Adult and Further Education

Debate between Paul Howell and Andrea Leadsom

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on his contribution to the amazing revolution in apprenticeships that has taken place under consecutive Conservative Governments since 2010. That ambition has really come to fruition, and the number and variety of different opportunities for young people is amazing. It is a shame that Opposition Members do not recognise that, because the ambition of Conservative Governments has been far greater than that of the Opposition parties.

Since becoming an MP in 2010, my experience has been to have an apprentice every year from one of the schools in my constituency. I am now on apprentice 14; they have all been fantastic, and almost all of them are now working for colleagues across the green Benches here in Parliament, or as special advisers for Ministers. If any Members who are in the Chamber or are listening on their television are interested in a parliamentary apprenticeship, I really recommend it. It is a fantastic opportunity for a school leaver in your area—fantastic for them, and fantastic for you as the Member of Parliament. As I say, it has been a real career path for many of those apprentices.

However, what I really want to talk about today—just very briefly—is the early years workforce. As my right hon. Friend the Minister knows, for many years, I have championed giving every baby the best start for life. With the huge support of both this Prime Minister and previous Prime Ministers, we have been successful in rolling out the family hubs and the best start for life vision across England, and we are now well into the implementation phase. As part of that, the family hubs and best start for life programme are providing £10 million for pilots of a multidisciplinary early years workforce.

We know—and I think there is cross-party agreement about this fact—that we need to put far more support into giving every baby the best start for life. Families—from pregnant people all the way through to new parents and carers of babies and toddlers, and right up to school level—have to come to terms with this new arrival in their life, with all the challenges that brings. They have to try to find their way around antenatal classes, mental health concerns, parent-infant relationship problems, breastfeeding and infant feeding. There are all the challenges they have with finding childcare and getting back to work, and all the decisions they have to make about whether to go for a nursery or a childminder, and so on.

We have a shortage of health visitors and midwives are under pressure, but in the early years space there are actually so many people who would love to get more involved and have a real career path in the early years workforce. We see so many fantastic volunteers, who work on a voluntary basis for Home-Start, grandparent drop-in groups, or stay and play groups. There are the people working in the charity sector as community champions, who bring people into family hubs to help them find their way around early years services, and act as navigators to advise people struggling with mental health, smoking cessation, debt advice, couple counselling and all the myriad problems that face new parents in our country.

As we embark on the roll-out of the family hubs and start for life programme, it seems to me that there is a lot more we could do to upskill the early years workforce for people who are currently volunteering. Indeed, people who are currently pregnant may be thinking, “Well, do you know what, I used to work in Tesco, but now as a new mum I’d actually quite like to go and work in a nursery, and perhaps have my baby in that nursery and be able to work with my baby alongside me, or I’d like to go and work in a family hub and I’d like to be a mental health first aider or a breastfeeding adviser.” Some of those roles do exist, but in large part they do not.

I really do think this is a subject whose time has come. I know the Opposition are also very keen to see much more support provided to help families give their baby the best start for life. So I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to look very carefully at what roles there are and what sort of career paths there are for people wanting to get much more involved in the early years space, and to look at how Government can support their ambitions to see every baby get the best start, while also upskilling the crucial early years workforce.

I understand that there are some 300,000 people working in the early years space right now. With our changes in childcare allowances and provision for families, which is absolutely the right thing to do, there will be the need for many more nursery workers and people associated with the care of young children, including childminders or those giving kinship care. Upskilling and providing those people with the right resources and qualifications they need is going to be a very big priority in the immediate future and in the longer term. I also believe it will give many young people a really satisfying career path for the future.

[Paul Howell]

For childcare, as for many sectors, this is obviously about attracting other people into the sector. I sometimes think we could get the vocabulary better when we are trying to go out and reach people, and instead of talking about basic skills, we could talk about essential skills and just be upselling the whole thing. These skills can be things such as resilience or teamwork, and these are the areas that people who have been at home and who have not got out much into the community would really value, and they would feel better if they were going into a different type of employment. I think this applies to the childcare sector as well as to many others.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that the prestige of working in early years, and indeed childcare, has sometimes not been what it should be. In any society, our babies are the future—quite literally—and everything we can do to help them to get the best start is absolutely essential. Often, the role is seen as fairly lowly, but trying to steer, nurture and empathise with tiny children and to help them learn to play nicely, pay attention, come when they are called and perhaps start reading are among the most crucial roles.

The same is true of supporting families, who often struggle. You do not have to be a special person to become a parent, but when you do become one, you are a special person to your baby. Parents are often crying out for a bit of help because they feel jittery, they do not feel confident or they do not have at their fingertips the information they need.

There is so much that we can do, and our skills revolution really should focus on creating valued, proper career paths and a proper ambition to have a career in the early years workforce. I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will look closely at the early years workforce pilots that are starting in the very near future.