,000 children between the ages of two and seven to understand the benefits of early education and care in England.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked that we ensure that nursery settings are led by someone with a relevant degree-level qualification. We recognise the importance of having a highly skilled early years workforce. Recruiting graduate early years teachers into the private, voluntary and independent early years sector remains a challenge, despite significant investment by successive Governments since 2006. It is therefore important that we consider complementary approaches to developing the skills of the early years workforce. This is why, as announced in the social mobility action plan, we will be investing £20 million in early years professional development activity in disadvantaged areas. We remain committed to ensuring that there are routes to graduate-level qualifications into the early years sector, as well as the existing early years initial teacher training programme that offers funded places and bursaries. We will also be developing apprenticeship pathways, enabling those in the early years workforce to progress up to a graduate-level qualification.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, asked how we will prioritise the potential for the early arts as a method of learning. Expressive arts and design is one of the seven areas of learning in the early years foundation stage. It provides a framework for teachers to assess how children’s artistic, creative and imaginative development is progressing, reflecting the importance of creativity in the early years. Expressive art and design is one of the most important ways for a young person’s mind to develop. I reassure all speakers today that the Government are focused on that.

The evidence is clear that the home learning environment is one of the biggest influences on a child’s vocabulary at the age of three and that its quality varies depending on socioeconomic and other factors. We are committed to supporting parents to improve the quality and quantity of adult-child interactions to help unlock the power of learning in the home. That is why we are holding a summit this month where we will convene businesses, broadcasters and a broad range of other organisations to launch a coalition to explore innovative ways to boost early language development and reading in the home. We recognise the importance of growing the evidence base and are working with the Education Endowment Foundation on a £5 million trial of evidence-based home learning support programmes in the north of England.

Local authorities sit at the heart of delivering effective early intervention services. We want to support this, which is why we are working with the Local Government Association to develop our early years local government programme, which is worth £8.5 million. The programme focuses on improving how the local services that work together to improve children’s outcomes in the early years are delivered, with a particular focus on early language. Children’s centres have an important role to play, but it is right that local councils continue to decide how to use them as part of their wider system of local services.

The noble Lords, Lord Loomba and Lord Touhig, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, all mentioned the importance of early intervention. Good-quality relationships between parents are critical for child outcomes. The reducing parental conflict programme will support all local areas to embed parental-conflict support into wider services for children and will work to ensure that evidence-based interventions are more widely available. We know that alcohol misuse can severely impact on parental conflict, which is why we are investing £6 million to improve the outcomes of children of alcohol-dependent parents.

We have committed over £920 million to the troubled families programme from 2015 to 2020. This focuses on preventive services and aims to achieve significant and sustained improvement for up to 400,000 families with multiple high-cost problems by 2020. The programme, delivered through local authorities and their partners, advocates a whole-family integrated approach across multiple services.

In addition to targeted work, we have national health programmes that support early intervention. These include the healthy child programme, which aims to identify issues early. It is led by health visitors and includes five mandated health reviews, advice, guidance and support to improve outcomes and to support the families of children from birth to five years. Building on this, my department is working in partnership with Public Health England to equip health visitors to support families with early language in the home and ensure that any speech delays are picked up early and the right support put in place.

Engagement with maternity services may be the first time that a woman experiences regular and in-depth interaction with the health and care system. The maternity workforce is well placed to support the long-term health and well-being of women and their babies. In March 2018 we announced a pledge to give the majority of women continuity of care from the same midwives throughout their pregnancy, labour and birth by 2021. The maternity transformation programme led by NHS England is leading system-wide activity to improve well-being, reduce risk and tackle inequalities from the preconception period through to eight weeks after birth. The Government are also investing £365 million between 2015 and 2021 in perinatal mental health services to improve outcomes for mothers and children.

There has been a tremendous focus on children’s mental health from speakers today. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lords, Lord Haskel and Lord Touhig, all raised this important area. One important initiative is Public Health England promoting local adoption of what is known as the prevention concordat for better mental health, which focuses on galvanising action to prevent mental health problems and promote good mental health in all local areas. The design is consciously cross-sector so that professionals from a diverse spectrum of organisations can engage and play their part.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked about the amount of financial capacity in the system. We have announced a package of some £300 million for children and young people’s mental health: £215 million from the Department of Health and Social Care for mental health support teams and £95 million in DfE funding for training designated senior leads for mental health in schools.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, asked about the impact of outdoor schools on mental health. I congratulate the noble Baroness on her involvement in this area. There is no doubt that exposure to open countryside has an enormously positive impact on young people. The early years foundation stage picks up elements of attachment through personal, social and emotional development. As part of this stage, providers must provide access to an outdoor play area or, if that is not possible, ensure that outdoor activities are planned and undertaken daily. On a personal note, I am the Minister who deals with any application for disposal of land in schools, and I have made it very clear to all schools that apply to me that disposals are conditional on improvement of sporting facilities in those schools.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, asked about obesity. I have to express a slight conflict of interest here: as a farmer who grows 3,500 tonnes of sugar beet a year I am slightly on the other side, but I absolutely support the obesity strategy, through which we aim to take 45 million kilograms of sugar out of the food system every year. It is absolutely clear to me that sugar is highly addictive: I am certainly one of its victims and I fight the addiction every day. The more we can do in the early stages for children, to remove that dependency on sugar, the better. It astonishes me that you can buy fizzy drinks in supermarkets for less than you pay for bottled water.

