Childcare

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would say to the noble Lord, first, that nothing is yet off the table. As I just said, my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families is considering all options. I am not aware of any research or evidence showing that quality is deteriorating; indeed, our childcare ratios are among the lowest in Europe.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, while the number of children with special educational needs and disabilities is going up, the capacity of childcare settings to support them is going down. According to Coram, only 21% of local authorities have sufficient capacity to meet their needs. Can the Minister say what the Government are doing to ensure that there is sufficient childcare provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities, given that the Government themselves have acknowledged the vital importance of early years inclusion to long-term outcomes?

Disabled Children: Support Services

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think I mentioned our starting point in response to the original Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, which is that part of our challenge is building up trust with parents who have children with a disability. We believe that by having much clearer bandings around provision, so that we reduce some of the regional inconsistencies in the system, and by requiring mediation as part of this, we will reduce confrontation. That is absolutely our intention, but we do not have a closed mind on this. We have held more than 153 consultation events and they are growing all the time. We are very keen to hear from parents on what they think will work.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the Disabled Children’s Partnership, to which many noble Lords have referred, points out that the Green Paper does not answer what may be the biggest question for many families: how will councils, schools, the health service and others be held to account if they do not meet their legal duties to provide appropriate support for disabled children and their families?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right, and she will be aware that just over 50% of councils inspected by Ofsted got written statements of action, which means they have significant weaknesses in their arrangements for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Obviously, we are planning to improve the system, but we are also planning to improve accountability through new inclusion dashboards for 0 to 25 year-old provision. We hope that that will give us a timely picture of performance that can be used to create a self-improving system.

Covid-19: Effect on Education in Deprived Communities

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I apologise, but I caught only part of my noble friend’s question. I think I understood him to say that a child’s background does not have a great impact on their outcome. The evidence does not support that. We are very pleased that the disadvantage gap decreased between 2011 and 2019 by 13% at primary level and 9% at secondary level, but it is clear that children from disadvantaged backgrounds do less well in education—hence our emphasis on levelling up.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister update the House on what discussions she is having with the independent school sector about partnerships with state schools to support less advantaged students? Does she agree that, while individual collaborations are always to be welcomed, her department has a role to play in brokering systemic and sustained programmes that could utilise online capacity for learning to ensure that support is targeted on those areas most in need, rather than on schools that are geographically close?

School Openings: January 2022

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not sure that the House would want me to go through all the plans, but the top line we have learned—I think we knew this before, but we know it more vividly now—is that the safest place for children is to be in school. On digital connection, we have distributed more than 1.35 million devices to ensure that children can be connected to education remotely, but we also funded the Oak National Academy, which is providing excellent online resources that can be used both in a classroom and at home.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, given what we know about the crucial role that ventilation plays in the fight against the spread of Covid in classrooms, might the Government reconsider their commitment to fund the provision of air filtration devices only for SEND and AP schools, rather than all schools? Does she not agree that it should surely be a priority to ensure that all schools can access this crucial mechanism for protection, not just those that happen to have some budget spare?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness’s tone is a little harsh in saying “budget spare”. We are talking about making sure our classrooms are safe for children, which is why we prioritise the distribution of devices to children with special educational needs and children in alternative provision. Indeed, beyond CO₂ monitors, we have disrupted 1,000 ventilation devices to those schools and launched a marketplace where schools can buy purification devices at the best prices.

Education: Music and the Arts

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, we heard again this weekend that the Government are considering further limiting the study of creative arts degrees because of their lower salary outcomes. Does the Minister agree that salary data is not the only way to assess value, even economic value, as it ignores differences in local labour markets and degrees that lead to low earnings but deliver high social and cultural value? With almost half of creative businesses reporting workforce skills gaps, is it not reasonable to assume that creative graduates will provide tangible fiscal value through labour in this high-growth sector, not to mention their contribution of future skills and creativity to the broader innovation economy?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that we need to look at qualifications more broadly than simply the financial and earnings potential of those careers. However, I am sure she will also agree with me that we need to meet a significant skills shortage in STEM and related subjects. I hope she will be pleased that the Government are bringing forward a T-level in craft and design which has been developed with employers.

