Margaret Hodge
Speech to Social Market Foundation
Labour’s ambitions for children in their early years has leapt up the political agenda because it encapsulates so clearly and strongly our vision and our values for exercising political power in Government.
And as we translate those principles through our programmes for the early years, we divide in a well-defined way from the Tories and their political approach to the role of the state in the family.
For the left, driven as we are by a belief in equality of opportunity and fairness of outcome, the knowledge that the early years of a child’s life are crucial in determining the outcomes for children when they grow up, means we must focus our energy and resources on the early years.
Feinstein’s research shows us that if we do not support children and families in their early years a child’s potential will be lost to the influence of social class, parenting in the home and the mother’s educational attainment level. Poor children who show good cognitive potential at 22 months fall behind rich children who show poor cognitive potential at 22 months by the time they start school.
And if we really do want to abolish poverty in a generation we need to invest as much in improving children’s life chances through the services they access as we do in supporting the family’s income through the tax and benefit system. The effective investment in early years education, care, family and parenting support and health, matters as much as the investment in poor families through tax credits. That is why the Chancellor set up the Child Poverty Cross-Cutting Review which reports this summer- to ensure that tackling child poverty is the task of each and every department.
For the Left our belief in gender equality also drives our determination to develop early years’ and childcare services. If women really are to be free to choose how they balance their lives between work and caring for their children then we must develop enough high quality, safe and affordable childcare which will support those choices.
This is not about women dumping their kids or transferring responsibility to the state for that most important job of bringing up their children. It’s about supporting parents to enable them to give their children the best start. Good quality early years’ services complement good quality parenting. They do not replace it.
Good quality early years services enable poor mothers to lift themselves out of poverty and into work and thus help them to provide a better and richer environment for their children. And good quality early years services are not simply about supporting the right of women to work; they are about supporting their responsibilities to their children by providing places where children can develop socially and where all parents (whether they work or not) can find networks of friendship, advice and support which helps to make them better parents.
For the Left investing in the early years is also a way of ensuring that we maximise the potential of all adults in the workforce. If we support the work-life balance of both mothers and fathers through the provision of childcare, we enable all employers to make the best use of the most talented people in the labour market.
So our assertion that individual opportunity is inextricably linked with economic success finds its expression in the development of services for children in their early years.
For the Right the agenda is different. They believe that the early years remain the private concern of families, with the state only intervening when things go wrong – if the child is at risk of harm or if the child has a disability. So building an early years’ infrastructure is seen as interfering in the private rights of parents. And for the right, slashing public spending and cutting taxes takes precedence over developing childcare services. So even in his acknowledged and open statements – as opposed to his private and closed speeches to the IEA – Oliver Letwin would cut £1/2 billion from children’s services by 2008.
Before Labour came into office there was no childcare strategy. Before Labour came into office there was no Sure Start programme. Before Labour came into office there was no universal nursery education for all 3 and 4 year olds.
Now, 6 months early, we have delivered free part-time nursery education for every three and four year old in England. Now we have created over 1 million new childcare places for 1.8million children – exceeding the target we set ourselves and providing places for 200,000 more children than we promised.
Now we have opened over 1000 new neighbourhood nurseries – the biggest investment in childcare since the Second World War, providing new childcare places in deprived areas within the timeframe we set ourselves. And we have over 500 Sure Start programmes up and running in the most deprived communities in the country.
The evidence on the impact of this investment is beginning to emerge.
A Sure Start programme in Corby has succeeded in reducing the number of children entering school with an SEN statement by 10%. There has been an 11.6% increase in library membership among Sure Start parents in the Church Street Sure Start in Westminster. There has been a 27% increase in breastfeeding rates since 1998 in one of the Sheffield Sure Start areas; in the Whitehaven Sure Start in Cumbria 25% of known smokers stopped smoking during pregnancy. In a Leicester Sure Start, emergency referrals to Social Services in the Sure Start district have been cut by 40% whilst in Hailsham East the child protection re-registration rates are down from 8% of 0-3 year olds to 3% of 0-3 year olds. And in Scunthorpe, in one year alone, 56 people were supported back into work through the Sure Start programme.
When we look at our national evaluation, the results are equally impressive. Children who start pre-school with a strong risk of low cognitive development greatly enhance their potential when they benefit from an early years offer which is of high quality, with highly qualified staff working in integrated early years settings. In our comprehensive study the percentage of children at risk of low cognitive achievement reduced from 40% to 26% after they had enjoyed time in a good quality early years setting.
So we are moving in the right direction. Our interventions are unlocking individual potential and the growth of childcare places is helping parents balance their work with their childcare responsibilities.
