Education Bill

My Lords, I apologise to the House as I did not hear the amendment being called. In Committee, I received strong support from all sides for my amendments on the importance of early years parenting. We all agreed that too many of the nation’s children today fail to get in their early years a foothold on the bottom rung of the education ladder. In her report published earlier this year, Dame Clare Tickell says: "““Parents and carers are the people who have the most important influence on children’s early development””." She goes on to say that ““clear and unambiguous evidence”” shows that 44 per cent of children, "““are still not considered to have reached a good level of development by the end of the year in which they turn 5””." The issue of how we improve school readiness is clearly important. In his response to my amendments in Committee, the Minister suggested that my concerns were dealt with by Section 1 of the Childcare Act 2006. Having read it very closely, I find that the Childcare Act 2006 indeed sets out general duties on local authorities in relation to the well-being of children but it addresses the issue in terms of institutional childcare and nursery education. It makes no mention of the need to encourage, help and support parents who struggle to support their child with the start in life that it needs. The Act makes no mention of early years education in the home. Looking at it in detail, Section 1 of the Act provides for free-of-charge provision of early childhood services. Section 2 defines the meaning of early childhood services and mentions parents only in that context. The rest of the Act makes it clear that the services referred to are institutional childcare services. They do not cover the role of parents and family members in the home. In my opinion—I say this with regret to the Minister—the Childcare Act 2006 is not a good basis for addressing the issue of the needs of parents, and indeed grandparents and family members, in their role as carers and educators of a young child. The Government’s policy seems to be to deploy all available resources to the provision of out-of-family childcare and early education rather than supporting adequately parents in their efforts to educate in the home. As the noble Lord, Lord Peston, wisely said in his excellent intervention in Committee, the Government cannot take on the role of a parent. Of course, institutional childcare has an important part to play but so do attachment, love, care, encouragement and education in the family. In the first two years of life, most children spend almost all their waking hours with a parent or surrogate parent. Even when they start to spend 15 hours a week in nursery school, they will probably spend the vast majority of their waking hours within their family. It is also important to remember that some families, often the most vulnerable, do not have any contact at all with institutional childcare services—often because they fear that if they did, social services might take their child away. In my view, there is the strongest possible case for working with and through parents, and through family structures, to help potentially disadvantaged children to develop emotionally and socially so that they are school-ready when they reach compulsory school age. The Childcare Act 2006 does not address these problems. I turn now to Sarah Teather’s position paper Supporting Families in the Foundation Years, which unfortunately became available only after we dealt with these issues in Committee. Sarah Teather’s report is excellent and most welcome in many respects but it, too, fails to place sufficient emphasis on developing more and better in-family education in the early years. It does not give it anything like the same level of importance as it does to institutional care outside the family—I am sorry, my computer made a mistake and printed something in the wrong place. The Government are making a mistake in this. I cannot see much hope in changing the policy by putting this matter to the vote during the Report stage, but I should be very grateful if the Minister would agree to meet me to discuss whether there is any possible way in which we could put more emphasis on in-family education as well as out-of-family education. The three amendments which I have set down today move in the same direction as my earlier amendments but have much more modest objectives. Amendment 1 is about the very strong case for trying to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and to do that by making all parents, especially men, more aware of the obligations that they have to any child who they bring into the world. This is a matter not of outdated Victorian values but about what we believe is fair to the child. Surely every child should, as far as possible, have a chance to get their foot on the bottom rung of the education ladder before they go to primary school. Well informed and well motivated parents are the best and, incidentally, probably the cheapest way to achieve that objective. I believe that a reduction in unwanted pregnancies will not be achieved by making laws or by providing more institutional childcare. It can happen only as a result of a change of heart in our society, which would require a major campaign such as the one that so successfully addressed passive smoking. A clear statement such as this amendment, if accepted, would produce a solid basis for such a campaign. I have set down the second and third amendments in my group because I believe that there is a strong case for making someone explicitly responsible for ensuring that the services to parents which the Bill establishes are actually being delivered by the wide range of different bodies that will be involved. It seems to me that the pattern of joint working that the Government propose for the early years services will lead to extravagance, duplication and inefficiency—especially when it comes to shared budgets. What business would run successfully without someone in charge? I have selected my amendments on the basis that so much of the delivery of this programme will fall on local authorities and they should have to answer for the effectiveness of delivery in their areas. At national level the Department for Education should have overall responsibility to Parliament in order to ensure that the outcomes of the programmes are being delivered because I believe that the early years programme is a key element in the success of the Government’s policy to improve educational outcomes and to reduce disadvantage. I have set down these amendments because leadership is a subject that should not pass without some discussion in this debate. I beg to move.