Education: Industrial Strategy

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bull]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the role for further education colleges in the delivery of the Industrial Strategy.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interests as set out in the register.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, as we place a much greater emphasis on skills and professional technical education, further education colleges have an increasingly key role to play in delivering the skills needed to support our industrial strategy. They form part of our skills infrastructure, delivering the full range from basic skills to high-level technical training. They are key to delivering existing professional technical and apprenticeship training, and will be important to the delivery of T-levels and the national retraining scheme.

[Baroness Bull]

My Lords, industrial strategy investment in skills is welcome but the sums are tiny alongside the £7.4 billion set aside for research and development. Innovation is vital, but so is a skilled and adaptable workforce. Is the Minister concerned by Augar’s report of shrinking numbers enrolling in colleges at technician level, declines in adult learning and a 45% fall in spending on adult skills over the last decade? Does he agree that investment in further education would not just address skills shortages across the economy but support social mobility by tackling stubborn inequalities of income and opportunity?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I recognise the pressures that FE funding is under and we are looking at this carefully ahead of the spending review. Further education is a driver of social mobility, providing a wide range of education and training for both young people and adults. For example, we know that a level 2 apprenticeship boosts earnings by 11% and a level 3 apprenticeship by 16%. They can provide a second chance by engaging adults who are furthest from learning and the labour market, providing the skills and training that they need to equip them for work.

Schools: Free School Meals

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

It is certainly incumbent on parents to set an example of good nutrition and diet in the home. I know of a number of schools that operate cookery classes and cookery clubs for parents. Indeed, my academy trust used to do such a thing. It is something that we need to keep as a priority.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, a new clinical service at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital has found that 70% of children with ongoing health conditions are from families living with food insecurity. It is even seeing the return of rickets, a disease of malnutrition and poverty. For these children, high-quality free school meals may be the best reliable source of nutrition. Given that we know that children who go hungry are more likely to experience health issues in later life, does the Minister agree that ensuring high-quality free school meals is about not just preventing hunger but preventing food insecurity leaving an indelible mark on these young people’s lives?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I agree with the noble Baroness that nutritious food is essential for children. That is why that is set out clearly in the food standards. We are working to understand more about food insecurity by spring 2021.

Equality of Opportunity for Young People

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, it is a depressing fact that there are now 500,000 more children living in poverty in the UK than there were in 2012. With so many young people starting from this position of early disadvantage, ensuring equality of opportunity is more important than ever, and I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for providing a platform to air these issues today.

Being born into poverty has a profound and enduring effect on the opportunities that will be both available and attainable in later life. Privilege may be an accident of birth but the propulsion that it provides, throughout the life course, is not.

Children from disadvantaged families have the odds stacked against them from the outset. By the age of three, they are likely to be 18 months behind the children of more affluent parents. In areas of high deprivation, up to 60% start school without adequate speech, interaction and communication skills. This early disadvantage accumulates: if you are lagging at age five, you are six times more likely at age 11 to be behind in English and 11 times more likely to be behind in Maths.

The terrible truth is that, by the age of five, 40% of the overall gap between disadvantaged 16 year-olds and their better-off classmates has already been set in train, and it continues throughout the educational journey. Only 26% of free school meal students go on to higher education, compared with 43% of their more affluent peers. Just 5% win places in the most prestigious institutions and, for those who do, drop-out rates are a third higher.

Early disadvantage continues to exert its insidious influence on employment prospects, career progress and earnings potential. A degree will certainly make a difference, but students from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to be in work six months after graduation, they will be earning less and, as they are less likely to have gone to a Russell group university, they will not be enjoying the 40% earnings premium of those who have. Even when disadvantaged students go on to gain a prestigious first, they are still likely to earn around £7,000 a year less than more privileged graduates with identical results. The recent State of the Nation report says:

“Being born privileged in Britain means that you are likely to remain privileged”.


Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison, authors of The Class Ceiling, go further, describing privilege as a,

“following wind … an energy-saving device that allows some to get further with less effort”.

It is not that the upwardly mobile cannot progress, as we know that they do, and it is not that they will never reach the top; it is just that they often have the wind against them. Their analysis in The Class Ceiling of Labour Force Survey data confirms that, showing that only 10% of people from working-class backgrounds will climb the steep social ladder to the highest professional, managerial or cultural occupations. It would be easy, and it would certainly be easier on our consciences, to put that down to merit—to justify it on the basis of talent alone—but research shows that this is not the case. Unless we believe that talent is reserved solely for the middle classes and above, we have to admit that something has gone wrong.

