Children’s Education Recovery and Childcare Costs Bridget
Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab) I beg to move,
That this House notes it is a year since the resignation of the
Education Recovery Commissioner Sir Kevan Collins; condemns the
Government’s continued failure in that time to deliver an ambitious
plan for children’s recovery, including supporting their mental
health and wellbeing; is concerned that the inadequate attention
being paid to...Request free trial
Children’s Education
Recovery and Childcare Costs
(Houghton and Sunderland
South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes it is a year since the resignation of the
Education Recovery Commissioner Sir ; condemns the Government’s
continued failure in that time to deliver an ambitious plan for
children’s recovery, including supporting their mental health and
wellbeing; is concerned that the inadequate attention being paid
to childcare, both for the youngest children and around the
school day, is allowing the attainment gap to widen and costs to
soar for parents at a time when there is significant pressure on
household finances; and calls on the Government to match Labour’s
ambitious plan for children’s recovery, including measures to
keep childcare costs down for parents while the cost of living
crisis continues.
Children’s voices are rarely heard in this place, but today I
want to put them right at the centre of our discussions. With
half-term over, I want to wish the very best of luck to all of
the young people sitting exams this week and in the weeks to
come. They deserve all of our good wishes, but they deserve far
more than that. They deserve to be at the heart of how we think
about our country and how we think about the Britain we want to
build.
The last two and a half years have been an extraordinary time for
all of us—for families, and for schools, colleges, nurseries and
universities. I pay tribute to the staff right across the
education sector, including teaching assistants, university
lecturers, school caretakers, admin staff, childminders, catering
staff, everyone who teaches in our schools and colleges,
headteachers and nursery workers. So many people deserve
recognition, and all parents know it, so I place on record again
Labour’s thanks to them for all that they have done.
It has also been an extraordinary and challenging time for our
children. After all, they only get one childhood, and although
experts have lined up to tell the Conservative party how much it
matters to put in place a recovery plan for their education and
wellbeing—not just for their learning now, but for their
futures—still this Government are failing them. That failure and
neglect are even clearer today when the Education Secretary
cannot even be bothered to turn up to debate the action we need
to secure our children’s futures. He can spend endless hours
touring broadcast studios, praising his lawbreaking boss, who has
lost the trust of the British people and his own Back Benchers,
but he cannot find time to be here with us today to debate how
our children recover from the greatest disruption to their
learning and lives in peacetime.
It is just over a year since the Prime Minister’s own expert
adviser, Sir , resigned from his post as
education recovery commissioner. Sir Kevan’s own words on why he
felt that necessary were sadly prophetic:
“A half-hearted approach risks failing hundreds of thousands of
pupils.”
He went on to say:
“The support announced so far does not come close to meeting the
scale of the challenge and is why I have no option but to
resign.”
That is exactly what happened. Sir Kevan repeated his warnings
after the autumn Budget, describing the continued lack of an
ambitious plan for our children as “incredibly disappointing” and
warning that the “meagre measures” the Education Secretary could
squeeze out of the Chancellor were a “false economy” that would
cost our country dearly in the long term. That warning has been
echoed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Education Policy
Institute, front-line teachers, parents and so many others. The
Education Secretary is fond of telling us that he has been
“studying the evidence” but when are Ministers going to start
acting on it?
(Eltham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of funding for education
under this Conservative Government started long before covid came
along? Funding in my schools on average is down by 6.3% since
2014-15. Does not that show that it is not just covid—this
Government have consistently been cutting our children’s
education?
My hon. Friend is completely right. We have seen year-on-year,
real-terms funding cuts per pupil over the last 12 years. I find
it incredible that Ministers expect some degree of gratitude for
rolling back funding to 2010 levels by 2024-25—[Interruption.] If
the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North () has something to say, I
would welcome hearing it.
(Stoke-on-Trent North)
(Con)
I’ll tell you later.
That is very generous of the hon. Gentleman—very generous indeed.
I am sure we will all be waiting eagerly to hear his
contribution.
Let us not forget how important education recovery should be to
the Government, and how much it matters to children, to families
and to their futures, to our economy, to our country and to all
our futures. Almost 2 million of our youngest children have never
known a school year uninterrupted by covid. Students sitting
their GCSEs this summer lost around one in four days of
face-to-face teaching in year 10. Parents, headteachers and
nursery managers who I met across the country told me about
delays to children’s speech and language development, about how
children struggle to use a knife and fork, about a loss of
confidence in our young people, and about their frustrations at
being unable to get children the help and support they so
desperately need. They have also warned, as has Ofsted, about the
explosion in mental health conditions among our young people. At
national level, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has been clear
that failing to support our children’s recovery now will cost the
economy an estimated £300 billion. What bar for evidence do those
warnings not meet? Who else needs to tell the Government about
the crisis our children face before they finally cotton on? What
more reasons do Ministers need to act to protect our children’s
futures?
The Government have failed our children. We see in the behaviour
of Ministers a heady blend of three distinct approaches to the
responsibility of Government. Sometimes they do nothing, or
sometimes they do not turn up. Sometimes they actively make
things worse and sometimes they belatedly accept that the
Opposition are right, but not before families and children have
paid the price for their pride. The first two sadly dominate
their approach to our children. It has been a pattern throughout
recent years. Time and again they have treated our children as an
afterthought. We saw that when the support that children needed
to learn at home was delayed, and when exams were thrown into
chaos for not one year, but two. We saw it over 18 long months of
inaction on school ventilation. We saw it when Government Members
voted to let our children go hungry during the holidays
and—perhaps most powerfully—we saw it when pubs were reopened
before our schools.
We saw it in the winter when the Government did nothing for
months, even after suppliers warned that the national tutoring
programme was at risk of catastrophic failure, and we saw it this
spring when we discovered that the Conservatives’ lack of
interest in our children’s outcomes had gone so far as to pay
tutors to sit in empty classrooms. We saw it in March when I
asked the Secretary of State whether he believed that the
delivery of the national tutoring programme had been a success.
Even he was unable to provide a simple yes. He knows that it has
been a disaster and he is not even here to defend it. We see it
now as millions of secondary school students face exams without
any support to recover the learning that they have lost.
(Eastleigh) (Con)
I remind the House that, if we had followed the Leader of the
Opposition’s advice, children would have been out of school for
even longer. The Government have put £5 billion into catch-up
costs for teachers, schools and pupils. From the shadow Secretary
of State’s magic money tree, how much is the Labour party
committing, compared with that £5 billion, in its manifesto?
I must pick up the hon. Gentleman on his first point, which, I am
afraid, is simply not right. It is just not accurate, but we know
that the Government have a habit of this kind of thing. On
children’s recovery, I suggest that he looks at the work that the
Government commissioned by Sir , who we can all, right across
the House, recognise as an expert in this. The long-term damage
to our economy and the costs that our country will face if we
fail to get this right now is £300 billion—that is the hit. I
assure him that everything that we have set out has been fully
costed and I will happily send him a copy.
(Mitcham and Morden)
(Lab)
If my hon. Friend would like to find a way to find the £500
million needed on catch-up for children in our schools—not that
she needs my suggestions—she could look at the Chancellor giving
£800 to people who own two properties. If that was not happening,
it would raise £660 million.
My hon. Friend raises an important point, not least because,
throughout the pandemic, we saw vast quantities—billions of
pounds—of Government waste, with personal protective equipment
literally burnt because the Government had failed to deliver what
was necessary. Money was lost to fraud and money was lost in
waste. We take our responsibilities on public spending incredibly
seriously.
(Kingston upon Hull West and
Hessle) (Lab)
Perhaps another pot of money for the Government to look at is how
every pound spent in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on tax
fraud delivers £16 back. If the Government were really serious
about raising some extra money for important issues such as our
children, perhaps they could look at tax fraud, which they seem
to be quite ignorant of at the moment.
My hon. Friend is right to highlight that, as with all these
things, it is a question of political priorities. A Labour
Government would have prioritised our children’s recovery from
the pandemic. They would have been at the heart of what we needed
to see as we started to rebuild our country. That is what we
would have delivered from government.
(Eddisbury) (Con)
I will take the hon. Lady back to the closure of schools during
lockdown. We now know that that had a profound impact on many
children, for a host of reasons. I know that the Secretary of
State has said that, in hindsight, the way it was done was
perhaps not the right thing to do. First, does she agree with
that? Secondly, does she agree that schools should become part of
our essential national infrastructure so that we do not close
them again should an unfortunate pandemic happen again?
I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman and I
appreciate the expertise that he brings to these issues. He
raises an important point about how we plan for the future and
look at what worked during the pandemic and what needs to be done
differently. I am glad that the inquiry into our covid response
will now consider issues around children and schools. That is
right and important.
I have a significant degree of sympathy for the very difficult
decisions that Ministers faced right at the start of the pandemic
when confronted with an unknown virus. We can all remember how
terrifying that was; I think it was the right decision when
Ministers acted in the way they did. What I find inexcusable,
however, is that, from that point, there was no proper plan to
get our children back to school as quickly as possible—to use all
available methods to do that as safely as possible. I find it
incomprehensible that we still do not have a proper plan, but I
recognise the hon. Gentleman’s point about the need to ensure
that, in the event that we see such a terrible situation again,
our children are put first. I am afraid to say that they were not
during this pandemic.
We see this as schools face eyewatering costs for their energy. A
primary school on Merseyside recently contacted me with its
electricity bills from April last year and April this year. For
April 2021, its electricity bill was £1,514. For April 2022, its
electricity bill was £8,145—a rise of more than 400%. Where are
the Government, as those costs soar and our schools need help to
protect children’s learning from rising crisis, to ensure that
energy bills are not being paid by cutting back on staff,
activities and summer trips, and the quality of children’s school
lunches? Nowhere. Again and again, we see a Government not
leading the way but leaving schools to work out 100 different
solutions on their own.
(Hornsey and Wood Green)
(Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She mentioned
school meals. Does she agree that it is a disgrace that only
4p—four pennies—has been spent in terms of an increase on school
meals per portion since 2014?
My hon. Friend raises an important point. It is incredibly
important that all our children receive healthy nutritious meals
while at school, but also through the holidays. We know so many
families are under significant pressure at the moment.
The Government are not just failing our children at school. They
are failing our families, not merely through months of inaction
but through conscious choices, time and again, to make life
harder still for working people. It took five months for the
Chancellor to come to this House and set out the windfall tax for
which Labour had been calling all that time—five months when
families were forking out £53 million a day. Let us not forget
that the wider cost of living crisis we face today is a crisis
made worse in Downing Street: income tax thresholds frozen,
council tax up, national insurance up, petrol costs through the
roof, food prices soaring and universal credit support slashed.
Again and again, when the Chancellor wants to raise money, he has
reached for the pockets of working people.
I have been hoping that the Chancellor’s change of heart on the
windfall tax might be an omen that the Education Secretary and
his Minister might start to heed some of our calls. I cannot but
welcome, for example, the Government’s belated conversion to the
belief that headteachers in our schools, rather than executives
and overseas HR firms, are best placed to ensure children get the
tutoring they need. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and
Urmston () made that point last summer,
when she raised our concerns that the national tutoring programme
was being taken out of the hands of education experts and given
to a multinational HR company. She asked the Secretary of State
and his predecessor whether they were happy with the contract and
could provide assurances that it was not a cost-cutting exercise
to the detriment of our children’s learning. Those assurances
could not be given and the contract has failed. At the current
rate of progress, all secondary school pupils will have left
school by the time his Government deliver the 100 million
tutoring hours promised.
The reason the Government veer to and fro from inaction and
impoverishment to political larceny, with the Education Secretary
cherry-picking his evidence, is because they lack any sense of
purpose. As one of the Minister’s colleagues said yesterday, the
Government lack a sense of mission. They have a majority, but not
a plan. Not only does the Secretary of State lack a vision of
what growing up in this country should be like, but he lacks a
vision of what going to school in this country should mean. That
is clear from the way he and his Government have treated our
children since the start of the pandemic and the absence of
ambition for their futures. It is clear from the lack of care
given to the soaring cost of childcare and it is clear from the
way they propose to treat our schools.
Taking our children first, as Government should, and as Labour
does, children’s education has been through three phases during
the pandemic. First, when schools closed in March 2020, we asked
for daily updates, for information on support for home learning
and on how free school meals would be delivered, and the evidence
underpinning the Government’s decision making. We wanted to know
there was a plan. Sadly, as the National Audit Office found,
there was none. Secondly, when it came to school reopening, we
made suggestions. We called for ventilation and for nightingale
classrooms. We put forward ideas and demanded a plan. Once more,
no plan. Thirdly, when we needed a plan for children’s recovery
and their futures, what we got was a hollowed out, cut-price
offer that is failing our children.
Labour has set out a very clear plan for how we would support
children’s recovery. We would match, not temper, the ambition of
our young people. If there were a Labour Government right now,
there would be breakfast clubs and new activities for every
child: more sport, music, drama and book clubs to boost time for
children to learn, play and socialise after so many months away
from their friends. There would be quality mental health support
in every school, answering the plea of parents and teachers to
get professional support to young people now. There would be
small group tutoring for all who need it, with trust put in
schools to deliver from the start, and ongoing training and
development for school staff, because we know that investing in
our children’s learning means investing in our education
profession, too. And there would be targeted investment so that
teachers and lecturers can provide extra support to the children
and young people who need it most. Critically, our plan would
increase the early years pupil premium more than fourfold to
drive up the quality of early education and keep costs down for
parents.
(Liverpool, Riverside)
(Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way to tackle
inequalities is to invest in early years? I have first-hand
experience of how Sure Start centres made a significant impact on
families and children, particularly in marginalised and
disadvantaged areas. Does she agree that the Government need to
do much more to invest in early years on the scale that Labour
invested?
My hon. Friend is exactly right. The last Labour Government
transformed early years—we put it first and made it an absolute
priority—and I assure her that the next Labour Government will do
the same again. Early years childcare and education in this
country is too often unaffordable, unavailable and
inaccessible.
