Education Bill

My Lords, I think I can give the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, some comfort on Amendment 4 because I am very familiar with a document called the coalition agreement. Although we cannot bind any future Government, this Government are bound by that agreement. I do not think it would allow any reduction at all in the amount of early years education provision given to children in this country during the five years of this Government. Turning to Amendment 5, I agree with the noble Baroness on the point about qualifications. The most reputable pieces of academic research into the effects of early years provision make it clear that the better the qualifications of the staff leading a centre, the higher the quality of provision and the more good that does for children. Indeed, it has also been shown that poor provision can do more harm than good. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that we should focus on improved qualifications for the early years workforce. On the number of Sure Start children’s centres, it is a pity that the noble Baroness’s diary was unable to allow her to attend the meeting and seminar of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Sure Start last week, at which we heard from a number of local authorities. It has to be admitted that they were all struggling to continue to make the provision they wanted to make for children and their parents. It was startling to see how differently they approached the issue. One of them pointed out that while in some cases they had closed a physical centre, they had not ceased to provide services to children and their families because they were being offered out of another centre, or from a virtual centre or something like that. We have to allow local authorities to work with the budgets they are given and make provision in the way they see best. But, of course, we also have to allow them to impose their own priorities on the provision they make. I am delighted that so many local authorities consider Sure Start children’s centres to be so important that they have somehow managed not to close any or reduce the services they provide.