Education ought to be the great equaliser, but all the challenges of disadvantage are compounded through our twin-track education system: one track for 94% of UK children and another for the remaining 6%. That part of the system employs one out of every seven teachers in the UK and the spend on students’ education is three times higher—all underpinned by fees that are now, on average, 50% of the median UK household income. Pupils at these schools mix with a peer group of equal privilege—the beginnings of a valuable network that will support them in their future careers—and they benefit from a vast range of extra-curricular activities and facilities, such as theatres, sports fields, drama and art, all of which help cultivate character, confidence and cultural capital.

To those of us who regret falling arts provision in state schools, it is bitter-sweet to see how frequently fee-paying schools sell themselves to parents on the basis of their outstanding arts provision. These schools fully understand the multiple benefits of arts engagement—discipline, resilience, empathy and creative thinking, for example—but they also understand the value of cultural capital in high-level careers: the contribution it makes to that elusive quality of “fit”, not just to getting in but to getting on. All that is borne out by the statistics: 48% of A-level grades in independent schools were A and A*, compared with a national average of 26%. Their pupils win 43% of the offers from Oxford and 37% of the offers from Cambridge. They also continue to dominate the professions: 74% of judges, 51% of journalists and 71% of top military officers are privately educated. Even in those fields that we think would be genuinely meritocratic, we see the same discrepancies. One-third of British Olympic medal winners in 2012 went to fee-paying schools, as did 42% of the 2016 BAFTA winners. Those are a lot of statistics, but it is hard not to conclude that our twin-track education system risks entrenching privilege more than ever before.

This matters for three reasons. First, educational credentials matter more than ever before. Secondly, it risks perpetuating inequality far into the future. If these schools were more diverse, society’s leaders would ultimately be drawn from a broader cross-section of the population, able to bring wider perspectives to the processes of decision-making. Thirdly, if there is an education system that is so successful in developing potential and opening up opportunities, should it not be available to everyone, especially those young people who need it the most?

Despite successive Ministers and Prime Ministers making it a priority, inequality is a wicked problem that is not going away. So what might the Government do? First, invest more in early-years education, which has a direct effect on the adults that children become. We know that children’s centres lead to better outcomes, yet up to 1,000 have closed over recent years. Can the Minister confirm when the promised review will be completed? Will he also consider the Sutton Trust recommendation that early-years teachers be given qualified-teacher status?

Secondly, the Government should lead a national conversation about how to harness the best qualities of independent schools, reimagining how the advantages they confer could be shared more equitably and articulating more clearly the role they should play in advancing social mobility. There are excellent examples of partnership in place, but there is a lack of definitive best practice and thought leadership to shift the status quo. The Social Mobility Commission’s report promises more detailed recommendations. Can the Minister say when those will be available?

Lastly, perhaps one of the reasons progress on social mobility has stalled is the absence of any imperative to monitor and report on socioeconomic diversity in the workforce. In January the Government published guidelines on how employers might do that, but their use is currently entirely voluntary. It is a well-worn truth that we measure what we value and we value what we measure. Given that, does the Minister agree that the time is right to move to the compulsory measurement and publication of social mobility data, particularly in the highest-level professions? Only then will we know whether our efforts to equalise opportunities for young people are having a genuine impact on the opportunities available to them in later life.

Social Mobility: Regional Attainment Gap

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, in addition to the pupil premium we also have an enhanced pupil premium specifically aimed at that most vulnerable group. One of my personal missions has been to increase the opportunities for care leavers to attend boarding schools, where, according to a small study in Norfolk, their educational outcomes showed a dramatic improvement.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the report also draws attention to the importance of and lack of funding for early years education and centres. The Government’s 2017 report, Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential, indicated that in areas of high deprivation between 40% and 60% of children arrive at school when they are not what is classified as school ready. What are the Government doing to address this lack of funding for early years education?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we are investing more in child care support than any other Government—around £6 billion for the year 2019-20. This includes funding for our free early education entitlements, on which we plan to spend £3.5 billion this year alone. The noble Baroness will also be aware of the great efforts we are making around phonics, which are leading to a dramatic improvement for young people. Some 163,000 young children are now able to read at a higher level; that is more than the population of Norwich.

