Affordable Childcare (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, it was a great pleasure and privilege to serve as a member of the Select Committee on Affordable Childcare under the sterling leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. I am proud that we have produced a report that prioritises the needs of the most disadvantaged children. That is going to be the main thrust of my comments this afternoon.

Childcare policy has always had to grapple with multiple aims: improving child development, narrowing the gap between the most and least disadvantaged, allowing parents to work, and possibly others as well. As someone who has long advocated early intervention as a way of improving social mobility, I am pleased that the report highlights so clearly the objective of narrowing the attainment gap. This recognises the tremendous potential of early education to enable children from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve their full potential and to break the cycle of inter- generational poverty and disadvantage.

Although I am sure it will not have failed to grab noble Lords’ attention that the title of the report is Affordable Childcare, the committee rightly took the view that childcare can be said to be truly affordable only if it gives both parents and the state value for money. The evidence we received suggests that existing spending on early education is not as effective as it could be in narrowing the attainment gap. The Nuffield Foundation’s recent Early Years Education and Childcare report finds that the effects of the 15 hours of free early education provided to three and four year-olds and the most disadvantaged children has been relatively modest so far. The free entitlement provision currently provided has very welcome but short-term effects on disadvantaged children’s cognitive development, but these effects largely disappear by the time the child starts primary school.

As so many noble Lords have already said in today’s debate, this is a long way from the potential of high-quality early education. Large-scale studies in the UK and abroad have demonstrated that early education has a dramatic and positive effect on everything from GCSE attainment, likelihood of attending university and lifetime earnings to the likelihood of having a criminal conviction. Moreover, they show that these effects are larger for disadvantaged children. By age three, disadvantaged children are nearly a year behind in intellectual development compared with their more advantaged peers. Early education offers precisely the chance for us to rectify these inequalities before they grow larger still.

It is true, as we have already heard this afternoon, that if it is not combined with a good home-learning environment, the effects of early education can be limited. As Professor Cathy Nutbrown, author of the Nutbrown review on childcare qualifications, memorably said: “The 15 hours”—of free entitlement—

“cannot make up for all the other hours in the week”.

Although the committee recognised that early education alone cannot remedy the many forms of disadvantage that children from low-income families face, good-quality early education can have an impact far beyond the classroom. As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, the committee heard that the best childcare centres not only provided quality sessions in the classroom but acted as a resource for parents. These childcare providers worked closely with parents, sometimes making home visits and building partnerships, to ensure that the beneficial aspects of early education could be sustained in the home.

However, as the report makes clear, this is not the sort of childcare that most children are currently receiving. Childcare in the UK is provided through a mixed model that we have already heard about this afternoon and which can sound rather complicated and jargony. In what is called “maintained settings”—that is, nursery classes in primary schools, nursery schools and some children’s centres—childcare is provided directly by the state, while others are provided through the private, voluntary, and informal sector, which other noble Lords have already referred to as the PVI sector.

Some 60% of three year-olds and 96% of disadvantaged two year-olds accessing free early years entitlement do so through the PVI sector. Although the maintained settings in disadvantaged areas were found to be equal or better in quality than their counterparts in more advantaged areas—a point already made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley—the obverse is true in the PVI settings, where those serving disadvantaged areas were of markedly lower quality compared with PVI settings in advantaged areas. The committee was rightly at pains to emphasise that there is good provision in the PVI sector. However, the evidence also showed that they were less effective at providing precisely the aspects of childcare that we know to be most important to a child’s development, which are high-quality interactions with staff and support for the child’s language and learning.

This is in part a matter of qualifications. Although the PVI sector is steadily improving, its lower quality reflects the remnants of a time when childcare focused primarily on quantity rather than quality. As a consequence, PVI settings have more lenient qualification requirements, and staff in PVI settings serving disadvantaged areas have particularly low levels of qualifications. For example, just 5% of paid staff in PVI daycare settings hold qualified teacher status. Echoing the recommendations of the Select Committee report, I urge the Government—both this Government and the next—once again to consider implementing the recommendations of the Nutbrown review to help support the sector in raising qualifications over time. Can the Minister give us any hope on this point?

At the same time, it is clear from the evidence that local authorities have not been able to ensure that PVI settings providing the early education entitlement are sufficiently funded, which clearly places them at a disadvantage compared to the maintained setting. My noble friend Lady Walmsley has already made the point that the playing field is certainly not level in the early years. The Select Committee heard numerous stories of PVI settings operating at a loss or cross-subsidising free hours with paid hours in order to make ends meet. Underfunding early education settings is a false economy; the data have demonstrated that early education rectifies social inequalities only if it is of sufficiently high quality. I strongly support the report’s call to end the underfunding of free entitlement hours and to tie funding to indicators of quality. The Government must ensure that the PVI sector has the resources it needs to improve if early education is to be an instrument of social mobility, as I wish.

There is good news, as the report makes clear. My noble friend Lady Shephard has already alluded to the fact that we have a ready-made tool to hand. I have previously strongly welcomed the extension of the pupil premium to early education. Starting next month, the early years pupil premium will give additional funding to settings that care for disadvantaged children so that they have the resources they need to provide high-quality care. This is an excellent development for which the Government deserve real credit.

The flipside of how the two sectors operate is that while the maintained sector tends to be of higher quality than the PVI sector, it also tends to lack flexibility. This is a point in which the committee was very interested. It is problematic, as for early education to have the impact I have described, it must be accessible for disadvantaged families. Lower-income parents are more likely to work anti-social or odd hours, and single-parent families, which are more likely to be impoverished, are particularly in need of flexibility. Though take-up of the early education offer has been very high, the minority who fail to take up the offer are some of the most disadvantaged families, and this lack of flexibility in maintained settings is part of the explanation.

For single parents, lack of flexible childcare can be a major obstacle to work. The charity Gingerbread found that childcare was an obstacle to working for all but 11% of single parents surveyed. In fact, more than a third of single parents had to use care from three or more providers. Too often, the complicated patchwork of childcare that single parents had to navigate meant that they had to trade down, as they put it, to less lucrative jobs or reduce the hours that they worked. As the committee found, the steep taper on subsidies for childcare means that even if single parents were able to work more hours, all or most of their additional income would go towards meeting childcare costs.

The situation need not be so bleak. The Select Committee was heartened to hear of instances where schools and PVI providers formed collaborative arrangements or partnerships to provide parents with flexible and high-quality childcare. Children receive high-quality early education in a school setting and wraparound care in the PVI setting. Even if schools do not have the capacity to expand the number of early education places they offer, they can still make sure the places that they offer are accessible to parents working anti-social or odd hours. I hope that such instances of collaboration can be replicated throughout the country. What steps do the Government plan to take to encourage this?

Finally, too often childcare is entirely inaccessible to disabled children. According to a survey by the recent parliamentary inquiry into childcare for disabled children, 41% of parents reported that their children did not access the full 15 hours of free entitlement, meaning that the early education offer is failing to reach some of the children who most need it. Just 11% of local authorities report having sufficient provision for disabled children. Even when childcare is available for disabled children, it can often be exorbitantly expensive. As we have already heard, an alliance of childcare and disability organisations reported that families of disabled children pay eight times more in childcare costs than do other families. Given this, it is clear that the current cap on costs that can be claimed back is set too low. What steps are the Government considering taking to help those families?

I end by repeating my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, to other committee members for such stimulating and at times vigorous discussions, to our professional advisers, and to the excellent committee staff.