(Hampstead and Kilburn)
(Lab)
My hon. Friend has mentioned the IFS a few times. Is she aware
that IFS research last month found that only four in 10 parents
of pre-school-aged children had even heard of tax-free childcare
and that 40% of families who qualify did not apply because of the
Government’s “confusing eligibility rules”? Does she agree that
in the middle of the worst cost of living crisis on record and
rocketing childcare costs, the Government have let children down?
The Minister has to explain what he is doing to address these
failures to deliver affordable childcare.
My hon. Friend has consistently campaigned on issues around
childcare over many years and I am grateful to her. She is
exactly right to raise those concerns, as well as the work that
she did in exposing how the Government knowingly and deliberately
underfunded the early years entitlement—the 30-hour offer—to
parents. I pay tribute to her for that.
The Government are failing parents and children alike, because it
is during the first few years that the attainment gap opens up
for our children. It is also the first chance to step in and
support the children and families who need it. We all see the
difference that early support makes—when it happens and when it
does not. In power, Labour acted decisively to support families
and children, tackle the disadvantage and close the gap. A
generation grew up with children’s centres. A generation such as
mine were supported after 16 with the education maintenance
allowance. I saw in my community the difference that those
changes made. I see it in the lives of young people who grew up
with that advantage, with the support that it unlocked. Some 20
years later, the evidence around attainment and early
intervention is clearer and stronger than it was even then, yet
the Government have been almost silent. Even before covid,
children on free school meals were arriving at school five months
behind their peers. That gap is set to grow. It is utterly
shameful in Britain in 2022 and a damning indictment of the
Government’s 12 years in power.
Right now, our children are being failed again in this cost of
living crisis. When parents cannot afford to feed their kids,
children are being failed. When parents cannot afford to take
their kids out for the day and cannot afford an ice cream at the
park or a ride at the fair, children are being failed. When mams
and dads do not see their kids in the evening or at the weekend
because they are working every hour that God sends to pay the
bills, children are being failed. When parents skimp on food and
are exhausted, without time and energy to spend with their kids,
children are being failed. And when the cost of childcare, not
just for two to four-year-olds but from the end of maternity
leave to the start of secondary school—I am talking about parents
being able to choose whether to go back to work; affordable
breakfast clubs; after-school activities so parents do not have
to rush back for 3 o’clock pick-ups; after-school clubs costing
more than women’s median wages; and parents paying over the odds
for each hour of childcare, because the Conservatives decided
that the Government would not pay the going rate for the places
they promised—is quite literally pricing people out of parenting,
children and families are being failed. That failure is not just
about the individual kids and the individual families failed by
this Government, although there are millions of them and that is
bad enough. Our whole country is failed when we let our children
down.
This Government have no plan, no ideas, no vision and no sense of
responsibility to our children and their future—the rhetoric of
evidence, but no reality. We have responsibility, ambition and
determination for our children. We would deliver the plan that
children need now, because education is all about opportunity—the
opportunities that we give all our children to explore and
develop, to achieve and thrive, and to have a happy and healthy
childhood. Through a broad and enriching curriculum and
education, we can foster a love of learning that stays with them
throughout their lives, turning our young people into the
scientists, musicians, entrepreneurs, sportspeople and, yes,
perhaps even the politicians of the future, generating ideas and
innovation that we cannot even dream of.
Education can transform every life, just as it transformed mine.
Growing up, we did not always have it easy, but I know that in
many ways I was very lucky: I had a family in which I was
supported and encouraged to read and where education was valued.
I was lucky to attend a great local state school at a time when
the last Labour Government were transforming education across our
country. My teachers were fiercely ambitious for me and my
friends because they believed in the value and worth of every
single one of us. I want every child in every school, in every
corner of this country, to benefit from a brilliant education,
supported by a Government who are ambitious for their future.
That is why we would make private schools pay their fair
share—not to tilt the system, as the Secretary of State claims,
but to support every child across our great state schools to
realise their ambitions.
Today the Minister has a choice. He could stand up and deliver a
speech that I suspect we have heard a couple of times before, he
could continue the hollow attacks on the last Labour Government,
despite no child today having been at school when we were in
office—or he could stand up and, like the Chancellor, admit that
the Government got it wrong. He could say that they should have
acted sooner, but that they will act now to match at last the
ambition of Labour’s children’s recovery plan and put our
children and their future first.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I suggest a limit of about eight minutes for Back Benchers, so
that we can give everybody equal time.
4.37pm
The Minister for School Standards ( )
I join the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South () in wishing all the best
to those who are sitting their exams in the coming weeks. It is
very good news that those exams are going ahead, and that so far
they seem to be going well. I also join the hon. Lady in paying
tribute to all in the teaching profession and all who work in our
schools to enable teaching. It was a real pleasure to take part
in Thank a Teacher Day a few weeks ago and visit schools up and
down the country that are supporting pupils well.
We all came into politics to help people to plot a path to a
better life. Members will not be surprised to learn that I
believe that one of the most effective means to achieve that is a
good education. Nothing is more important to a child’s future
than their education: a good education helps to ensure that all
children can fulfil their potential. We are committed to making
childcare more affordable and accessible to support parents, as
well as providing children with the best start in life.
Education recovery remains a top priority for the Government: it
is a key part of building back better, levelling up and making
sure that we are ready and skilled for a future in which the next
generation can prosper. Helping our children to recover from the
impact of the pandemic is one of the Government’s key priorities,
so we have committed nearly £5 billion to fund an ambitious and
comprehensive recovery package investing in what we know works:
teacher training, tutoring and extra education opportunities. It
is absolutely right that our support is especially focused on
helping those who need it most, including the most disadvantaged,
the most vulnerable and those with the least time left in
education, wherever they live.
Of the £5 billion, what proportion will be swallowed up by the
inflation in costs of energy for schools, rather than being spent
on teachers?
Mr Walker
The answer is none, because the £5 billion for recovery is on top
of the additional funding that we are putting into schools: the
£4 billion coming in for this academic year and the £7 billion
over the course of the spending review period. The £5 billion is
a targeted intervention specifically for recovery. I will break
it down in a little more detail. It includes £1.5 billion for
tutoring in schools and colleges, with which we will provide 100
million hours of tuition for five to 19-year-olds by 2024. That
is backed by extensive evidence that small group tutoring is one
of the most effective tools to support learning and accelerate
pupil progress.
Will the Minister give way?
Mr Walker
I will in a moment.
More than half a million courses have been started by pupils
across England, and regionally, the north-west, Yorkshire and the
Humber, the north-east and the midlands are leading the way with
the highest proportions of participating schools. Now I give way
to the hon. Lady.
I thank the Minister, who is always very generous. If he is
looking for something that actually works and has an extremely
strong evidence base, I hope he will note that, according to
evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation, oracy has a
greater impact on children’s progress than extending the school
day, small group tutoring, or any of the other elements that he
has mentioned in connection with the £5 billion. It was
disappointing not to see it included in the schools White Paper,
and I hope he will revisit the evidence, because if he wants to
use something that works, here is something that is ready to
go—“oven-ready”, one might say.
Mr Walker
We believe that oracy is very important as part of an overall
strategy supporting literacy, language and development in
schools. As the hon. Lady will know, our package includes
specific interventions in early language development. However, I
have engaged and will continue to engage with her in the oracy
all-party parliamentary group, which she chairs.
We have listened to feedback on tutoring, and next year we will
allocate all tutoring funding directly to schools, improving the
programme’s simplicity and flexibility. Great teaching transforms
children’s life chances, and we know that great teachers are not
born but made. That is why we are investing more than £250
million of additional funds to help provide 500,000
teacher-training opportunities through initial teacher training,
the early career framework, and our new suite of national
professional qualifications. Supporting teachers, including
headteachers, throughout their careers is fundamental to
delivering the best outcomes for children.
I thank the Minister for outlining the measures that the
Government are taking. When I was a special adviser at the
Department for Education, we were constantly hearing from members
of the profession about the difficulty of recruiting and
retaining good teachers to continue educational attainment
through primary and secondary schools. The £3,000 levelling-up
premium that has been announced is a vital tool in that regard,
but what else can be done to ensure that more good teachers enter
the system?
Mr Walker
My hon. Friend is right. It may have been during his time in the
Department that it ceased to focus purely on recruitment, and
pivoted to focus on retention as well. That was an important
intervention and an important change. While the levelling-up
premium is indeed a valuable tool in targeting support at the
areas where it is most needed, we also need to look at our
approach to teachers’ workloads, given that the work done before
the pandemic managed to reduce unnecessary workloads. We need to
look at our wellbeing charter, and we need to look across the
board at how we can support teachers. The investment in national
professional qualifications, supporting teachers who are
mid-career and on their way towards leadership, is a new
initiative which the Government have pioneered to ensure that we
are investing in members of the workforce not just at the start
of their careers, but throughout them.
(Reading East) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Mr Walker
I will, but then I must make a bit of progress.
The Minister is being very generous with his time.
The hon. Member for Eastleigh () made a good point about
recruitment and retention. Can the Minister tell us a bit more
about what he is doing specifically to support the retention of
these vital public servants, and, in particular, what he is doing
to deal with the loss of teachers in high-cost areas? In the area
that I represent, in Berkshire, housing and rental prices are
very high, but teachers do not receive any extra compensation for
that, certainly in Reading, and many heads are concerned about
the drift of teachers away from our area.
Mr Walker
The hon. Gentleman has raised an important issue. Our reforms of
the funding formula to ensure that schools are funded according
to the cohorts that they serve and according to their activity
are an important element in responding to it, although of course
they will take time to come through. However, it is also
important that we look at retention more broadly. As I have said,
the Department has recognised that in its move towards a
recruitment and retention strategy rather than just focusing on
recruitment as it traditionally did. I hope that the funds that
we are putting into schools this year—a £4 billion, or 7%,
increase—will allow them to deliver good pay rises, and will help
with teacher retention. Work with the School Teachers’ Review
Body is ongoing on that front.
Extra time is part of our strategy, and we are increasing the
number of hours in 16-to-19 education by 40 per student per year
from September 2022. In our schools White Paper we set an
expectation that all mainstream state-funded schools should
deliver at least a 32.5-hour week, supporting our ambition for
90% of primary school children to achieve the expected standard
in reading, writing and maths by 2030, and in secondary schools
for the national GCSE average grade in both English language and
maths to rise from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 in 2030. The parent pledge
set out in the schools White Paper further supports these aims by
making clear the Government’s vision that any child who falls
behind in English or maths will receive the right evidence-based,
targeted support to get them back on track.
I am sure the House will agree that the earliest years are the
most crucial stage of child development. We know that attending
early education supports children’s social and emotional
development and lays the foundation for lifelong learning, as
well as supporting their long-term prospects. That is why it is
so important that we address the impact that covid-19 has had on
the youngest children’s social and personal skills as well as on
their literacy and numeracy. On top of spending £3.5 billion in
each of the past three years on early education entitlements, we
are investing up to £180 million of recovery support in the early
years sector.
We will build a stronger, more expert workforce, enabling
settings to deliver high-quality teaching and helping to address
the impact of the pandemic. This includes up to £153 million in
evidence-based professional development for early years
practitioners—for example, supporting up to 5,000 staff and child
minders to become special educational needs co-ordinators and
training up to 10,000 more staff to support children in language
and communication, maths, and personal, social and emotional
development. That includes up to £17 million for the Nuffield
early language intervention to improve the speech and language
skills of children in reception classes.
Over 11,000 primary schools, representing two thirds of all
primary schools, have signed up, reaching an estimated 90,000
children and up to £10 million is included for a second phase of
the early years professional development programme in the current
academic year, supporting early years staff in settings to work
with disadvantaged children.
(Newcastle upon Tyne
North) (Lab)
The Minister reels off a lot of statistics, but the most
important factor he has acknowledged is how important the early
years are. He mentioned levelling up earlier, but the one issue
that the Government seem consistently to fail to recognise is the
impact that child poverty has on a child’s life chances and
opportunities. Will the Government acknowledge that without
tackling child poverty—which is on the rise, with a third of
children living in poverty in my region in the north-east—any
effort to invest in later stages education will be undermined,
and that they need to tackle child poverty first?
Mr Walker
Of course the hon. Lady is right in saying that we have to grow
the economy and drive up prosperity in order to support children
everywhere; I think that is something we can all agree on across
the House. We need to make sure that we are targeting support
towards the disadvantaged, and I have already set out that we
are. Of course, more broadly we all want to see a stronger
economy, and education can play a key part in that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Walker
I want to come on to the attainment gap, which has been
mentioned, but I will give way one more time.
(Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for giving way. The point that my hon.
Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North () makes is apposite
because we know that the vast majority of families picking up on
the tax credits to be able to use early years are from wealthy
households, and that a lot of families are being priced out of
early years childcare because of the cost. I am sure the Minister
would agree that the fact that nearly £2.8 billion-worth of tax
credits were unclaimed last year is a problem; if there is a
subsidy for childcare, we should encourage parents to take it
up.
Does the Minister understand how perplexing the situation is? If
it was a priority for the Government, we would see them investing
in telling parents about it. For example, the Government spent
£35 million on adverts about Brexit in last year, but they have
spent £150,000 in total on telling parents where they can get tax
credits to cover the cost of childcare. Does he understand the
concern about that disparity, and what is he going to do about
it?
Mr Walker
The hon. Lady makes a fair point. We do want to see better
take-up of the offers coming in, and the Under-Secretary of State
for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (), has been working hard on
that. Perhaps he will say a bit more about it in his closing
remarks, but I recognise the issue. Of course, we also provide a
lot of direct funding to the disadvantaged through the
two-year-old offer, as I think the hon. Lady will recognise.
We know that the covid pandemic has caused considerable
disruption to the education of our nation’s children and young
people. Evidence shows that that has been significant for all
people, in particular the disadvantaged, reversing the years of
progress we had seen in closing the attainment gap. The gap
between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers had
narrowed, both at primary and secondary levels, between 2011 and
2019, following the introduction of the pupil premium. Despite
the impact of covid-19, the latest pupil progress data published
at the end of March 2022 shows that we are now seeing good
progress for many pupils, but we know that certain groups and age
groups need more help.
