Early Years Development and School-Readiness

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. The way in which a child develops in their early years has a huge influence on every aspect of their lives, including their future economic wellbeing, educational attainment and health. More poignantly perhaps, a child’s early years development is key to their emotional development and their ability to sustain positive and meaningful relationships. Yet according to the Department for Education’s most recent early years foundation stage profile results, one in three children starts school without having achieved the expected level of early development.

To our shame, but perhaps not to our surprise, the likelihood of falling behind is much higher among the poorest children. In my constituency of Rotherham, 38% of children—almost four in 10—are not reaching a good level of development at the age of five. In fact, Rotherham ranks in the bottom 25%. How can four children in every 10 in my constituency be arriving for their first day of school unprepared to learn, socialise and thrive? It is appalling that we have a system where the postcode a child is born into can determine their readiness and preparedness on their first day of school. How can we have failed children to such an extent that their future chances of success have already been determined even before they begin formal education? I find the situation deeply frustrating, because it is something that this House could prevent with the right interventions.

Parents are the first mentors and role models for their children. They have a strong influence on their learning and play a fundamental role in helping their child develop. For a number of reasons, however, some parents simply need a bit of extra guidance on how to positively interact with their child. Through my Dare2Care campaign to prevent child abuse, I know that parents from all backgrounds are calling for support. There seems to be an assumption that people innately know how to be parents and have all the necessary parenting skills and that a parent is inherently skilled and ready to deal with even the most serious issues their child could face, such as sexual or online abuse.

During my roundtables, I heard from parents, charities and academics, and they all asked for support, including well-funded Sure Start centres at the core of every community, providing flexible, trusted parenting support; targeted support for parents who may be struggling to cope or may not be confident in their own abilities; and reviews of every existing point of intervention in a child’s development, including using the personal child health record or red book.

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

I completely agree that parents need much more support to break cycles and give young children much better opportunities and life chances. Does the hon. Lady also agree that in certain areas support is available, but is not promoted or accessible? In my county, there is a lot of support, but the courses are too expensive, the hours are not appropriate and nobody knows about them.

[Sarah Champion]

I completely agree with that, and it goes back to my original point about the postcode lottery, which cannot be fair. Every child in this country needs the best start.

The Government also need to run awareness campaigns highlighting the tell-tale signs of abuse. Tomorrow evening we may have a new Prime Minister, but can the Minister please tell us whether he still plans to take forward the Government’s life chances strategy? Will the strategy include action to provide parents with the support they are asking for to protect children from physical, sexual and online abuse? Will the strategy look at giving parents the tools to enable them to face the challenges their children have to endure? Will he look at every available existing opportunity, from Sure Start centres to health checks to free childcare, and outline how each intervention can be used to support parents? Finally, will he please tell us today whether the Government will use the opportunities created through the strategy to take action in the early years and improve the life chances of all children? The strategy should especially focus on the most disadvantaged children, because every child should have the opportunity to be the fully empowered citizen they deserve to be.