Seema Malhotra
Main Page: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)Department Debates - View all Seema Malhotra's debates with the Department for Education
(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons Chamber5. What steps he is taking to ensure sufficient funding for early intervention for children aged five or under.
7. What plans he has for early intervention spending; and if he will make a statement.
We are increasing the overall funding for early intervention from £2.2 billion in 2011-12 to £2.5 billion in 2014-15. This funding should enable local authorities to support early intervention for children under five, including through the new entitlement to early education for two-year-olds.
Local authorities are under an obligation to ensure a sufficient supply of Sure Start children’s centres. The overwhelming majority of local authorities, including Liberal Democrat-led ones, have done just that. It is important to recognise that children’s centres work best when they offer a variety of services, from stay and play to some of the targeted early intervention programmes that have done so much to help those children most in need.
The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists estimates that at just age four there is a 30 million word gap between a child from a deprived household and one from an affluent household. This is the number of words that a child will hear in different environments. Will not language and child development now suffer from the scrapping of the ring-fenced early intervention grant and result in more children starting school at four on an unequal playing field?
I have a lot of sympathy with the hon. Lady’s case. The gap in attainment between disadvantaged children and children from more fortunate circumstances only grows over time and is often a consequence of growing up in households where they are not read to and where they do not have a rich literary heritage on which to draw. However, she is mistaken in thinking that the early intervention grant was ring-fenced. It was not; it was money that was available to local authorities to spend as they saw fit in order to help those whom they considered, on a local basis, to be most deserving.