Since 2021, the additional gaps in attainment created by the
pandemic appear to have reduced in primary maths and secondary
reading. Evidence shows that, on average, primary pupils
recovered around two thirds of progress lost due to the pandemic
in reading and around half the progress lost in maths. To
mitigate the impact on secondary pupils in key stage 3, we
committed to doubling the rate of the recovery premium for
secondary schools for the next two academic years from 2022-23.
That will help schools to deliver evidence-based approaches to
support the most disadvantaged pupils, from small group support
in reading and maths to summer schools.
We know that literacy is fundamental to children’s education. As
mentioned in the schools White Paper, since 2010 the Government
have placed the effective teaching of phonics at the heart of the
curriculum, introducing the annual phonics screening check in
2012 for pupils at the end of year 1 and incorporating phonics
into teacher standards.
(Wythenshawe and Sale East)
(Lab)
Are you in disguise?
Mr Walker
It is great to hear an Opposition Member paying tribute to my
predecessor.
In 2018 we launched a £26.3 million English hubs programme
dedicated to improving the teaching of reading, with a focus on
supporting children who are making the slowest progress. In 2019,
82% of pupils in year 1 met the expected standard in the phonics
screening check compared with just 58% when the check was
introduced in 2012.
Another Government initiative that helps academic performance, as
well as the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of children,
is the primary physical education and sport premium, which has
been in play since 2013 at the cost of £320 million a year, going
straight to primary schools. Will my hon. Friend reassure the
House that it will continue into the next academic year? Will he
go further in acknowledging the importance of great physical
education as a habit for life, within our schools and beyond, by
considering making physical education a core part of our
curriculum?
Mr Walker
My hon. Friend is extremely experienced in this space, and he is
a great champion for physical education and young people. The
Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member
for Colchester, who will be closing the debate, is working
closely with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social
Care and hopes to have news on this front before too long. I
recognise the importance of these issues.
In 2021, we launched the £5 million accelerator fund for English
as part of the Government’s education recovery package; the fund
is targeted at 60 local authority districts identified as most in
need of specialist intervention. To date, more than 430 schools
have been provided with funding to adopt DFE-validated phonics
schemes and the training to implement them successfully.
The Government continue to make sustained investment to support
the most disadvantaged pupils to recover lost learning. Building
on the flagship pupil premium worth £2.6 billion this year, the
recovery premium provides an additional £1.3 billion over this
and the next two academic years to help schools deliver
evidence-based approaches that will boost progress for pupils
with the most ground to make up.
(Birmingham, Hall Green)
(Lab)
Nearly 45% of children in my Birmingham, Hall Green constituency
live in relative poverty—more than double the national average.
An area of Sparkbrook in my constituency has the highest rate in
the region, a staggering 67%. Many of these children come from
families that are not in work, and other families rely on
universal credit.
Given the cost of living crisis, stagnant wages and the cut to
universal credit, this situation is bound to worsen
significantly. Does the Minister agree that the Government’s
current offer is not good enough for the 67% of children living
in poverty? Is it not time for the Government to seriously
consider expanding eligibility for free childcare, as well as
increasing the total amount of free childcare available to
families?
Mr Walker
The hon. Gentleman raises some important points in what I might
describe as an expanded intervention. We want to ensure that we
target support at disadvantage, and I am trying to set out the
detail of how we are doing that.
As I mentioned, from the next academic year we will maintain the
primary rate and almost double the rate for eligible secondary
school students, as they are further behind and have less time
left in education to catch up. We have also extended the recovery
premium to all pupils in special schools and alternative
provision, not just to those who are eligible for the pupil
premium, and we have doubled the primary and secondary rates for
these pupils in recognition of the higher per pupil costs
incurred.
This year, we have also published a new menu of approaches—
(Twickenham) (LD)
rose—
Mr Walker
I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention in a moment, if I may
finish this point first. As I was saying, this is making it
easier for schools to identify and embed the most evidence-based,
informed practices and interventions, which will have the
greatest impact on disadvantaged pupil outcomes—
rose—
Mr Walker
The hon. Lady mentioned the important work of the Education
Endowment Foundation, and she is right to do so, because the
EEF’s endowment, all those years ago, has proved very valuable
for the sector. It has built an evidence base on which everybody,
across parties and across different parts of the educational
community, can agree.
One really important intervention we were able to confirm in our
White Paper is the £100 million re-endowment of the EEF so that
it can continue its work, making sure that initiatives such as
the recovery premium and the pupil premium are as evidence-based
and effective as possible. I am now going to take the
intervention from the hon. Member for Twickenham () because I promised to do
so.
I thank the Minister for giving way. He talks about helping the
most disadvantaged and about the pupil premium. Will he
acknowledge that the pupil premium, which I am sure he will
acknowledge was a Liberal Democrat policy delivered in coalition
by us, has been cut in real terms since we left government and
the Tories took over on their own—by £160 per secondary pupil and
by £127 per primary pupil? Any recovery or catch-up premium is
being swallowed up by all the inflationary costs, because the
pupil premium has not kept up with inflation.
Mr Walker
Pupil premium funding rates are increasing this year by 2.7%.
They are reaching the highest level in cash terms that they have
ever been, and that is a proud achievement. Yes, the pupil
premium was agreed during the coalition Government, but we have
continued to invest in and support it, and we have added the
recovery premium on top of that.
rose—
Mr Walker
I have a lot to say, so I am going to make a bit of progress now.
I have taken an intervention from the hon. Lady already.
Regular attendance at school is also vital for children’s
education, wellbeing and long-term development. Our priority is
to maximise the number of children regularly attending school. We
recognise that the lessons learned during the pandemic must help
us to strengthen and improve the overall system, which is why we
recently published guidance for schools, trusts and local
authorities, setting out how we expect them to work together to
improve attendance.
The Secretary of State has also established an alliance of
national leaders from education, children’s social care and
allied services, who have taken pledges to raise school
attendance. That includes work by Rob Tarn, the chief executive
officer of the Northern Education Trust, a multi-academy trust
serving areas with high levels of disadvantage, to work with
other trust leaders to identify and disseminate best practice.
Alongside that, we are running a series of effective practice
attendance training webinars, which have been accessed by more
than 12,000 school staff so far. Our team of expert attendance
advisers also continues to work closely with a number of
multi-academy trusts and local authorities with high levels of
persistent absence to review their current practice and develop
plans to improve.
I am pleased to confirm that legislative measures to establish a
registration system for children not in school were included as
part of the Schools Bill introduced by Parliament on 11 May 2022,
which is currently in the other place. These measures will help
local authorities to ensure that all children are safe and
receive a suitable education. Through our attendance action
alliance, the Children’s Commissioner has also begun a review to
understand more about children missing education, and where and
why they may be falling through the gaps. She has consulted the
alliance on her initial findings, but her review is ongoing.
We know that the worries that children and young people may have
about their progress at school and how this affects their future
are important factors in their wider wellbeing, and subject
learning is part of what children and young people enjoy most
about school. That is why the additional support we have put in
place to ensure that children feel supported in their education,
and on track with their learning and wider development, is so
vital and integral to their mental wellbeing.
I wish to be clear that children and young people are not alone
on this journey and the onus is not on them to catch up; it is
something that the whole school and the whole education system is
looking to achieve together. It is our priority to support
education settings to do so. The things we are doing to support
schools are reflected more widely in our schools White Paper.
We have provided specific support for teaching about mental
health and wellbeing as part of health education. Taking part in
enrichment and extra-curricular activities is well known to
support children’s wellbeing, but we know that participation fell
during the pandemic. The longer, richer school week that we are
securing through the White Paper will help to ensure that all
pupils have the chance to have a wide range of experiences,
including in sport, music and the arts, and we are supporting the
expansion of opportunities to take part in specific schemes such
as the cadets and the Duke of Edinburgh award.
We are also updating our behaviour in schools guidance to support
schools to create calm, safe and supportive environments, which
are important to pupil mental health and wellbeing. The guidance
recognises that reasonable and appropriate adjustments may need
to be made for pupils and that schools may wish to ensure that
their staff are trained on matters that may affect pupils’
behaviour, including special education needs, disability or
mental health needs. The guidance also makes it clear that
following a behaviour incident staff should take into account any
contributing factors and whether a pupil has mental health needs,
and consider what support is required.
I am grateful to the Minister for his time. In a very difficult
incident in my constituency, a young boy was brutally stabbed—the
Minister may well have come across the case some time ago. I have
received from a retired teacher who used to be a local education
authority adviser a fascinating suggestion that I wish to put the
Minister: is it possible to include in personal, social, health
and economic education warnings about knife crime, and education
about its dangers and the combination of the threat of knife
crime with social media, which happened in the tragic case in my
constituency? It seems to me to be a worthy and important idea to
explore. It is complicated so I would not expect the Minister to
give an answer right now, but is he willing to write to me on
this important matter?
Mr Walker
I am happy to do that, and if it would be helpful, I would be
happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to follow up and talk through
that case in a separate discussion, because it sounds like an
important case.
To ensure that schools are able to put in place whole-school
approaches to mental health and wellbeing, we are providing £10
million to extend senior mental health lead training to even more
schools and colleges. That training will be available to two
thirds of eligible settings by March 2023 and to all state
schools and colleges by 2025.
The Government are expanding and transforming mental health
services for all, with additional investment of £2.3 billion a
year through the NHS long-term plan. As part of that work, we are
funding mental health support teams to provide specific support,
to make links to other health provision and to help to support
school staff to deal with issues. Because of the £79 million
boost to children and young people’s mental health support that
was announced in 2021, some 2.4 million children and young people
now have access to a mental health support team, and more teams
are on the way, with numbers set to increase from 287 teams today
to more than 500 by 2024.
I recognise that people throughout the country are worried about
the impact of rising prices, with many households struggling to
make their income stretch to cover the basics. Although we cannot
insulate people from every part of cost rises, we are stepping up
to provide support, as we did during the pandemic. This year
alone, we are increasing core schools funding by £4 billion
compared with 2021-22. That is a 7% per-pupil boost in cash terms
that will help schools to meet the pressures that we know they
face, especially in respect of energy costs and pay.
I recognise the strength of feeling when it comes to our
childcare system. We want families to benefit from the childcare
support they are entitled to, thereby saving them money and
helping them to give their children the best start in life. I am
proud to be part of a Government who have extended access to
early education and childcare to millions of children and parents
over the past decade.
In 2013, the Conservative-led coalition Government introduced 15
hours of free childcare for disadvantaged two-year-olds. So far,
this has helped more than 1 million children to get a much-needed
boost to their early education. To ensure that all children are
ready for school, all three and four-year-old children continue
to be eligible for 15 hours of free early education a week, and
nine out of 10 took up the entitlement last year.
In 2017, the Conservative Government announced 30 hours of free
childcare for working families, to save families up to £6,000 a
year. Because of that, thousands of parents have been able to
return to paid work or increase their hours, while saving
thousands of pounds a year. We have also introduced tax-free
childcare, which provides working parents with up to £2,000 of
support to help with childcare costs for children under the age
of 12. With universal credit, parents can claim back 85% of
eligible childcare costs, compared with 70% under the old
system.
We invest a significant amount of funding in early education and
childcare, including more than £3.5 billion in each of the past
three years on early education entitlements for two, three and
four-year-olds. In 2022-23, we have increased the hourly funding
rates for all local authorities—by 21p per hour for the
two-year-old entitlement and, for the vast majority of areas, by
17p per hour for the three and four-year-old entitlement.
rose—
Mr Walker
I give way to the hon. Lady one more time.
Many parents listening to the debate might have a simple question
for the Minister: what does he expect them to do with a child who
is under the age of two, so that we do not see women in
particular having to leave the workforce because no employer is
going to wait two years for them to have childcare?
Mr Walker
The hon. Lady raises an important point. As the parent of a
nine-month-old, I definitely recognise the challenge.
[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my
hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, refers to the support that
is available through tax-free childcare and universal credit, but
of course we recognise the challenge. I have to say that I do not
see anything in Labour’s plans that would fix it.
To support childcare for families with school-age children, the
Government are investing more than £200 million a year in our
holiday activities and food programme. The programme provides
free holiday club places, with healthy meals, enriching
activities and free childcare, to children from low-income
families, benefiting their health, wellbeing and learning. Last
summer, our programme funded free holiday places for, in total,
more than 600,000 children and young people in England, including
more than 495,000 children who were eligible for free school
meals. That means that hundreds of thousands of children from
low-income families are benefiting from healthy food and
extracurricular activities, thereby helping to level up
children’s educational outcomes, provide better nutrition and
improve their wellbeing, behaviour and social skills.
The Government are continuing to invest more than £200 million a
year in the holiday activities and food programme, with all 152
local authorities in England delivering the programme. We are
also committed to continuing support for school breakfast clubs.
The Department for Education is investing up to £24 million to
continue its national school breakfast programme until July 2023.
This funding will support up to 2,500 schools in disadvantaged
areas, which means that thousands of children from lower-income
families will be offered free nutritious breakfasts to better
support their attainment, wellbeing and readiness to learn. The
enrolment process is still open to schools that wish to sign up
to the national school breakfast programme.
We recognise that we must ensure that childcare works the best it
can for families’ lives now. The Government are committed to
continuing to look for ways to improve the cost, choice and
availability of childcare. With safety and quality at the heart,
as a first step we will consult on ratio requirements by the
summer to give providers more flexibility and autonomy to make
decisions about their settings and the needs of their children.
We will continue to work across Government to ensure that parents
are given the information that they need to access support from
tax-free childcare, universal credit, and other entitlements. We
will actively consider how we can ensure a sufficient supply of
childminders, giving more parents access to an affordable and
flexible type of childcare, as well as creating further
flexibilities to enable parents to be able to spend Government
funding on childcare that best meets their need.