Children: Welfare, Life Chances and Social Mobility

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for securing this debate, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to focus on this critical issue through the lens of arts and creativity in the early years.

There is a mass of evidence to support the idea that high-quality early years arts interventions have long-lasting effects on children’s development. I am grateful to Ruth Churchill Dower, who has done so much work in this area, for pointing me towards the significant body of research that now exists across multiple disciplines— neuroscience, cognitive science and developmental psychology—in the UK and internationally. This evidence supports the contention that engagement with arts and culture at the earliest stage of a child’s development, which I will refer to as “early arts”, can significantly enhance the child’s educational readiness and overall life chances.

Yet it seems clear to me that these concepts have been neglected in educational early years and even arts policies. King’s College London—an institution in which I declare my interest as an employee—undertook an investigation into 70 years of arts policy directed at young people. It found a surprising lack of any attention to the early years, despite clear evidence from other areas of policy that early intervention is crucial in shaping later outcomes in life.

I shall focus on the ways in which early arts engagement contributes to young children’s preparedness to enter school, but I will also touch on the contribution it makes towards a child’s personal and social development and the consequential long-term benefits for society.

The early years foundation stage includes expressive arts and design as a subject, but the framework is designed so that the learning areas can be taught predominantly through games and play. This misses the potential of arts not as a subject but as a means of learning—a means that research shows may have a clear advantage over other methods in that arts are already a major form of play for children, who naturally sing, dance and make things up. Therefore, the arts represent motivating and interesting activities and contribute to deep, lasting learning experiences.

Some nursery schools have taken advantage of this and are actively supporting delivery of all the early years learning goals through arts activities. For example, problem solving and numeracy are addressed though concepts of space and shape in visual arts or dance; knowledge and understanding of the world can be developed through exploring different national cultures; and physical development is supported through playing with materials—sculpting—to develop fine motor skills and through music, dance and movement to develop gross motor skills. Communication, language and literacy are supported through storytelling and shared dances, and dancing helps to develop the fine motor skills which are needed in writing. All of the above encourage social interaction, positive group behaviours and critical thinking skills.

The Government’s 2017 report Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential highlighted the importance of young children arriving at school with strong foundations in place, yet we know that in areas of high deprivation between 40% and 60% of children start school with levels of speech, interaction and communication that are of sufficient concern for a child not to be considered school-ready.

A US study published in January this year suggests that early arts can help to address these challenges. The research focused on 265 children between the ages of three and five in the Philadelphia area, all of whom were engaged in the Head Start programme. Noble Lords contributing to this debate will no doubt be aware of the Head Start programme, which promotes school readiness in young children from low-income families in the United States. Some 197 of the children took part in a pre-school arts-enrichment programme alongside the regular Head Start offer. Both groups’ programmes included arts-based activities, but the important thing is that the arts-enriched group took part in 12 additional 45-minute arts sessions every week. School readiness was evaluated at the beginning and end of the pre-school year and, not surprisingly, the results showed that, compared to their counterparts, the arts-enriched group demonstrated greater growth in school readiness and greater gains in self and social awareness.

That second finding is consistent with existing evidence that early arts programmes enhance social and emotional development. This may be because children are not only introduced to the concept of self-expression through art but are also encouraged to explore and communicate their feelings and ideas through painting, stories or creative movement. That stimulates them to articulate their thoughts and practise communication skills, and we know that this has significant value in the early years, when young children need the chance to express themselves without fear of failure or feeling that they are going to be judged.

Given all that, it is surprising not to see more government policy directed towards achieving these aims. The default policy lever has always been to build arts into the school curriculum—as we have heard, this is a good thing in and of itself—but that is too late to generate the specific benefits that would derive from early-years engagement. A robust network of Sure Start centres would offer a ready-made infrastructure to support this kind of arts-integrated early education.

So I ask the Minister: what are the Government doing to support early engagement with the arts, not just as a subject to be explored in its own right, although that is important, but as a way of generating the educational benefits that I have described—benefits that will increase the welfare, social mobility and life chances of young people throughout the UK?