We want to support all young people to be happy, healthy and safe. This is why we are making relationships education compulsory in all primary schools, relationships and sex education compulsory in all secondary schools, and health education compulsory for primary and secondary state-funded schools. In health education, there is a focus on avoiding the damaging effects and risks of drugs and excessive alcohol. The Government are committed to supporting the life chances of children who need particular support from the state. Children in need and looked-after children fall behind from the early years, and these poor outcomes are entrenched throughout childhood and adolescence.

Since the Munro review of child protection in England, which highlighted that the use of evidence is fundamental to social work, the Government have prioritised innovation, learning from evidence and best practice. We have invested almost £200 million since 2014 in the children’s social care innovation programme to develop, test and spread innovative new ways of supporting vulnerable children and improving their outcomes. Through the children in need review, we are building the evidence on what works to improve the educational outcomes of children in need, both in and out of school. We are seeking to understand why their educational outcomes are so poor and what needs to be in place to achieve consistently better educational outcomes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, asked about the impact of funding on social care demand. The drivers of demand are complex: for example, the sector-led care crisis review found many overlapping factors contributing to the rise in care proceedings and children entering care. There is not a uniform picture but instead, significant variation. We have invested almost £270 million since 2014 to help local authorities learn from what works and to support improvements. We have invested in the Early Intervention Foundation to help build evidence in early intervention strategies. We have invested £10 million since 2014 in the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care to improve the evidence base in children’s social care, with the aim of translating this into better practice. In the autumn Budget the Government announced £84 million in targeted, evidence-based interventions, with the aim of reducing demand and saving money for local authorities. Most importantly, this is about improving the quality of services for our most vulnerable children.

Through our partners in practice programme, we are working with 20 of the best local authorities to deepen our understanding of what excellent children’s social care looks like and working with other local authorities to improve their practice through sector improvement support. A number of speakers asked about this. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, asked about the APPG. I give recognition to the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, as co-chair of the APPG for Children’s report, Storing Up Trouble. Since 2010, 45 of what were previously inadequate local authorities in which we have intervened have left inadequacy behind and not returned. This is not intervention for intervention’s sake but improving the lives of children and families. Recently we have gone further, investing £20 million in regional improvement to get ahead of failure.

Our partners in practice programme, which, by the way, has now grown to include 20 of our best authorities, is sharing and spreading excellence across the country. The APPG report recommends that the department works with the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care and sector partners to evaluate new and developing approaches to meeting the needs of children and families. I am pleased to say that this is already happening. An early priority for the What Works Centre is to understand what works to safely reduce the need for children to enter care and to build our confidence that children are entering care only when that is the best option for them. There are promising signs emerging from our £200 million innovation programme.

On the question from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, about the lack of capacity, since the 2015 spending review we have made more than £200 billion available up to 2020 for councils to deliver local services. This includes children’s services. Funding is important but so is how it is used.

My noble friend Lord Farmer mentioned the boarding school partnerships initiative. I am a huge supporter of this and tried very hard to raise its profile across government and, more importantly, across local authorities. Like my noble friend, I too was in a boarding school. My parents’ marriage collapsed and it was that stability and continuity that gave me the courage to continue my education. My noble friend raised the statistics that came out of the report, albeit a small one, from Norfolk. The figures are very powerful, particularly on outcomes—the percentage of children who came off the register as well as the overall cost. I am endeavouring to increase local authorities’ awareness of this. Almost 60 boarding schools have now committed to bursaries and to helping vulnerable children. My particular focus here is looked-after children who, as we know, get a very raw deal in life.

The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, asked whether I agree that the school system is vital in preparing the whole child, as I would describe a young person. The Government have invested more than £12 billion in the pupil premium over the last seven years, particularly aimed at the most vulnerable members of society. The Progress 8 measure is aimed very much at encouraging schools to lift up lesser-attaining pupils when they enter school. I accept that data can be somewhat dry, but from my business experience, what gets measured gets done. We are seeing some tremendous improvements in these areas.

I commend my noble friend Lord Baker for his passion for education and for everything he has done in his long career in politics. No Peer in this Chamber has spent more time in my office in the last year than my noble friend. I share his passion for technical education. We cannot always agree on everything, but I have tried very hard to help as much as I can. The UTC programme is important, dealing with a cohort of children who are clearly more suited to a technical education. I do not believe that the picture is as bleak as he paints: we now have the T-level programme, to which we are committing some £500 million a year. The EBacc programme, which I know is controversial in this House, is aimed particularly at those from less advantaged backgrounds whose ability to go to good universities is restricted.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, I know the noble Lord is coming to the end of his remarks, but I hope we have enough time for me just to say that it is not controversial in this House only; it is controversial at large. There are very many people who believe that the EBacc is misguided in the narrowness of its base.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I accept that the noble Baroness says that it is controversial; we will have to agree to differ at this time. I would like to pick up on a slightly more positive issue that she raised in the debate on music and facilitating subjects the other day. I have spoken to two Ministers in the department since, and have agreed that we will write to some universities to test their appetite for adding music A-level to the facilitating subject range.

I apologise, I am running out of time, but I want to say I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken today. All of you have shown great passion and expertise in this area. We all agree that early intervention is vital to promote children’s attainment, health and well-being through their lives. The Government, across departments, will continue to make progress on this agenda, to improve the life chances of this nation’s children, particularly those in the most need of support.