The Government are committed to helping families and giving every
child the best start in life, and we back that with significant
investment at the spending review. We are investing £695 million
in the Supporting Families programme to provide targeted support
to 300,000 of the most vulnerable families. We are also providing
a further £600 million for activities and healthy food for
children in the school holidays, and we are delivering on our
manifesto commitment to champion family hubs. Family hubs bring
together services for children of all ages. We will invest £302
million to transform Start for Life and support local authorities
to create the network of family hubs in 75 local authorities
across England.
I am proud of our record in supporting children and young people
both before and during the pandemic. The Government have ensured
that supporting our children and young people is at the heart of
our recovery plans, with the latest evidence suggesting that real
recovery is taking place. Those on the Labour Front Bench have no
plan other than to keep promising more of other people’s money.
Nowhere in their proposed plans are detailed costings of their
proposed interventions on childcare. We will continue to follow
the evidence and provide investment where it makes the greatest
difference.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. Both Front-Bench speakers have been incredibly generous in
taking interventions. Some of those interventions have been quite
long, which has put a bit of pressure on time. That makes it even
more important that we help each other out, so that I do not have
to impose a time limit. The eight-minute limit has become a bit
more like seven.
5.07pm
(Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I am delighted that we are having this debate today, because,
frankly, it is long overdue. Indeed, in the past couple of years,
this place has debated wind turbines more than it has debated the
future of childcare in this country. We can all make the jokes
about hot air, but the reality is that our children deserve
better.
I want to focus my remarks particularly on this question about
childcare costs. According to the TUC, one in three parents with
pre-school children are spending a third of their pay on
childcare. The cost of a full-time nursery place for a child
under two—those children whom we do not seem to know what to do
with—has risen £1,500 over the past five years. The honest truth
is that these challenges are not about the pandemic. They
pre-empted the pandemic; they have been exacerbated by the
pandemic.
Our childcare system is more dysfunctional than the Home Office.
We have to ask ourselves what we can do to fix it. Having the
debate is the first step. Again, I want to declare that I am a
big fan of the “Derry Girls” and “Countdown”, but we have spent
more time, particularly in the Queen’s Speech, thinking about
privatising Channel 4 than we have about sorting out
childcare.
Childcare in this country does not work for the children,
especially if they are aged under two, because they do need more
than a packet of crisps and a pint of coke during the school
holidays. Parents face bills running to hundreds of pounds a week
for at least the first two years, often pricing all but the
wealthiest out of the workplace. Children from disadvantaged
backgrounds feel the pinch most of all. They are already 11
months behind their peers when they start primary schools because
many of them cannot be in childcare to get that early years
learning that we all said is so important. We know that that has
got worse during the pandemic, with 76% of schools reporting that
that cohort of children—the children from the poorest
backgrounds—needed additional support compared with the
pre-pandemic cohorts.
Even when the Government do invest in childcare, it does not get
any better, particularly if parents have a child who might need
care during the school holidays. Parents are spending over £800 a
year more for after-school care than they did in 2010, with the
average family spending more on these activities than they do on
their weekly shop. Little wonder that this childcare system does
not work for parents or for employers, who are losing talent from
our economy at a rate of knots. Some 40% of mothers have said
that they had to work fewer hours than they would have liked
because of childcare costs, and that figure rises to more than
half of women in households on incomes of less than £50,000.
This weekend alone, we saw evidence of a jump of 13% in women
aged 24 to 35 not working in the past 12 months. It does not take
a rocket scientist to work out who those women are, but it does
take a Government who want to prioritise families—I say families,
because we know that dads are getting a raw deal too. The mums
are disappearing and the dads cannot be there for their kids as
they want to be either.
The uptake of paternity leave in this country has dropped to a
10-year low, with only one quarter of new dads choosing to take
it. Let us be clear what they are taking: two weeks. Anybody who
has had a new-born knows that it takes a lot longer than two
weeks to work out what on earth to do with it. Just 27% of
eligible fathers are taking up that offer of just two weeks’ paid
leave, down from 170,000 in 2021, compared with 650,000 women who
took maternity leave, although many of them then faced the
discrimination of not being able to return to work. That is a
loss of 100,000 men compared with those who took paternity leave
in the previous year. The number is falling.
A separate study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Development showed that more than three quarters of men feel
there is a stigma to taking just those two weeks to care for
their children, let alone asking for flexible working. Where does
that stigma come from? I do not know. Maybe somebody could leave
a note on my desk to tell me why caring for children and wanting
to have a career is a bad thing.
Employers want to be able to offer these things, because
employers and businesses are ahead of the Government here. They
know that offering flexible working, helping families to work and
have a career but also be able to care for their children, is one
reason why many of their employees stay with them.
The current situation does not work for Government or those
running nurseries—those heroes we all know who look after our
children. National Day Nurseries Association data shows that the
Government is the biggest purchaser of places, but they are
frankly short-changing the industry hand over fist. Providers are
making a loss of £2 an hour on every Government-funded child they
take, forcing them to cut their margins, underinvest in staff and
overcharge other families to try to make ends meet.
Even when childcare is subsidised, it does not work. The
estimated shortfall in funding for a three or four-year-old is
more than £2,000 a year, and it is nearly £895 a year for a
two-year-old. Little wonder so many nurseries are going out of
business and childcare is increasingly becoming an indulgence of
the middle classes, rather than part of the infrastructure of an
effective economy.
In this debate, it is parents who we do not hear from in this
place most of all. I pay tribute to the amazing work that Joeli
Brearley and Pregnant Then Screwed, and people such as Anna
Whitehouse at Mother Pukka, are doing in giving a voice to real
parents. These are genuine comments I have had in the past week
alone:
“Nursery fees for two kids cancel out my whole wage. My employer
is consistently in the top 10 global best employers (they are
great) so if I can’t make it work, god knows how others do.”
“All my wage goes on childcare for two days a week, which works
out at the same price as rent for a flat.”
“I’m a teaching assistant. My monthly nursery fee for 4 days a
week is £300 more than my entire monthly salary—I’m lucky to have
a supportive family who help me with some of the cost, otherwise
I wouldn’t be able to work. I’m trying to complete my teaching
degree, make a career for myself and support my child, but my god
do this government make it so hard!”
“£1870 a month for 5 days a week for me to pay childcare to
return to work. More than I earn!”
“This summer it’s going to be a nightmare trying to work and find
affordable childcare for an 11-year-old, 5-year-old and
3-year-old.”
“I attempted to re-enter the workforce once my twins were in
reception—I had to give up as there was no childcare provision
during the summer holidays of 2021. I wasn’t expecting to still
be at home when the children were 7.”
“No one warns you or helps you pay £2,400 per month in childcare
so that you can go back to work. I’ve always been a career woman,
so why should we have to choose?”
“I have returned to work 4 hours a week to fit around my partners
working hours. If I returned to my normal hours I would take home
less than £10 a day, minus the cost of petrol. Totally ridiculous
that there is no help until the age of 3.”
“Cheapest nursery I found within walking distance of my flat was
£1603 a month!”
“The worst thing about this is that it is seen as the status quo.
A justification for pregnancy and parental discrimination. So we
get hit twice. No career and blamed for it too. I now work
freelance and when I was hired by a client in the same profession
for private work, they had assumed I had left an office to start
a family.”
The truth, though, is that those experiences are not the worst
thing—the worst thing is that investing in childcare is not a
loss leader; it is a benefit to our economy because of the
increase in tax take, the lower universal credit that is paid,
and the equality, prosperity and productivity it brings to us
all. Free universal childcare from the end of parental leave to
the start of school would bring £25 billion extra funding into
the Exchequer through those factors. That would cover 90% of the
additional cost outright. But instead of investing, we have a
Government murmuring about trying to cut corners by tweaking
childcare ratios. I say to the Minister—he and I have children of
a similar age—that, if he wants to take five kids of that age at
the same time, I will happily lend him mine so that we can see
just how possible that is. Our economic competitors recognise
that this is the wrong way round as well. Some people claim that
they have higher ratios, but we already have higher staff to
child ratios than other similar countries. We have 13 children
for every staff member in pre-school compared with six children
in Sweden and eight in the Netherlands.
As I said, there is money to spend on childcare, but this
Government are not spending it. It is our money as taxpayers.
Those tax credits could be a valuable part of helping parents to
make ends meet when it comes to childcare. The Government are not
telling people that they are entitled to tax credits, yet the
Government got back £2.8 billion alone last year in unclaimed
childcare tax credits. If the Minister needs people behind him to
go to the Treasury to demand that money back, I am with him,
because that money alone would pay for 500 million hours of
childcare as a first step towards having a universal system. But
I do not hear any evidence that the Department is going to claim
our tax money back so that our children can have that
childcare.
The truth is that we cannot solve the cost of living crisis
without solving the cost of childcare. We cannot have a
productive economy unless every single talented person can make
the right choice for their family about working life. A party
cannot claim to be the party of the family when it is abandoning
particularly mums but dads too. The Minister knows that he could
have support to do this, but we need it to be a priority, even
more so than saving “Derry Girls” and putting up the wind
turbines.
5.17pm
(Stoke-on-Trent North)
(Con)
I warmly thank the teachers, teaching assistants and support
staff of schools across the entirety of Stoke-on-Trent North,
Kidsgrove and Talke. I also send my best wishes to the students
on their upcoming GCSEs and A-levels. If they have worked hard
enough, and I am sure they have, they will reap the rewards in
the summer.
The Minister outlined a raft of figures—important figures,
because a serious amount of money has gone into education,
particularly to help with education recovery. Let us look at just
a few examples. There is the £400 million going into equipment
for remote education and the funding of £5 billion for the
catch-up education recovery plan, which includes the £200 million
a year holiday activities and food programme. That is a fantastic
scheme that not only provides a meal for students on the day but
makes sure that they have the physical and mental education that
is so important to making sure that those who have free school
meals, in particular, do not fall behind in the summer weeks; we
know from the statistics that, on average, it is seven weeks once
they start the academic year. Helping to bridge that gap is so
important.
We have seen in the great city of Stoke-on-Trent the Minister for
children and families, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester
(), hear the call for a family
hub. I am looking forward to rolling out family hubs across the
city, particularly in Tunstall town hall. They will not only help
parents, particularly those on low incomes, to get the support
that they rightly deserve and make sure they give every child in
their family the best start in life, but make sure that those
young people get the early years education that is absolutely
critical to a person’s future life chances.
On top of that, Stoke-on-Trent was awarded a priority education
investment area, which means that we are going to see not only
£30 million in additional funding, plus some more, coming to our
area, but a new specialist 16-to-19 free school and more
resources to ensure that the city of Stoke-on-Trent no longer
lingers in the bottom 20% for educational outcomes and
destinations.
In Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, we sadly face the
statistic of being 7th worst for children going on to higher
education. That is no fault of a Government but sometimes the
fault of a system that does not have in place the support network
for families to encourage a young person to take that big,
important step; they may well be the first in their family or the
first in a generation to take it.
I want quickly to talk about the holiday activities and food
programme. We have the fantastic Hubb Foundation, led by the
mighty Carol Shanahan OBE, who, as chair of Port Vale football
club, saw that mighty club win the Wembley league two play-off
final and had Robbie Williams for his home-coming concert at the
weekend. With her fantastic team, also led by Adam Yates, a
former professional footballer, she has supplied thousands of
opportunities for activities during every single school holiday.
The Minister for children and families was gracious enough to
come to Stoke-on-Trent South and Stoke-on-Trent North to see
those in action and to engage with Carol and Adam on the great
work they are doing. On top of that, at a time of national need,
they provided nearly half a million meals across the city of
Stoke-on-Trent to children and their families while we were in
lockdown. In 2021 alone, the foundation held 1,211 sessions, with
4,688 delivery hours, and provided 57,154 meals. That programme
is a UK-leading holiday activity and food programme, and I hope
that the Government will always recognise the fantastic work that
is done in Stoke-on-Trent.
We also have the fantastic Charlie Rigby, from the Challenger
Trust. Charlie has been working with local academy trusts such as
the Alpha Academies Trust, led by Simon French. They have come up
with a scheme where they will lock off £150 each year for all
students on pupil premium. That will give those students the
enrichment and extracurricular activities they rightly deserve
and need, and, Minister, the trust is simply asking for an extra
£600,000. We could then pilot the scheme further within the city
of Stoke-on-Trent to extend it beyond those students with pupil
premium and show the long-term benefit, as well as provide an
extended school day, which the Department knows I am a huge
supporter of.
I am also a big supporter of shortening the summer holiday to
help those childcare costs. In a report I did with Onward, we
estimated that that would save £266 each year to parents just in
childcare costs, not including any salary loss from parents
having to take time off work or no longer being able to be in
work, as well as helping to prevent students from falling further
behind, particularly those on free school meals. Those are the
types of things we should be considering.
I appreciate that you want me to stick to time, Madam Deputy
Speaker, so in summary, I heard the shadow Front Bencher and I do
not recognise their picture of education. I spent eight and a
half years in the classroom working in the state education
sector, both in Birmingham and in London, and I loved every
single minute of it. What I do not understand is why Labour
Members are yet to answer questions about why they were
anti-phonics for so long, why they were anti-Ofsted at the last
general election in which they were elected, why they are
anti-academies such as the fantastic Michaela Community School
led by the brilliant Katharine Birbalsingh, and why they are
anti-free school. Well, not all of them are. The hon. Member for
Bury South () was a big fan of this
Government providing a free school to the people of Radcliffe. I
know he warmly welcomed it at the time, when he was on the
Conservative Benches. I am sure that he continues to welcome it
on every leaflet he has put out in his local area since.
It is great to see that the Government are rolling out that
fantastic free school programme. We need far more. The Minister
knows that I want to know when wave 15 is coming, and it had
better be coming soon because I am desperate to make sure that we
have a new 11-to-16 school in Stoke-on-Trent, particularly for
the people of Ball Green and that area, which is not served
locally enough by a decent secondary school. We need to see some
of the best multi-academy trusts coming into the city of
Stoke-on-Trent, such as Star Academies and the Northern Education
Trust, and I hope that the Minister will assist me with that to
ensure that we see the changes we need.
