I speak to Amendment 23 standing in my name. In so doing I give my broad support to Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that covers similar grounds. The policy statement on this Bill that we recently received stated that the workforce is the key driver of high-quality childcare. I agree—we probably all agree with that. I welcome the Government’s
commitment to exploring career progression routes in 2016 and look forward to hearing more about these plans from the Minister. However, more needs to be done to support new entrants to the sector. This is the primary purpose of my amendment on minimum workforce qualifications.
The Affordable Childcare Committee felt that it was crucial to increase the proportion of staff qualified at a higher level in the private, voluntary and independent sector in order to drive up overall quality and improve outcomes for children. Setting a minimum qualification level for working with young children at level 3 was suggested by Professor Nutbrown during her review of early education and childcare. This would help to level the playing field and to ensure that where children grow up and live has much less of an impact on the quality of care and education that they receive than, sadly, is sometimes the case at the moment. It is telling that new evidence from Ofsted has identified that settings that have at least 75% of their practitioners qualified to level 3 achieve better inspection results. Indeed, the Nuffield Foundation recently reported on a strong relationship between the level of staff qualifications, the quality of provision, as judged by Ofsted and, most importantly of all, outcomes for young children.
The second part of my amendment is around disabled children. There is overwhelming evidence that parents of those children are struggling to access their current entitlement to childcare. Indeed, in 2014, the Department for Education found that only 40% of parent carers believe that the childcare providers in their area can cater for their child’s disability. Last year, the parliamentary inquiry into childcare for disabled children concluded that lack of staff skill and confidence was often the reason for parents,
“being subtly discouraged or simply turned away by a provider”.
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The Government will be unable to fulfil their pledge to ensure equal access to the new 30 hours’ free entitlement unless some action is taken to address this. Of course—and this is an argument that we had earlier this afternoon—it is important to be realistic and proportionate about this and to take scale into account as well. That is why my amendment applies to larger childcare settings, which should be required to have an early years special educational needs co-ordinator, who could actively promote the inclusion of disabled children and those with special educational needs.
The best way in which to achieve the skill levels and the highly skilled workforce, which we would all like to see, is through a workforce that in most cases is qualified to level 3. We need to do that within a realistic timetable; I completely understand that—but the best way in which to do it is through a national workforce strategy, drawn up in conjunction with the sector, which sets out the actions that need to be taken to strengthen the quality and capacity of the workforce over the next five years, including things such as progression pathways, both for new and existing entrants. Can the Minister say what steps the Government are taking to develop a strategy for expanding and improving the quality of the early years workforce, and when such a strategy may be available?