Education: Early Years

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for obtaining this debate and in doing so salute her for the consistency and determination with which on the Floor of this House she pursues issues affecting children. I would like to focus on one issue which the noble Baroness identified, and that is school readiness because it is no good talking about education unless you are certain that the child is ready for that education. As chairman of the All-Party Group on Speech and Language Difficulties, I want to focus on the necessary communication skills which, if absent, will prevent children learning.

It is interesting to note how the impact of the electronic age on our children has crept up on us during the latter part of the 20th century and the 21st century. Too many of them are just parked in front of a television set or handed a computer game. They simply end up being unable to communicate, either with each other or anyone else. This was put to me very well last week during a dinner that I was helping to host for Durham cathedral when my neighbour told me of the frustrated anger of her two year-old niece who, like many of her contemporaries, had been issued with an iPad of some kind. She issued frustrated cries of rage when she wiped her hand across a television set and it did not respond.

Members of the all-party group have conducted research into what is happening now and what can be done about it. We were very struck by a graph produced for us which showed that a child with a high IQ coming from an unsupportive or socially disadvantaged background was overtaken at the age of five and a half by a child with a low IQ coming from a supportive background. That to my mind is an indictment of the system. We must do something about it. On discussing this with experts, I was interested to learn that the age of five and a half is very important as it marks the end of a critical window where interventions can be made effectively and identified gaps can be closed. Therefore, it seems hugely important that we should focus on the years up to the age of five and a half to make certain that that crossover never happens.

We are very glad that the Government have done a number of things recently, including bringing in the integrated review incorporating health visitor checks at the age of two and the pre-school progress checks in the reformed early years foundation stage. I welcome the duty that is being put on local health and well-being boards. However, I am very concerned that by putting the duty on local health and well-being boards the Government are introducing the possibility of postcode lotteries, and they worry me. I welcome the early support programmes and the early years foundation stage profiles as a factor but I wonder about the use that is made of them. I also welcome the involvement of speech and language therapies at various stages of education.

However, I am concerned that I have already mentioned the involvement not just of local government but of the Department of Health, the Department for Education and another department. They all need pulling together because individual organisations are doing their own thing. It is very important to recognise that the good they are doing will not be aggregated unless their efforts are pulled together. As I have said many times, the thing that worries me most about prisons is that nobody of a particular type is in charge of who is responsible or accountable for making things happen. Until you have somebody who is responsible and accountable nothing will happen. We cannot afford to let this situation go on. Therefore, my first question to the Minister is: who will be in charge of all the development I have outlined?

During research for a report which my group will publish—we hope before the children and families Bill is published—on the connection between social advantage and speech, language and communication needs, we discovered that the Department of Health and the Department for Education together have published four potential pathways consisting of guidance for workers. One is guidance for health visitors and midwives on pregnancy and the early weeks. Another is guidance for health visitors and school nurses on supporting children from the age of two, and their families, until settled into school. The third is guidance for school nurses on supporting children with complex and/or additional health needs; that continues until age 25, linked with provision for people with special educational needs. The final guidance is for school nurses and youth justice workers on supporting children at risk of entering the criminal justice system. I welcome those publications because they provide a framework within which everything I have been talking about can be brought together. However, I must emphasise that this requires management, not just allowing the pathways to be published and the individual organisations to get on. We must make certain that everyone is required to conform to their pathway; otherwise we will not achieve the results.

Of course, a lot of training needs to go with this. I have been fascinated while we have been undertaking the inquiry, because we have learnt of wonderful examples of work where, for example, Stoke-on-Trent has been training everyone down to the dinner ladies and the lollipop men to identify people who might have the sort of problem that could be helped. There are masses of good examples that need to be pulled together. Under all this, I come down to the fact that until and unless children can engage with a teacher and therefore engage with education, they are never going to make progress. The lesson we have learnt is that until and unless you enable people to do that communication—after all, education boils down to contact between a teacher and a pupil—they will not be ready for the school and the education that is the subject of this debate.