Ultimately, this is a Government who are taking education
seriously. We know that if we get education right levelling up
will be a true success and all the new jobs that we are creating
across the country—including the nearly 2,000 that we have
already created since 2019 just from this Government alone, as
well as the 8,000 that Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which is
Conservative-led, has created in the past six years—will be
filled by Stokies, because they will get the best education. It
is this Government who are taking them seriously.
5.23pm
(Mitcham and Morden)
(Lab)
Both you and I know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that academies were
the policy milestone of a Labour Government, because we both had
the opportunity to vote for them and see them introduced. So I
suggest that we will take no lessons about academies from the
hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North ().
The Government repeatedly argue that the best way out of poverty
is work, and I for one would never disagree with that. I would go
further. I think it is morally important. It is important for
health. It is important for people’s children to watch them go
out to work. The rhetoric is only ever as strong as the practical
reality, however, and that reality could not be clearer.
Prohibitive childcare costs mean that ever more women are being
priced out of the labour market and out of the opportunity to
make a better life for themselves and their children. As we have
already been told, the average cost of a full-time nursery place
for a child under two has risen by almost £1,500 in five years,
and 40% of mothers now say that they have to work fewer hours
than they would like because of childcare costs.
Against that backdrop, I was delighted to take up an invitation
from the Social Market Foundation to join a new cross-party
commission on childcare, co-led by the hon. Member for
Weston-super-Mare (). Our aim is to analyse the
stark impact of poor childcare provision on wages and poverty,
and to consider cross-party the changes that are desperately
needed. Today’s debate is timely, as our first research was
released this week and reveals that women who had a baby in 2010
have in the decade since missed out on a staggering £70,000
almost. That is not their costs, but the income they have lost
relative to what would have happened if they had remained
childless—£70,000.
But should we be surprised? The charity Pregnant Then Screwed
found that more than a third of mothers who return to work make a
financial loss or break even, and that 62% of parents said that
their childcare costs were the same as their rent or mortgage. If
they cannot afford the childcare costs of returning to work, or
if those costs outweigh the salaries they would bring home, work
simply does not pay—no matter how many times the rhetoric is
repeated at the Dispatch Box.
Meanwhile, this weekend’s The Sunday Times revealed that Britain
shamefully leads the way when it comes to net childcare costs,
which represent 29% of income. That compares with 11% in France,
9% in Belgium and just 1% in Germany. We are statistically one of
the most expensive countries in the world in which to raise
children. The problem is getting worse: the reality is that the
number of women aged 25 to 34 who are not working has jumped by
13% in the last year.
The cost to women, children and society is about more than money.
It is about missed promotions and career progression for women
who cannot afford to return to work. It is about the
consequential worsening of gender inequality. It is about the
lost learning and the widening of the attainment gap because of
the unaffordable costs of before and after-school clubs.
Meanwhile, according to the Women’s Budget Group, the cost to
economic output of the 1.7 million women prevented from taking on
more hours of paid work due to childcare issues is a
mind-boggling £28.2 billion every single year.
The importance of the early years must never be underestimated,
but how far this Government have fallen. Under the last Labour
Government, education was so important that we said it three
times—and our rhetoric matched the reality. Some 3,500 Sure Start
centres were delivered on time and offered a place in every
community for integrated care and services for children and their
families.
The situation is clear: we know the importance of the early
years. We know that parents are being priced out of childcare and
that an increasing number of women are not returning to work
because they simply cannot afford to. We know that we have a
problem in the entire economy with people withdrawing from the
employment market and that the consequential cost to society is
extortionate. If only we had a Government who recognised the
importance of affordable childcare as the solution that threads
so many of society’s injustices together.
5.29pm
(North Swindon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. We all have a calling
as MPs, and I was driven to get involved by social mobility. I
went to a school at the bottom of the league tables and I lost my
father at an early age, and I have always recognised that if we
get this area right—the things we have all been discussing;
despite the partisan speech of the shadow Secretary of State, the
hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (), we are united on much
of it—it can unlock potential and allow people to progress in
life.
I have now served 23 years representing my community, initially
with a Labour council and a Labour Government and now with a
Conservative council and a Conservative Government, so I have
seen both sides. Neither got it all right and neither got it all
wrong, but the reality was that schools were built late under the
Labour regime, and when we did get them, they were through the
private finance initiative. They came with huge extra costs and
were limited in their ability to meet changing demands,
particularly when numbers increased.
Under our Government, we have delivered a swathe of new schools,
including the new £23 million Great Western Academy—bizarrely
opposed by one of the former Labour shadow Secretaries of State
for Education—which is now full, and we are seeking to expand.
This is making a difference to parents: 91% of parents in my
constituency, in the top 10 in the country, are now able to
secure their first choice school. What a contrast to when I used
to have to go to public meetings to see the anguish and the anger
of families who were being robbed of the opportunity to have the
school they deserved to which to send their children.
As a big supporter of the free schools programme, I have some—I
hope, constructive—asks. First, I think the welcome consolidation
of multi-academy trusts helps with the pooling of resources,
training, recruitment and career progression for teachers, but I
think it should go further. When we consider large new school
sites, we should look to consolidate the offerings, so that we do
not just have traditional secondary schools, but perhaps have
university technical college provision, grammar streams and
special educational needs provision, which children can move
through during their school life. Some children develop at
different stages. They could stay on the same site, but move
around. I have seen some examples of that on a smaller scale, and
I think it has potential.
I also think, and Ministers will not be surprised by this, that
when we award free school status, we must make sure we get the
consultation right. There is an issue at the moment in that the
schools provisionally awarded then carry out the consultation. We
had a case in my constituency where a school was the only bidder
at the time—a long time ago, before others came forward—and it
decided to go against what the community, the elected
representatives and the local authority wanted. It carried out
its own consultation and, frankly, picked or cherry-picked which
bits it wanted, and the regional schools commissioner was useless
in trying to do anything about it. Our local community feels
slighted by that, and we just hope that that will be reflected on
and improved in the future.
I recognise that the two Ministers representing us today are
fully over their briefs, thoughtful and, crucially, willing to
engage. Both are parents, and I thought it was a bit of a bizarre
comment earlier to say that not enough parents were speaking; I
think probably most of us are parents. We have a four-week-old
child who has been sleepless for a week, and I can confirm that I
am definitely a parent on the back of that.
Turning to nurseries, I pay tribute to the Minister for children
and families—the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon.
Friend the Member for Colchester ()—who in his then new role came
to visit Councillor Jo Morris, a director of a number of
nurseries in my constituency, where he took the time to engage
thoroughly with the challenges. Again, to be helpful, I have some
asks, but I first wish, along with many other speakers, to pay
tribute to the fantastic nurseries and the staff who, throughout
covid, were able to keep the show on the road. It sometimes felt
that they were the last ones standing, and as parents we were
very grateful for what they were able to do.
My first ask is about the peculiar position whereby schools
offering nursery provision do not pay business rates, yet
traditional nurseries do so, although most of us would recognise
that they are educational establishments. The nursery that the
Minister visited pays £15,000 a year. It has about 100 children,
so that equates to about £150 per child. In his supremely
effective lobbying of the Chancellor, will the Minister please
add that one to the list?
On the broader funding point, we all support the annual increases
in the national living wage above inflation, but we must also
recognise that nurseries, which predominantly rely on the free
provision funded by the Government, have limited abilities to
increase income, and that has to be taken into account. I know
there are discussions and consultations about ratios, and there
are other options such as qualified ratios, underpinned by strict
conditions linked to Ofsted inspections. This is a particular
challenge of recruitment, and when recruitment is a challenge at
short notice, nurseries rely on agencies with very expensive
costs, which impacts on their viability.
I welcome the Government’s investment in speech and language
development and the catch-up post-covid, but could consideration
be given to allowing nurseries also to bid for some of that
money, on a case-by-case basis? Without having the expertise of
fellow hon. Members and friends who were teachers in a former
life, I suspect that doing some of that in nursery would make a
significant difference. Again, it was highlighted to us
post-covid that there was a direct impact on the speech of a
generation of young children entering nurseries.
Finally, hon. Members will find no bigger fan than me of school
holiday after-school provisions and the holiday activity fund,
which I have pushed for in debates over years. Indeed, I brought
Mark Draycott of Draycott Sports Camp to Parliament to meet the
Secretary of State for Education, who was then in a former role
in that Department. The holiday activity fund is a huge welcome
relief for busy working parents—nothing fills busy parents with
dread more than the thought of a long summer holiday and
entertaining their children—and I want the Government to
turbocharge it. We can do more with sharing best practice,
because the scheme is still in its infancy, and that will help
build capacity to provide greater local choice.
I also want the Government to consider one of my long-standing
asks about the free use of school community and sports facilities
for any community parent group that is putting on constructive
activities for young children. That will predominantly be sport,
but it could also be scouts, guides or other activities. It seems
a bit bizarre that we ask volunteers to step forward, and then
charge them for the privilege.
Finally, as we consider the cost of living, it would make a big
difference if we followed the German model of spreading out term
times region by region, so that we dampen down peak demand for
school holidays, as that would save hard-working parents
considerable amounts of money.
5.37pm
(Twickenham) (LD)
We have heard lots of Members saying how important children are,
and I think we genuinely feel that across the Chamber, but how
sparsely populated is the Chamber for this important debate? This
is not the first time, as the Minister will recall from the last
debate, that I have commented on how sparsely populated a debate
is, particularly on the Government Benches. I am really
disappointed. [Interruption.] The Conservative party has 350 MPs.
Sadly, the Liberal Democrats has only 13, so proportionately
there are far fewer. I am really disappointed that more people
are not in the Chamber for this important debate.
(Redcar) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady look to her left and tell us how many Lib Dem
MPs are in the Chamber with her today?
If the hon. Gentleman is good at maths, perhaps he could work out
that one out of 13 is a far higher percentage than whatever it
is—six—out of 350.
With children and young people having disproportionately suffered
the impact of pandemic restrictions, and the Government having
scrimped and saved on supporting their recovery, millions of
children across the country are bearing the brunt of the cost of
living crisis that we face. They cannot be let down again, which
I why I tabled an amendment to the motion about the provision of
free school meals. It is utterly shocking that in one of the
richest countries in the world, in April this year more than 2.6
million children were living in households that had experienced
food insecurity in the past month, according to a YouGov poll
commissioned by the Food Foundation. That was an increase of over
5% in the three months between January and April 2022. No child
in the United Kingdom should be going hungry, let alone 2.6
million of them. That is why, given the cost of living crisis
that we face, the Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government
to extend free school meals to all children in primary education
and to all those secondary school children whose families are in
receipt of universal credit.
I am proud that the Liberal Democrats in government delivered
universal free school meals for every child between the age of
four and seven regardless of income. All the evidence shows that
hunger has a severe negative impact on children’s mental health,
with studies linking it to increased anxiety and stress in
primary children—and we know that is off the charts at the
moment. It was bad before the pandemic, and it is even worse now.
International studies have also demonstrated the need for
well-balanced meals, which many families are simply unable to
afford, to ensure strong brain development. It is important for
children’s wellbeing and for their learning, yet we know that
increasingly cash-strapped families are struggling to put food on
the table. The policy outlined in the amendment would give a
much-needed boost to families who are really struggling to put
food on the table every day and ensure that every single primary
child and all disadvantaged pupils in secondary education get at
least one decent, healthy, hot meal a day.
There are also the social benefits of children coming together
and eating the same meals together at the same time without, say,
parents opting out at the primary level—it is a really important
social intervention as well as academically and for their
wellbeing—but there are already reports that some school meal
caterers are talking about cutting portion sizes to cover the
costs of free school meals. As I pointed out to the Chancellor a
couple of weeks ago—needless to say, he did not address my point
and he did not seem to take much interest in how children are
going hungry and will get hungrier—the Tory Government have
increased funding by a measly 4p over the past seven years since
universal infant free school meals were introduced by the Liberal
Democrats in government in 2014. So, yes, that is 4p in those
years, and food prices have risen by almost 6% in the last year
alone, so is it any wonder that we are hearing about caterers
having potentially to cut school meal portions?
My concern is that for schools already struggling to make ends
meet with spiralling energy bills, insufficient catch-up funding,
rising children’s mental health needs and food price inflation,
we will see cuts to teaching assistants and other staff, and less
money spent on books, computers and other essentials. That is
especially true of schools in rural areas, which are
disproportionately underfunded. Councillors in the south-west of
England regularly point out to me the inequality of school
funding in their region.
I urge the Minister to look at this area and ensure that children
from lower-income backgrounds do not suffer academically and in
their wellbeing because they are going hungry during the cost of
living crisis. Will the Government please consider expanding the
remit of free school meals beyond infants to the many other
children who are struggling with hunger daily? Every child
deserves to grow up happy and healthy regardless of their
background.
I want to touch on childcare costs. I cannot better the speech by
the hon. Member for Walthamstow (), and the hon. Member for
Mitcham and Morden () also made some important
points. Here in the UK, we have the highest childcare costs in
the world. We know that parents up and down the country are
struggling to pay their childcare fees, and the crippling costs
mean that many are unable to return to work. Earlier this year,
Pregnant Then Screwed, which has been mentioned several times,
did a survey of 27,000 parents and found that two thirds are
paying more for their childcare than for their rent or mortgage.
That is simply unsustainable for many households. That has
resulted in 43% of mothers stating that they are considering
leaving their job, and two in five said that they are working
fewer hours than they want because of childcare costs. Some 80%
of families who responded to the survey expect their childcare
costs to increase in the next six months. That worry is backed up
by research undertaken by the children’s charity, Coram.
The Government are trying to address the issue by looking at
tweaking the ratios. Quite apart from all the safety issues
thrown up by reducing the number of staff to children, if the
Government think that the savings will be passed on by childcare
providers to parents, they are living in another world. I have a
three-year-old son and am absolutely delighted that I will not
have to keep paying childcare costs after September, when he
starts school. I pay for 27 hours of childcare a week. When he
turned three, I thought, “Happy days! Apparently, I get 30 hours
of free childcare, so I don’t have to pay for it anymore.” No: I
am still paying at least half the bill I was paying before he
turned three.