Where should we go from here? We have said that our longer-term 10 year goal is a children’s centre in every community. Children’s centres will be different in different communities. There are different needs in rural and urban areas, in rich or poorer areas, in areas where schools have developed extended services and in areas where the private and voluntary sector play a key role. Local communities working with their local authorities will need to develop local solutions to the needs of children and families.
But our vision of a children’s centre has certain features. A children’s centre will provide integrated early years education and childcare ; it will offer its services throughout the working day and throughout the calendar year. Other services could include support for families through the provision of community health workers like health visitors and midwives and through the contribution of family support workers working with families in their home; they could also help parents to move back into work or to develop their skills and centres could provide a facility to support other childcare providers in the community with their training and development.
We have achieved much since we launched the National Childcare Strategy in 1998. But we do still have a long way to go. For too many families accessing good quality, affordable childcare is still a distant dream. So how do we transform our vision into a reality and what else do we need to do to improve children’s life chances and to support the choices we want for parents?
I recently went to Sweden. I came back full of envy at the scale of their investment in the early years. They spend 2.5% of GDP on the early years of children’s lives; we spend 0.5%. It took them 20 -30 years to develop their infrastructure; we are impatient to move more quickly. And their investment in services is matched by their more generous settlement for parents with better and longer paid leave for both mothers and fathers.
And providing that support to parents, particularly after the baby is born has to be part of what we are about. Again we have introduced great improvements; we have extended maternity pay and maternity leave; we have introduced paid paternity leave and we have opened the door to more flexible working hours with over 1 million people now taking this up. The DTI, under the leadership of Patricia Hewitt, is consulting with parents, family groups, unions and business, to find out how we in Government can best support parents in the choices they make in balancing their work and family responsibilities. I will be taking part in those discussions, and I and Patricia are keen to look at these issues in more detail over the next 18 months.
There is no doubt that all the evidence and research tells us that the role of the parent is critical to the first year of a child’s life. In my view, we should be working towards parents having the opportunity to stay at home for the crucial first year of their child’s life. And that opportunity should be open to both fathers and mothers. Much is said about the rights of parents; but all too often not enough is done to support both parents to exercise their rights and thus fulfil their responsibilities to their children All the research confirms the important role fathers – as well as mothers - play in their children’s lives; yet too few fathers take time out of work in the first year of their child’s life to care for their baby – this is partly a result of pay differences between men and women, partly a result of social norms and expectations . Even in Sweden where paid paternity leave is much more generous, only 35% of fathers choose to take that leave.
Of course any extension to existing benefits would need to be affordable. But one possibility we can, and I think we should consider, could be to extend paid maternity leave for a further 6 months. However we should not naturally assume that this role falls on the mother alone. Parents themselves, not Government are best placed to decide who should stay at home and care for their own child. This is an important factor we will need to bear in mind as we consider any extension to financial support.
But Government and employers should be working together to develop more opportunities to help more fathers take time to care for their very young children. For example measures such as reserving a portion of leave that could only be taken by fathers – ‘daddy leave’ may be one way to encourage fathers to spend more time at home. I am sure that we can work with employers to do this in a light-touch way. Some of the best employers already offer leave and entitlements to fathers as well as mothers. With my lifelong commitment to gender equality I know that we will only make more progress if we enable both men and women to share the responsibility for caring for their children. Some already do; Many more want to, but our culture and our public investment does not always support that. It is time that it should.
There are financial constraints on what we as the Government can do. As we build towards a universal framework there are difficult choices to be made at each turn. Should we focus investment on the extension of paid maternity leave or would other financial incentives be more appropriate? Should we continue to target the expansion of early year’s services at poor families or should we evolve a more universal offer? How much should we spend on demand side subsidies by extending the childcare tax credit system and how much should we spend on the supply side by subsidizing the creation of new places? Should we grow numbers quickly or should we focus on only growing quality early years services? How should we balance what is free with what we can expect parents to pay for?
All these are tough policy challenges which we are considering as we decide what we deliver with the very generous spending settlement we got from the Chancellor in the last budget – a 17% real terms growth in early years services every year until 2008.
Let me share with you some of the ideas which I am thinking about. In his speech to the NAHT a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister said he saw the early years as a new frontier for the welfare state. This was a seminal but little reported statement. I believe we need to move to a new, defined and coherent phase in children’s lives from birth to six which the state has a clear role in developing alongside our other partners. We have the building blocks in place with our framework document: Birth to Three Matters and with the Foundation Stage.
This isn’t about teaching tots. It’s about giving proper recognition to what makes for a quality experience which can support not just a child’s cognitive development, but their emotional, social and physical development too.
It’s not about undermining the role of parents. Far from it. We know from all the research evidence which was brought together for us in one research study by Charles Desforges from Exeter University that good parenting in the home is more important than anything else in determining children’s outcomes. What we need to do is support parents and complement their efforts.
