Early Years Development and School-Readiness

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I will focus on early intervention and school-readiness. In 2013, Home Start UK, working with the Department for Education, undertook a pilot programme over a two-year period called “Big Hopes, Big Futures”. The report that emerged from the pilot showed that, in 2014, there was a 19% gap in achieving a “good level of development” between children on free school meals and their classmates. Action for Children’s most recent report shows that, in the past two years, there has been improvement but by only 1%. Ofsted’s assessment in 2015 was that the gap between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers, in terms of early years development and school-readiness, was not closing.

Why are we not getting results? I had a quick look at some of the Library briefing papers on poverty in the UK and on early intervention from the Library. We have Healthy Child programmes, Healthy Start and Public Health England’s seven national priorities, and we are getting support from health visitors and family-nurse partnerships, so why are we not getting the improvements that all of us wish to see?

We can make a difference, but solely increasing free childcare hours should not be seen as a panacea. Families supported by the “Big Hopes, Big Futures” programme saw an improvement of between 25% and 33% in their children’s school-readiness for language, cognition, behavioural adjustment, daily living skills and family support. Not only did that programme directly affect the children, but it helped the parents in many ways, from improving their physical and mental health to improving their skills and knowledge of early years and child development, as well as their work-readiness.

If we know the impact of those schemes, why are two out of every five children in deprived areas lagging behind their classmates on measures of child development? That is true around the country and true in my constituency of Great Grimsby, where 34% of children—more than 400 children—are not reaching a good level of development by the age of five. The answer is not all about academic achievement, because everything from the ability to make friends and form good relationships to understanding feelings form part of what it means to be school-ready.

A study undertaken in 2000 found that socio-emotional and behavioural development help to improve a child’s “teachability”, and do far more than a traditional simplistic focus on reading, writing and arithmetic would. The “Big Hopes, Big Futures” report cited international studies that demonstrate the “pivotal” importance of family support in the transition from home to school. It recognised that many families in the “deprived” category have multiple needs, and that helping them requires complex intervention-based solutions. That is why I am surprised and disappointed that a scheme in my constituency that has existed since 1995 to provide exactly those sorts of solutions was first of all wound down to a narrow perinatal pilot scheme and then closed in March this year, owing to a lack of funding.

I know that I only have a little time left—well, not any time at all—but I will extend my speech anyway before I get told off. I will just mention the funding, because there are issues around where pupil premiums are spent and whether they are really making a difference, and around the reductions in and changes to the early intervention grant—that funding was reduced to a figure 20% below the original 2010-11 allocation. It also included a specified amount for education places for disadvantaged two-year-olds, but because it was not ring-fenced by local authorities, that money did not have to be spent in that way. Subsequently, the funding was subsumed into a dedicated schools grant; the payment of the remaining early intervention grants was transferred into the business rates retention scheme; and the remaining £150 million was centralised into the DFE for adoption and reform grants. We need to ensure that that funding gets to the appropriate areas and schemes that can actually help disadvantaged children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

All I can say is that we want to provide that as soon as possible, because we understand the need for providers to prepare so that they can deliver the full 30 hours in 2017—it is in the “urgent” in-tray at the moment.

I will develop my points further and answer some of the questions that have been asked. On take-up, we will publish a workforce strategy shortly. Speech and language is absolutely important. If a child arrives at school and cannot communicate or recognise that those squiggly things on a page are words, and that words are used to form sentences, they have got a problem. One of the things the early years pupil premium is there for is for those disadvantaged kids to get extra funding—about £300 a head—and the nurseries can make a discretionary decision on how to spend that to ensure that those kids do not arrive at school already behind.

[Melanie Onn]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gyimah]

I will not take any more interventions, because of the time.

We have introduced reforms to improve the standard of literacy in the early years, which has included awarding grants, for instance through the National Day Nurseries Association’s literary champions programme, which supports practitioners to provide a high-quality, literacy-rich experience for all children. In 2015, 80% achieved the expected goal in communication and language, compared with 72% in 2013.

All of that sits in the broader context of life chances. School-readiness cannot be divorced from the broader discussion of life chances. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister set out his vision for improving life chances, and the Government want to transform the life chances of the poorest in our country and offer every child who has had a difficult start the promise of a brighter future.

We are already transforming lives. Since 2010, there are 449,000 fewer children living in workless households. The early years foundation stage framework is improving the quality of early education and care for young children, and our most recent results show that 66% are achieving a good level of development at that stage. A number of hon. Members touched on that point. It is worth noting that 66% is an increase of 14.6 percentage points in the past two years. The quality of settings continues to improve, with the highest proportion ever—86% of settings—judged good or outstanding in their most recent Ofsted inspections.

We know that some of the poorest children are already behind their peers by age three, before they start school. Such children miss out in the number of words they speak, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton pointed out, although the proportion of school children eligible for free school meals who achieve a good level of development is increasing—it was 51% last year, compared with 45% the year before. However, I will be the first to admit that we still have a long way to go.

Obviously, in considering school-readiness and life chances we also need to take into account what happens in the health sector. A number of hon. Members touched on that. All children aged from two to two and a half are offered a universal health and development review by a health visitor, which includes checking a child’s communication development and referring families to more specialist support if necessary. One thing that I introduced when I became the Childcare Minister was an integrated review for children who are not in early years settings, so that health visitors could recommend and introduce parents to other support services that they might need.

To touch on a point raised by the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), we also published “What to expect, when?” so that parents know what they can do to support their children’s development in the early years. It is easy for Government to think that we have all the answers, but children, especially in their early years, spend a disproportionate amount of time at home with their parents, so parents need to understand what good development is and what they can do to influence it. That is what our guide is meant to achieve.