As many others have pointed out, the funding the Government give
for those so-called free hours does not begin to cover childcare
providers’ costs, particularly in London and particularly given
that they are rising. It is a complete red herring when Ministers
say, “We’re going to tweak the ratios and that will help to save
money and provide more childcare.” Childcare providers cannot
afford to pass that on.
I am in the fortunate position of being able to afford to still
pay the £500 a month, as opposed to the £1,000 a month I was
paying before, for 27 hours of childcare. Many families simply
cannot afford that. I am also in the fortunate position of having
an amazing husband who will stay at home and look after my son
for two days a week; many families are simply not in that
position. I urge the Government to address this issue head on
and, instead of tinkering with ratios, look at offering a fair
deal for parents in terms of quality childcare provision to give
children the best start in life.
I could not possibly sit down, Madam Deputy Speaker, without
saying a couple of words about children’s and young people’s
mental health. Many in this Chamber will know that I have been
banging on about that since the day I got elected two and a half
years ago. We hear time and again from Ministers about how much
they are doing to support children’s mental health, given the
spiralling numbers. I give credit to the Government: they have
put money into this area. The problem is that we are not
necessarily seeing the impact on the ground. That is why I was so
disappointed in the last Session when Conservative Members talked
out my private Member’s Bill on presenting an annual report to
Parliament on children’s mental health.
We have a fragmented system. We have some mental health support
provision— we need far more at an early stage in the community
and in schools—and then we have the NHS provision. The data is
not joined up. It is sparse and patchy: we do not see what it
translates to per head at a local level and we do not see
granular detail of what some of the waiting times are for
treatment at a local level. If we want to measure the impact of
what the Government are doing and what we need to bridge the gap
when children need to be suicidal before they get mental health
support, we must measure and track far, far better the provision
being put in place for our children.
5.47pm
(Ruislip, Northwood and
Pinner) (Con)
It is important, when debating this issue, to avoid the risk we
often run in this House of getting into an auction on spending
figures. I very much commend Ministers for having focused not
just on the totals of funding allocated, but on the policies
designed to ensure, as is incredibly important at a time of
rising living costs, that that money is going as far as
possible.
I must, in my introduction, perhaps challenge a little the
comments of the hon. Member for Twickenham (). I certainly remember being
in the room with David Laws—then Education Minister, and someone
for whom I have a good deal of respect—when the free schools
policy, of which my son is now a beneficiary at his primary
school, was implemented under a Conservative-led coalition
Government. It is important that we all recognise that there is
good will on all sides towards achieving the outcomes we
seek.
The figure for local authority expenditure in the most recent
year for which it is available, the financial year to 2021, is
£41.5 billion. That does not include local authority expenditure
on children’s services that take place through academy schools.
So, £41.5 billion is being spent on children’s services and
maintained schools, and two thirds of that is on the education
budget. And £41.5 billion is a lot in anybody’s money, so clearly
it is right that the focus should be on how we spend that money
best. We are sometimes at risk of talking about how the funding
in the system is at the highest ever level, but the numbers of
children in the system are also at an exceptionally high level.
For most of our children, the numbers in the system drive
expenditure rather than other areas of priority.
When we look at how things have been developing and where the
Government are going, we see a welcome focus on not just totals,
but outcomes. What is the money actually doing for the children
we are seeking to spend it on? Opposition Members often talk
about the Sure Start programme, on which more than £500 million
was spent in the financial year that I referred to. However, one
of the long-standing frustrations with Sure Start among people
who spent time as an elected member in a local authority, as I
did, was that the restrictions on it inhibited the benefits that
it could deliver. The decision to shift that investment towards
family hubs—to change the way in which that money was spent—is
welcome, because it sees children in the context of their family
and household and enables what we do for them to be greater for a
given level of expenditure.
I will touch on a number of different aspects of the way that the
money flows around the system, which is extremely important in
considering how we best address the issues at the heart of this
debate. When we look at what has been going on in the system with
the money, it is important to recognise that according to those
DFE figures—I reiterate that they apply only to local
authority-maintained schools; the picture with academies is
similar but covered by separate figures—we have seen an increase
in the revenue balances held by schools, from £275 million to
£379 million. The levels of deficits in maintained schools have
gone down from £150 million to £128 million. The average balance
held by maintained schools has risen to £160,000.
Those figures tell us that the system is extremely well resourced
at the level of individual schools. That means that headteachers
and school governors have the resources to deploy in the way that
they know best, knowing the children and families that attend
their setting. Interestingly, the figures also show that the only
area of the system where there has not been an increase in the
balances held is nursery settings. We need to recognise that a
challenge remains in ensuring that the aspiration expressed for
the national funding formula is reflected in the experience of
those settings.
There has sometimes been a tendency to hide behind the fact that
the money is allocated through local authority schools forums,
but the reality is that the challenges that Members on both sides
of the Chamber have outlined exist today. Much as I welcome the
tax-free childcare policy for working families, which has been an
enormous benefit to working households across the country—I
should say that I am personally a beneficiary—we need to
recognise that the Government are right to begin to look at such
things as childcare ratios, because we must think about how the
money that we are putting into the system can deliver the
greatest service and the best possible outcomes for the children
at which it is targeted.
The benefits of early education are often overlooked. We tend to
talk about early education very much in the context of enabling
parents to go to work, rather than what it does for children. The
Early Intervention Foundation—a charity of which I was a trustee
and which continues to do excellent work, funded by the
Department, among others—highlighted that we can tell pretty
accurately what a child’s key stage 5 results will be from their
outcomes in the early years foundation stage. It is clear in the
first years of life how a child’s progress—measured across the
various outcome measures that that stage uses—will be reflected
in their progress throughout life. That is a clear demonstration
that what we do in the earliest years makes the biggest possible
difference. I very much welcome the increased focus that seems to
be coming from the Department on ensuring that that money is
again spent in the best possible way.
It seems clear that all across the system, whether in nurseries
or in schools, it is money allocated at local discretion that
brings the best results for children. The feedback that I have
had from headteachers across my constituency, where we are
fortunate that almost all schools are either good or mostly
outstanding, is that resources to enable catch-up at school level
have added the most value.
The tutoring programme, ambitious and welcome though it was, has
been less significant in transforming children’s outcomes than
the school using resources in a way that reflects its local
knowledge of the child and their family. The same is true of
local authorities: they have seen a significant increase in
expenditure, as we would expect in a system under pressure with
more and more children, but it is with a level of local
discretion, as outlined the Government’s approach, that we
deliver the best possible outcomes.
Children with special educational needs and disabilities, who I
know have been very much the focus of Ministers’ recent thinking,
have often been most at risk in the context of the covid
pandemic. They are at the heart of the recovery that we are
talking about. They are also often the children who find it most
difficult to access the childcare that they need, because small
commercial and independent providers in particular struggle to
recruit, train and retain staff who have the skills to provide
specialist support where it is required. The role that local
authorities will continue to play, including as convenors of
multi-academy trusts under the Schools Bill, demonstrates that
the Department for Education and its Ministers are listening.
They recognise the challenges and see where things need to
go.
I will finish where I started: £41.5 billion in local authority
expenditure on children’s services and maintained schools, plus
the expenditure on academy schools, is a lot of money by
anybody’s way of counting. It seems to me that we must step back
from the attempt at an auction of promises and focus on doing
what Conservatives in government do best: making sure that we
deliver value for money and outcomes for our children.
5.56pm
(Newcastle upon Tyne
North) (Lab)
When we look at which developed countries have the highest cost
of childcare, the UK always comes close to the top of the list.
We know that parents are feeling it, as we have heard today. The
Petitions Committee, which I chair, has debated the issue at some
length in response to calls for an independent review of
childcare funding. As the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and
Pinner () said, we should not have
an auction of promises. This should not be a party political
issue; it needs to be properly looked at in the round.
The comments that we received from petitioners were quite
depressing, but sadly not surprising. One response to our survey
said:
“My wages will just about cover our childcare costs, therefore I
am basically working only to ‘hold my place’ until my baby is old
enough not to need childcare i.e. once she starts school.”
Another commented:
“I do not have the option to have family or friends look after my
child when I return to work and I can’t afford to not be in work,
but childcare costs more than my mortgage for full time
hours.”
We all know that the spiralling cost of childcare is a worry for
many parents amid the cost of living crisis, but the impact on
new mothers is particularly troubling. Decisions that women make
in that very short period have a huge effect on their earnings
for the rest of their life. That has a direct impact on the
gender pay gap, or what many might call the child pay gap.
The International Labour Office has found that in the UK, the pay
gap between mothers with two children and non-mothers is 25%
across their lifetime. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has found
that by the time a woman’s first child is 12 years old, her
hourly pay rate is 33% behind a man’s. That is appalling, but we
can hardly be shocked when our childcare system is not only one
of the most expensive in the world, but assumes that most
families do not need any help with childcare costs until their
child reaches the age of three. Support is poorly targeted, and
it is letting families down.
Unfortunately, there are worrying signs that some problems for
new mothers are getting worse. The Times recently reported that
in the past few months, the trend of women staying in work has
stalled, so we are now seeing an increase in new mums dropping
out of the workplace, many of them for good. Furthermore, about
29% of women who are not working say that it is because they need
to look after their families, compared with about 7% of men. The
figure has risen by 5% in the past year alone. It is the first
sustained increase in 30 years, and it is incredibly troubling.
Some of this may be due to covid and changes in lifestyle
patterns, but the increase is most pronounced among women aged
between 25 and 34. It feels as though the clock is ticking
backwards for women.
Women may make the decision not to work for various reasons. It
is their right to make that choice, and the choice should be
supported. But what about those for whom it is not a choice—those
who simply cannot afford the childcare, and who give up their
jobs as a result? What about the women who work three jobs and
barely get to see their children, because that is the only way
they can put food on the table once they have paid for their
childcare costs? The cost of a part-time nursery place for a
child under two has risen by a staggering 59% since 2010, which
is totally out of sync with the changes in general prices and
average earnings.
There is so much evidence to show that the Government’s own
policies are driving up childcare prices. The free hours are of
course extremely welcome to those who receive them once their
child turns three, but in providing funding at a level that they
know is inadequate, the Government are forcing providers to
cross-subsidise by making non-funded hours even more expensive.
This is robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it is mothers who are
losing out as a result.
We need a childcare system that not only helps to make the lives
of parents and their children better, but helps to make our
economy work. We cannot stand by while it becomes too expensive
for mothers to work, so that women are forced back into the home
for the sake of those few precious years, out of sheer economic
necessity. Early years childcare and support is as essential for
parents to get to work as the roads and the rail network, and it
provides a great many benefits beyond that. Until we approach it
as the vital infrastructure that it clearly is, we will continue,
as a country, to let down women, families, and our whole
economy.
6.02pm
(Bolton North East) (Con)
You will be glad to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I intend to
keep my remarks short.
Let me begin by thanking all those working in childcare support
in Bolton and across the country, following what was said by my
hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (). I especially thank all
the staff at Eagley School House Nursery in Bromley Cross, run by
Julie Robinson, who, when it comes to this issue, is a leader not
only in my constituency but throughout the United Kingdom. I also
thank those at Queensbrook Children’s Nursery in Halliwell and
Bolton School in Chorley New Road, which I visited very recently.
When visiting those nurseries, especially during the pandemic, I
have often heard from staff who feel that they have not been
loved enough by the general public—among others—although they are
providing an exceptional service, and I want to put on record my
gratitude for the support that they have given my
constituents.
What, then, are the Government doing? Conservative Members,
including the Minister, have mentioned quite a few things today,
including the offer of free childcare to every three and
four-year-old, giving millions of children the best possible
start in life, which has had a positive impact on more than 1.21
million children. The Government have also provided free
childcare so that more than 124,000 two-year-olds, especially
those from disadvantaged backgrounds, can receive a good early
education. They have cut the cost of childcare for 458,000
children through our tax-free childcare offer. My hon. Friend the
Member for Stoke-on-Trent North () mentioned the £14 million
that we have already committed to family hubs, in addition to the
£20 million to support the 10 new ones.
In the last few days, I have been reading through the Action for
Children report, which makes incredibly interesting reading. I
notice that my next-door neighbour, the hon. Member for Bolton
South East (), is in the Chamber today.
When the Government continue to focus on the levelling-up agenda,
Bolton will be one of the top 10 local authorities to benefit
from such an agenda, and the investment through public services
will help to bring over 8,000 children out of poverty and give
them better life chances.
Just to finish, I would like to say happy birthday to my daughter
Brannagh, who is in the Public Gallery and who turns four today.
She is dressed like a little princess, and a princess she is, of
course. She was not very happy this morning when I sang “Happy
Birthday” at 8 am, but everyone here will be happy to know that
we are banned from singing “Happy Birthday” in the Chamber. And
with that, I shall finish.
6.05pm
(Reading East) (Lab)
It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolton
North East (). That was a lovely story about
his daughter, and I wish her a happy birthday. I hope the whole
family enjoys a wonderful day out in central London.
It is also an absolute pleasure to speak today in this important
debate and I hope that we will have further opportunities to
debate education, which is such a central issue for our country.
I would like to speak in support of the motion, but before I
start I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the
education professionals in the country, including teachers,
support staff and people working in colleges, higher education
and the childcare sector, as well as those, like some in my own
family, who work in delivering apprenticeships.
I am keen to focus on a few key points because I realise that
time is pressing. The first is the fundamental importance for any
country of investing in education. The second is the scale of the
issues we face following the pandemic. Some of these have been
addressed by other colleagues, but I would like to address them a
little further. The third is the need for the Government to raise
their sense of ambition in this important area, and the fourth is
the need for a much more robust and deliverable strategy.