So in creating this distinct phase we have to recognise that we need to develop a highly qualified workforce to deliver it. And therein lies another challenge. At present too often early years services are delivered by poorly paid and minimally qualified staff. And at present childcare and nursery education are seen as separate services provided by different people with different skills. Yet little children do not distinguish between care and education; they do not recognise the difference between playing and learning. Neither should we.
We should think about developing a new professional to respond to the challenges of the new phase, bringing together the best in teaching with the best in care so that the professionals can put together a really high quality integrated programme to support children in realizing their full potential. We have started to do that with the development of early years foundation and honours degrees. But until that cohort is grown we must ensure children’s centres employ a well-qualified graduate or teacher alongside other experienced care staff who understand child development and who can support the pedagogical offer that we make to children in children’s centres.
I am absolutely clear that if we really want to make the difference to children’s outcomes, we must ensure high quality early years services.
If quality counts and it does, how can we achieve our universal offer of a children’s centre in every community in a fast and affordable way.
We know that the free nursery education we have grown is mostly of a high standard. This is the first stage of our reform. The second stage must be to build on that free offer a greater flexibility which meets the needs of all families, and particularly those who work.
The way forward lies in developing the integration which comes from creating a distinct and integrated Early Years phase. Many local areas such as Manchester, Southampton, Cornwall, Camden, Islington and others are already providing this service- combining the free part-time education place with wrap around care on the same site. Some are bringing together innovative partnerships between the public, private and voluntary sectors to deliver it. Some are led by inspiring and innovative head teachers. But we need to look at how this can become much more universal practice.
This is an excellent opportunity for social entrepreneurs to act as intermediaries, helping schools to develop these new services. In this way we can really respond in a flexible way to the different needs of individual children and their families. We can build on the entitlement to free part-time nursery education to offer more to the children and families who want it.
Some families can contribute to the extra provision as they do now by paying for child care. Indeed 45% of early years’ services are presently privately funded by parents (with employers only contributing 2% to the total expenditure on early years’ care)
But there are other children from disadvantaged backgrounds who would benefit from extra hours or from starting in an early years setting at a younger age and their parents need to be subsidized so that the children access the services.
We want to develop a universal offer for all with greater support for the poorest.
And if we want to create children’s centres in every community we must build on what we have already got. That means nursery schools should be adapting and developing into children’s centres offering a full range of services. It means creating children’s centres from Sure Start programmes, Early Excellence Centres and neighbourhood nurseries.
And it means developing children’s centres as an integral part of many school sites. I have often said that schools are the most wasted and valuable resource in our communities, with the doors closed for much of the day and the gates locked for much of the year. Opening schools up so that they provide not just part-time nursery education, but a properly integrated early years service has to be part of our vision for the future.
That is the way in which we can construct a universal offer in an affordable way. That is how we can ensure a surer start for all our children. That must be part of our reform agenda for schools so that we build schools fit for the future.
Of course that presents huge challenges. We need to ensure that the head teacher can continue to focus on teaching and learning. We can do that by spreading the burden of responsibility to bursars and others in the school team, with small schools sharing such expertise. We need to ensure a continuing and strong role for the private and voluntary sector who can take on the task of providing many of the early years services on the school site. We need to break down the distrust and suspicion that exists between the various professionals who work with children in their early years and build a shared understanding that by working together they can build an integrated whole which is worth much more than the sum of its parts. And we need to build an understanding among all the professionals that building services around the needs of children is the best way of both including all children and raising standards in all schools.
And by developing integrated early years services on school sites we can bring together a richness of funding which will enhance the offer to parents and children. Funding from parents who can afford to pay for childcare. Funding through the tax credit system for low income parents in work. Funding from employers who want to retain their experienced staff and who will want to use the £50 childcare vouchers we are introducing next April to support their employees in paying for childcare. Funding from the Learning and Skills Councils for the training of early years professionals and for supporting the education of parents, either as they skill themselves for work or as they undertake courses which support their parenting skills in the home. Funding from Social Services as we build a strong preventative offer for disadvantaged children which will enable us to maximize the opportunities for them and minimize the risks to them. Funding from the health services as we bring the health visitors, the speech and language therapists in to support children’s development. The opportunities are immense and our task is to incentivise and cajole more schools into seeing the children’s centre as an integral part of the 21st century school.
I said that I came back from Sweden full of envy. That is true. But I also came back confirmed that our vision for the future is a better vision. The Swedes developed their pre-schools in response to women’s demand for childcare so that they could work. Our children’s centres marry the interests of children with the interests of parents. Opportunity for children linked with choice for parents. The best start for children with integrated services built around the child with affordable childcare for parents so that they can balance work with their childcare responsibilities. Our vision is a great vision. It commands enormous support. Our task now is to make it a reality in the lives of all families. And that we want to do.
