Early Years Intervention

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Massey for introducing this extremely important debate. I have the good fortune to be a member of the Select Committee on Affordable Childcare, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, from whom we shall hear shortly. That experience has caused me to think about the subject of today’s debate.

I have been surprised at the complexity of the issues surrounding the case for government intervention in early childhood education. Within that complexity are the varying approaches of hundreds of academics, think tanks and other organisations. It is an extremely complex issue. However, through all that complexity, what I have learnt is quite simple. In order to help break the cycle of deprivation and to promote greater social mobility, intervention in the home/learning environment at the earliest possible opportunity is absolutely essential. That includes the development of early speech, language and vocabulary, and recognition by professionals and parents that working with the young to stimulate early learning is both socially advantageous and deeply rewarding for parents, professionals and children. That is the number one thing that needs to be considered and promoted.

I have also learnt that, in nursery and child-minding settings, getting the highest quality staff possible on the front line working with children from disadvantaged backgrounds is essential. That means accepting fully the recommendations of the Nutbrown review and investing in a better trained and qualified workforce, many of whom will need to work with disadvantaged children. The Government should target and champion the expansion of high-quality provision in the most deprived areas.

I spoke this week to the head teacher at Abingdon primary school in the centre of Middlesbrough, a town which has provided excellent nursery education, who is experiencing great difficulty in coping with an expansion of parent-led demand in the inner city. She is unable to meet the demand because there are physical space requirements which she cannot afford. This means widening the gap between the children in the more affluent parts of the town and the inner core and increasing the cycle of underachievement and deprivation. That is the sort of thing that the Government could help with because targeted funding would have a major impact and effect on helping children in the inner city areas. If we do not do this we create differences in ambition and achievement at a very early age which will never be recovered.

Government recognition of the problem and intervention will probably never be enough and the problems of the poor can never be resolved without the support of the better off. Although we received evidence in our committee that the cost of childcare in the UK is 33% of net household income compared to an OECD average of 15%, something tells me that there is not a lot of room for increased parental contribution from the better off. To get a better contribution from wealthier parents, we need to look more carefully at the way in which we organise work and at how we can enhance the lives of the more affluent. This means that employers should think a lot more about how professionals can do the job they are paid to do and also manage childcare at the same time. Good work is being done on this. Some companies are working more flexibly, with greater agility and sensitivity, so that people can fulfil their roles at work and also their family responsibilities. We all know about job sharing and reduced hours flexibility, but a culture where the success of a business is recognised by its having successful employees at work and at home is very important.

I stopped being a trade union official 20 years ago. At that time I started to think about these kinds of issues but not in the fully-developed way in which I think about them now. Today, in unionised and other workplaces, childcare and early education should be at the top of the bargaining agenda. I thought about it a little 20 years ago but now I am fully full steam behind it. As with sickness, health and safety, pensions and all the other things that enhance the lifestyle of people at work, the bargaining agenda, with or without unions, should involve the quality of their lives. That is very important. For the almost 7 million lone working parents with dependent children, it is almost a necessity. A recent survey showed that half of these parents are unable to leave work on time and cannot eat with their children, so for them this is a necessity, and for the growing number of young fathers who are resentful about their work/life balance, it is also a necessity.

We have a lot of work to do with employers, businesses and Government to try to get people to think a lot more about how they can be successful in their careers and also take full responsibility—men and women—for childcare.