First, turning to the overall importance of education, it is
great to see cross-party agreement on this important and central
area of Government work. In my opinion, it is an absolute
first-order necessity for any Government, in any country in the
world, to invest in the future of their people. While it is
acknowledged across the House that that is fundamental, I believe
we need to think quite deeply about what that actually means,
based on our own experience in this country and on international
comparisons, because some of it is a little bit challenging for
some of our colleagues.
The evidence base from around the world and from recent British
history shows clearly that investment over time ultimately means
better-paid teachers—whether people are in favour of that or not,
the evidence shows that to be the case—and it also means
investing in resources such as better school buildings and better
labs for teaching science, as well as better provision of other
forms of resource to help teaching, whether that is technology or
other forms of resource such as school trips or school sports.
These things all add up. Unfortunately, they are all expensive,
but they are investments and they should be seen not as
short-term costs to the public but as a long-term investment in
our future as a country, in our economy, in our people and in our
aspirations as a society.
We can see this in some of the achievements in recent times.
Programmes such as the London Challenge are an example. At one
point, London schools were seen by many commentators as being in
a really difficult place, but determined investment, with central
Government funding the resources, working in close partnership
with schools, teachers, parents and local communities, drove up
standards in London despite all the challenges. There are
numerous other examples. Some time ago, we saw the literacy and
numeracy strategy introduced by when he was the new
Secretary of State for Education.
The investment in science, technology, engineering and
maths—STEM—subjects is another example. The way that STEM has
been championed and the growing number of young people studying
A-levels in maths, science and technology is a national success
that predates the current Government. It is something we should
all be proud of, and it should be seen as a long-term investment
in this country’s future. It should not be a party political
issue, but we should be honest about the resources needed. These
examples are seen in jurisdictions around the world—in US states,
in individual cities and in European and Asian countries—where
exactly the same process is under way. Governments are determined
to invest in education because they believe in their country’s
children and their country’s future.
Sadly we have faced the most awful setback to those aspirations
because of the pandemic, and it is worth reflecting on how awful
it was. It has been wonderful, a real pleasure, to see people out
in the streets again over the past few days, yet things were so
different only a few months ago. These are anecdotes, but I still
find it hard to think back to the Zoom meetings in which parents
had to scurry off to offer a rudimentary education to their
children, with the support of online resources. We should
remember the difficulties experienced by young people who had to
sit public exams for the first time. That is the scale of the
challenge we face. It is not an insignificant challenge, and we
should not underestimate how difficult it is for our schools and
universities.
We need a focused strategy that is up to the scale of the
challenge. is a respected educationist
who worked with the Government and their Liberal Democrat and
Conservative predecessors for years when he was at the Education
Endowment Foundation. He has a very strong academic background
and is respected across the education profession, but a year ago,
sadly, the only thing he was able to do was resign, because he
felt so strongly about the lack of resources targeted at the
problem I have described. I hope there is all-party appreciation
of what it means for a senior public servant to take such action.
I am sure he would have loved not to resign. He wanted to lead
programmes to improve the quality of education in this country,
but he was left with no choice.
We need a proper strategy, and we need to think about why left. The Under-Secretary of
State for Education, the hon. Member for Colchester (), is a committed chap, and I
hope he will look at this again. The Government need to think
about the strategy, invest significant amounts of money—far more
than currently planned—and focus on what actually works. My hon.
Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South () clearly illustrated the
principles that should be considered but sadly are not.
To make matters worse, it is appalling when we contrast and
compare the Government’s spending on education with their
spending on other things, such as the poor-quality spending on
PPE, which was often not procured effectively or in line with
Government procurement rules, or the Chancellor’s recent failure
to focus money where it is most needed to fully address to cost
of living crisis. He gave handouts to people with second homes,
which I am sure they welcome but is not an effective use of
public money.
I would like Ministers to look at this again and to think
carefully about what a good strategy might look like. I would
argue that a good strategy has the appropriate funding, is
school-led and is built on best practice. We have heard a lot of
talk about best practice, but international success is based on
best practice. There is widespread agreement and consensus on
what that might be.
We also need to work with parents. We have heard about the
importance of breakfast clubs, early years education and other
forms of support—the success of the education maintenance
allowance has been mentioned —in providing practical support to
families who are currently squeezed. There is emerging evidence
on things like targeted funding, continuing professional
development for teachers, small-group tutoring and oracy, which
my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle
() mentioned. All of this should
be in the Government’s strategy, but sadly it is not.
I appreciate time is at a premium, so I will sum up. It has been
a pleasure to speak today, and it is wonderful that we are
debating such an important issue. I hope the House will find more
time for debate, and I hope the Government will address this
issue and offer education greater priority in their thinking.
Education seems to be a big gap in Government policy at the
moment. It is almost as if education has been forgotten, but it
is vital and should be the first duty of any Government.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I hope Members will now confine themselves to about six minutes.
I am quite sure you can all do the arithmetic, and it is
important that we have time for the Minister and the shadow
Minister to reply to the debate.
6.14pm
(Bolton South East)
(Lab)
Every day, tens of thousands of working parents across the
country are being failed by inadequate childcare policies that
leave families financially crippled, stagnating in their careers
and desperate for radical change. Families are being let down by
Ministers, who are simply not doing enough. Indeed, in June 2021
the Government’s own education recovery adviser, Sir , resigned in protest at the
Government’s failure to support children’s recovery.
The average price of a full-time nursery place for a one-year-old
child is a staggering £14,000, and one in three parents spend
more than a third of their entire income on childcare. More often
than not, it is families on the lowest incomes or on universal
credit, single parents and those with disabilities who suffer the
most.
Labour’s Sure Start scheme aimed to help people and was very
successful. It supported working families with childcare.
Naturally, the Conservative coalition cut its funding by two
thirds, despite the policy’s success. One in three parents with a
household income of less than £20,000 have had to cut back on
essential food or housing as a direct result of childcare costs.
A staggering 92% of parents said that the cost of childcare had
affected their standard of living because the cost was completely
unaffordable and had resulted in a substantial impact on
them.
It is not as if the nurseries and childcare workers themselves
are the ones benefiting from this. Research by the National Day
Nurseries Association found that 95% of nurseries in England did
not even have enough funding to cover their basic costs after the
impact of the covid pandemic on their incomes. Now, in the midst
of a cost of living crisis, nursery finances will be squeezed
even more by the rise in national insurance and the cost of
heating and electricity bills. Nurseries such as Grosvenor
nursery in my constituency are fighting for survival because of
serious funding shortages caused by the disparity between funding
and overhead and staffing costs, not to mention the large deficit
created by the pandemic. In a recent visit last year, I saw at
first hand the hard work that its staff and management do in
nurturing our future generations This crisis is only going to get
worse as more and more childcare providers go out of business,
increasing demand for places and pushing prices even higher for
families struggling with the rising cost of living.
Until recently, Government underfunding was one of the main
reasons nurseries were going out of business, but now we are
seeing more nurseries unable to open because of a recruitment
crisis, with demoralised staff leaving the profession in droves.
Part of the reason for that of course is that wages for early
years staff are embarrassingly low. May I remind the Minister
that these are people we trust and hand our children over to, to
look after? Many of them are on the national living wage, which
is not enough for them to survive on, bearing in mind the work
that they are doing. Nursery workers do not just play with our
children; they are preparing them for school, and helping in
their development and with their educational opportunities.
The first 1,000 days of any child’s life are crucial to their
development and their life chances. People working in early years
care are crucial to this and should be paid fairly as a result.
That is even more important for disadvantaged children. Being in
early education is one of the most important things that can help
to close the gap for them. Lower-income parents will be forced to
withdraw their children, who have the most to gain from not being
a year behind their peers when they start school.
Childcare has not only been neglected; it has been deliberately
starved of funding, and has forced parents—many mothers—out of
work and into poverty. Labour would introduce breakfast clubs,
and support children in sporting and social activities to broaden
their horizons. We would give children access to a counsellor to
support their mental health and we would introduce an education
recovery premium to prevent children from falling behind.
I remind the House that Nelson Mandela once famously said:
“The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its
children.”
I have to say that the Government’s neglect of childcare is
pushing us deeply into this. Finally, I would like to wish
Brannagh Logan a happy birthday, bearing in mind that she is the
daughter of my constituency neighbour.
6.18pm
(Kingston upon Hull West and
Hessle) (Lab)
I join in wishing Brannagh a happy birthday—I hope she has a
lovely day.
I wish to start by talking about the points I made in my
intervention on the importance of oracy. The Government talk an
awful lot about the importance of being evidence-led. The
evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation is conclusive on
the importance of oracy. It is a shame that the Minister for
School Standards is not here right now, because I was slightly
concerned that in his response he seemed to be talking about
oracy in relation just to the early years, whereas good oracy
education needs to be continued throughout the early years, all
the way through primary school and on into secondary school.
Through the all-party parliamentary group on oracy, I was
recently able to invite some wonderful year 6 pupils from Cubitt
Town Junior School in Tower Hamlets to show off their oracy
skills. They were absolutely outstanding. Their confidence, the
way they spoke to the different adults in the room and the way
they articulated everything they had gone through was incredibly
impressive. It was even more impressive given the fact that they
were children from one of the most deprived areas in the country.
Many of the pupils at the school are pupil premium children and
some of them have English as an additional language. Despite all
the barriers, they have overcome them through sustained and
explicit oracy teaching.
It is not just me or the Education Endowment Foundation saying
this: Ofsted is saying it as well. In its report on its English
review, published on 23 May, Ofsted talks about the importance of
oracy—in fact, a whole section is dedicated to it. It says
that
“a strong command of the spoken word is a crucial outcome of
English education. The benefits of spoken language extend beyond
just success at school. Becoming an articulate, effective
communicator forms the basis of democratic engagement within
wider society.”
Ofsted goes on to say:
“Opportunities for pupils to develop their proficiency in spoken
language require explicit teaching”.
I really wanted the Minister for School Standards to hear that
point about explicit teaching. Too many people think that skills
in oracy are developed through osmosis by just being in an
environment. We are talking about explicit teaching. According to
Ofsted, those opportunities
“require explicit teaching of the knowledge, for example
vocabulary, and ideas necessary for effective communication.
These opportunities should be planned carefully, both in English
lessons and across other subjects.”
So we are talking about the explicit teaching of oracy. In my
opinion, and that of the APPG, oracy teaching should be as
explicit as the teaching of reading and writing. Reading, writing
and oracy are the three pillars that should underpin all English
education.
My hon. Friends have already made for me the points in my speech
about how expensive childcare is, so the House will be pleased to
hear that I am not going to repeat them all now, but it is worth
pointing out that net childcare payments in the UK account for
29% of average income. That is clearly unsustainable and cannot
be allowed to continue. Why is the cost so shockingly high? Is it
because wages are too low? Is it because childcare costs are too
high? It is probably a mix of both.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden () made an excellent point
about the number of women who are—I hate the phrase—economically
inactive because they are unable to go out to work because of the
cost of childcare. I recently shared something to do with the
cost of childcare on my social media and there were nearly 200
comments under it. I would like to share with the Minister a
couple of the points that were made.
One commenter gave the childcare provider’s point of view. They
said:
“If the government wants it to work they have to increase the
amount that childcare providers get. Currently that is a national
lottery. Some providers get most of the funding rate, some
providers get about half, as their”—
local authority—
“keeps a large proportion. There are early years providers all
over the country closing their doors as they just can’t make it
work. Even those that are committee run, not-for-profit and that
just take funded 3 and 4 year olds still can’t make it work.
On top of that there’s a massive staffing crisis in early years.
Settings are shutting left, right and centre. Many providers,
including me, are having to reduce the age range and numbers we
care for because we can’t attract qualified staff. There’s a
massive national shortage. We would love to pay our fabulous
staff more but the funding rates are just too low.”
The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner () made a thoughtful speech.
The only point on which I disagree with him is about the
childcare ratio. I used to work in children’s nurseries before I
trained as a teacher: believe me, if someone has more than two or
three two-year-olds, they have their hands full. We should think
seriously about the ratio. It is also worth thinking about how
things work in a nursery when we look at the ratio of adults to
children, because often one of the adults might be doing nappies,
another might be feeding and another might be playing with the
children, so the ratio can be higher during the time the adult is
physically with the number of children, because it is to do with
the number of adults and children in the building. I warn against
trying to change that as a way to reduce costs.
I want to conclude by quoting what a constituent told me about
her difficulty paying for childcare. She said
“I work full-time with a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old. I’m an
early years teacher, so see the struggles of many parents with
regard to childcare. My 2-year-old is in nursery for ONLY 3
mornings and this costs us around £400 each month. My 5-year-old
is in school, but we have to pay breakfast club and after-school
club fees. This is another £150 plus per term. Myself and my
partner work full-time, and keeping up with payments is a massive
struggle. We rely heavily on my mum who is in her 60s and also
works, which is a huge strain on her. I think working parents
need more support for children under 3.”
I completely agree with my constituent. I do hope that the
Government will not put pride in front of accepting Labour’s plan
for education recovery and the free breakfast and after-school
clubs that would make a great difference to many working
families.
6.25pm
(Hornsey and Wood Green)
(Lab)
The title of today’s debate is “Children’s education recovery”,
but it should actually be “The economy’s recovery” because we
know that investment in education is the key to productivity
gain. We also know that, with the unemployment rate at 3.8%, the
crisis in skills and the crisis that so many employers are
facing, if we could solve the childcare problem, we will go a
long way towards helping out in many of our workplaces.
One crisis that the Government have been dealing with in
“backlog” Britain in the past week has been what is going on in
our airports. How many of those airport jobs were done by women
who now cannot be in those jobs because of the childcare crisis
and the cost of it?
We know that, in March, two leading organisations for women,
Pregnant Then Screwed and Mumsnet, conducted big surveys into the
impact of childcare costs. My hon. Friends the Members for
Mitcham and Morden (), for Walthamstow (), for Newcastle upon Tyne
North () and for Kingston upon
Hull West and Hessle () have mentioned the impact of
expensive childcare. We know that 62% of parents say that the
cost of childcare is the same or more than their rent or
mortgage. In a high-value area such as Hornsey and Wood Green,
this can be prohibitive in terms of returning to work. We know
that the figure is even higher for black and Asian families, at
71%, and 73% of parents who work full-time say that the cost of
childcare is the same or more than their rent or mortgage.
Ninety-nine per cent. of respondents said that childcare costs
are making the cost of living crisis even more challenging.
Forty-three per cent. of mothers say that the cost of childcare
has made them consider leaving their job and 7% have quit
altogether. How is it possible that it is cheaper for mums to
stay at home than to work?
We know that work is a key driver for general wellbeing—or it can
be in a high-quality work environment. We know that it is the
Governments around the globe who are child friendly and in favour
of more women in the workplace who end up having more productive
and innovative workplaces, so it is a real driver for the
economy.
We know from the same survey that has been mentioned a number of
times in this debate that 76% of women who do not have children
have said that childcare costs are a major factor in why they
have not started a family. This goes to the heart of Government
and planning in that we do want to encourage families to have
children. We will end up having lower and lower fertility rates,
which will have a knock-on effect on the economy in the long
term.
We know that childcare pays for itself. The Canadian Government
found that, for every $1 they invested in childcare, there was a
return of $1.50 to $2.80. They described it as the hat trick of
jobs and growth and subsidising childcare in the whole of Canada.
It would be worth while if the Government looked at that
example.
However, instead of investment in childcare, we see in the UK
today a big sticking plaster, hoping the problem will go away.
What assessment has been made of the approach under the taxation
model? That is simply not being taken up to the degree that it
needs to be.It seems to be a bit of a gimmick which only a very
small number of women are taking up.
A constituent wrote to me to say that the policy is
“bad for staff, bad for children’s mental health, safety and
general wellbeing.”
She has asked me personally to push the Government not to
“risk the lives, happiness and education of our children”
by getting the childcare approach wrong.
The Government appear to have no plan, no ambition and no vision
for our children or the long-term future for our families. For
years, they have been turning a blind eye to this crisis and, in
the meantime, generations of young people are being utterly
failed. We are living in a low-growth economy. The Government
need to wake up to the role that investing in education will play
to increase that productivity. Affordable childcare could enable
women to go back to work, knowing that their children are
receiving the best start in life. The Government should stop
tweaking those ratios; it will put even more parents off using
childcare if they think it will not be a good start in life for
their children.
We know that a decent early years education has a major impact on
child development. Education is one of the most powerful means of
overcoming disadvantage. Even the Duchess of Cambridge has said
this:
“What we experience in the early years, from conception to the
age of five, shapes the developing brain, which is why positive
physical, emotional and cognitive development during this period
is so crucial.”
That is my contribution to the jubilee celebrations. We know that
a properly invested-in childcare sector is good for parents and
crucial for our children’s recovery after the pandemic.
6.30pm
(Wirral West) (Lab)
Children have suffered throughout the pandemic in so many ways.
Many have lost loved ones, and all of them have been through the
same stresses and tensions as the adult population. Research
published by the Education Endowment Foundation found:
“For many children the experience of lockdown was made harder by
cramped living conditions, no access to green spaces, parental
mental health difficulties and financial hardship.”
Young people have had to deal with restrictions on their lives
and on their opportunities to develop social skills.
The lack of opportunities for social interaction has meant that
the children of the pandemic have had a very different start in
life from what would usually be the case. They have missed out on
the fun of making friends, playing together and growing together.
Those are important experiences for children, so it comes as no
surprise that recent research by Parentkind found that mental
health and wellbeing is now a major priority for nearly nine in
10 parents. We must ensure that education policy and the way
schools operate support that priority. We must put children’s
happiness and wellbeing at the forefront of all decision making
about the education children receive.
Of course, a child is far more likely to do well if they are
enjoying their learning. I recently visited Woodchurch Church of
England primary school in my constituency, one of just six
primary schools in the country to have been selected to take part
in the “Life-Changing Libraries” initiative being run by
BookTrust, which aims to develop a culture of reading for
pleasure. BookTrust has provided funds that have been used to
transform a space in a corridor into a magical reading
environment, stocked with a specially curated book list of
approximately 1,000 titles chosen by BookTrust’s expert team.
Talking to the staff, it is absolutely clear that the project is
a real success. It is noticeable that there is so much enthusiasm
for reading in the school, with children reading in the
playground at break times and sharing books with each other. I
ask the Minister to look at that scheme and beyond just the
phonics that the Minister for School Standards’ opening speech
focused on. Encouraging a love of reading in childhood reaps so
many rewards, improving reading levels while engaging in the
world beyond the immediate here and now. Every child should be
given that opportunity. There is absolutely no need to test
reading for pleasure; one just needs to create the environment
for it and encourage an appetite for it.
That brings me on to the issue of testing. If we are serious
about putting children’s wellbeing at the centre of their
educational experience, it is time we took a long hard look at
just how much we are testing them. There are numerous stories of
parents worried sick that their children are being over-tested,
and recent polling by Parentkind found that 80% of parents
disagree that SATs provide parents with useful information about
their child's achievement or progress in school.
The National Education Union has reported that pressure on
teachers and children from cramming for SATs
“is extreme and school staff have very little time to deliver
interesting, varied lessons, as they feel forced to ‘teach to the
test’”.
Will the Government scrap SATs and put pupils’ wellbeing at the
forefront of education policy?
There needs to be a proper look at the curriculum too, to ensure
that all children have the opportunity to develop their
creativity and are given the opportunity to study and engage in
subjects such as art, music, drama and dance—I note the comments
by the Minister for School Standards earlier. The OECD’s
programme for international student assessment, known as PISA,
measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics
and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.
The OECD is introducing a creative thinking assessment to PISA in
2022 as an optional additional assessment. It is immensely
disappointing that England has opted out of that, and I ask the
Minister to explain why.
There are other things that the Government should be doing to
improve children’s experience of education. They should reinstate
the £20 uplift to universal credit, because we all know that
children who are hungry struggle to learn, and that it is no good
for children’s wellbeing when their parents are struggling to pay
the bills. Ministers should get behind the “Right to Food”
campaign of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby
() and end the scandal of hunger
and foodbanks once and for all. The Government should also get
rid of the two-child limit in universal credit that punishes
families with more than two children. The Government have
responsibility for the wellbeing of every child. They should give
every child access to qualified in-school counselling staff, as
Labour would do, to provide psychological support for children
when and where they need it.
If we are to look after our children, we need to look after their
teachers too. The Government cannot be getting it right when, as
National Education Union research has shown, two thirds of
teachers in state-funded schools in England feel stressed at
least 60% of the time and over half of teachers say that their
workload is either “unmanageable” or “unmanageable most of the
time”. Education policy has to be about the wider social
environment in which children are growing up. If we have a
Conservative Government who are determined to destroy public
services, as we do at the moment, then our children will suffer
and their futures will suffer too.
The massive cuts inflicted on Wirral Council by central
Government since 2010 have left the future of numerous libraries
in my constituency hanging in the balance. A loss of libraries
and of skilled librarians does a huge disservice to the children
of our country. Those cuts, too, have put the future of
Woodchurch leisure centre and swimming pool at risk. How are the
children supposed to learn to swim if they do not have a leisure
centre because of these cuts from central Government? The impact
of cuts to public services on our communities cannot be
overestimated. The Government are creating cultural deserts and
opportunity deserts, and children will suffer as a result.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I call shadow Minister .
6.35pm
(Portsmouth South) (Lab)
As children return from half-term to continue with exams and the
cost of living crisis spirals, this debate speaks to the heart of
concerns across this House and up and down the country.
I echo the tributes paid to the dedicated and committed staff in
the education sector by Members in all parts of the House. We
have heard in interventions and speeches specific mentions of
individual staff, schools and other settings. The hon. Member for
North Swindon () paid particular tribute
to nursery staff. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East
() recognised the efforts of
teaching staff in schools and colleges. From school leaders to
teaching assistants, catering staff to each and every teacher, I
place on record our thanks to them all. They have stepped up for
our children time and again, during the pandemic and since.
Millions of those children will now be sitting exams and
assessments for the first time since 2019. It is a credit to our
young people that they are rising to this challenge after the
unprecedented challenges they have faced: we are so proud of them
all. But this Government have consistently let them down.
Ministers’ miserable failure to help children to recover lost
learning threatens to limit their opportunities.
We have heard that, again, in interventions and speeches today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East spoke of investment in
after-school clubs—something that Labour’s recovery plan would
invest in—and partnerships such as the London Challenge under the
previous Labour Government, which drove up outcomes for young
people. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and
Hessle () made powerful points on oracy.
I thank her for her work on the all-party parliamentary group on
oracy in encouraging speaking skills at the heart of an education
catch-up in schools. She also talked about the value of breakfast
and after-school clubs.
As parents increasingly feel the pinch, this Government’s
inaction is pricing families out of care for their children. The
hon. Member for Twickenham () and other Members rightly
praised the valuable work of Pregnant Then Screwed in lobbying
for women and mothers. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow
() spoke of the raw deal on
childcare that parents are getting from this Government and the
importance of speaking up for parents. I thank her for so
passionately doing so.
My hon. Friends the Members for Bolton South East (), for Newcastle upon Tyne
North () and for Mitcham and
Morden () made powerful speeches
about how the costs of childcare in the UK compare with European
countries, and the cost that that has for our country’s economic
output. That is why Labour’s motion calls on Ministers to match
our ambitious plan to help children to recover lost learning and
keep childcare costs down. Despite the challenges that they face,
parents are working to provide the very best for their children.
Time and again this Conservative Government have made that task
harder. While Ministers dither, Labour has proposed practical
solutions to help children and families to thrive. It is time
that this Government matched that ambition.
After the unprecedented disruption of the past two years,
children must be at the centre of our plans for the future. We
need a real education recovery from the pandemic that supports
both children and teachers—not a gimmicky quick fix, but a
recovery that is targeted, impactful and sustained, that is
embedded in the fabric of day-to-day school and that is properly
resourced, but there has been a complete absence of both
leadership and ambition from this Government. Sir Kevan Collins’s
plan was rejected out of hand by a Chancellor who told us that he
had maxxed out on support for our children. It is now just over a
year to the day since Sir Kevan resigned. At the time, he said
that the Government’s plans were “too narrow” and “too small”,
and would be delivered “too slowly.” His warnings have proved to
be spot on.
The Government’s flagship national tutoring programme has failed
children and it has failed taxpayers. The latest figures suggest
that the Prime Minister’s blusterous target of 1 million hours of
tutoring will not be met until all children currently at
secondary school have left. Worse still, Ministers plan to pull
out the rug from under schools that are working hard to deliver
the scheme. Tapering funding will mean that schools will cover
90% of the cost within three years. With eye-watering energy
bills and food and other day-to-day costs rising, there is a real
possibility that schools will struggle to deliver the scheme. It
is children in the classroom who will suffer.
As schools face the pinch, so too do families. Childcare is
critical for learning and development, but it is also
intrinsically linked to our wider economic prosperity.
Pre-pandemic, children on free school meals arrived at school
almost five months behind their peers. Spiralling costs will make
that worse. The average cost of a full-time nursery place for a
child under two has risen by almost £1,500 over five years. In
fact, the United Kingdom has one of the highest childcare costs
as a proportion of average income, as we heard earlier. At 29%,
we are 19% higher than the OECD average. That has perpetuated a
gross inequality that is holding women back. Some 1.7 million are
prevented from taking on more hours of paid work because of
childcare costs and we lose £28.2 billion in economic output
every year as a result. That contributes to the farcical
situation in which young families’ income will be higher if they
remain on universal credit than if they were both in work and
paid for childcare. Of course, that is more punitive for single
parents.
The Education Secretary likes to say that he is evidence-based
and evidence-led, although there has been some debate about that
recently, but what more does he need to see before acting? The
latest bright idea, to cut the number of adults looking after
groups of children, will likely reduce the quality of provision
and have no impact on availability or affordability. After
yesterday’s no confidence vote, I know that Ministers will be
particularly concerned with numbers, but parents and children
will tell them that this just does not add up.
In contrast, Labour’s children’s recovery plan means small-group
tutoring for all who need it, breakfast clubs and activities for
every child, quality mental health support for children in every
school, professional development for teachers and targeted extra
investment for those young people who struggled the most with
lockdown. That is the action that we would take right now, and it
includes investing in childcare places for young people on free
school meals. Because we know that childcare pressures do not
stop when children start school, we are investing in before and
after-school clubs for children.
Every day, this Government are wasting time that children and
families do not have. Yet there was nothing in the White Paper to
combat that and nothing in the Schools Bill. This Government are
happy to let children drift, with teachers and parents picking up
the pieces time and time again. It is not inevitable that a
generation of children should be held back by disruption to
learning and spiralling costs. It is political choice made by
this Government. Just as the previous Labour Government
transformed education, we would do so again, working together
with staff, parents and children. Labour would deliver a
sustainable recovery for children’s education for more than a
year, and we would insulate children and families from the
Government’s cost of living crisis.
The choice for Ministers and the question for Back Benchers is
once again clear. Will they finally admit that they have got it
wrong and back our plans, or will they leave children as an
afterthought once again? If they do not stand up for children and
families, Labour will.
6.44pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education ()
I welcome the opportunity to respond on behalf of Her Majesty’s
Government and I thank the many hon. Members who have made
constructive and passionate contributions to the debate. I will
try to respond to as many of the themes and issues raised as
possible in the time available to me; there is much to respond to
and so little time in which to do it.
As the Minister for School Standards said at the beginning of the
debate, we are committed to making childcare more affordable and
accessible, supporting parents and providing children with the
best possible start in life. Recovery remains a priority for the
Government. It is a key part of building back better, levelling
up and making sure that we are ready and skilled for a future in
which the next generation can prosper.
Opposition days are, by their nature, political and the
Opposition are right—dare I say it—to push us to go further and
faster, which is their job after all. I gently say to them,
however, that there is not one Member of the House who does not
want every child in this country to have a world-class education
where they are given every opportunity to fulfil their potential.
I have two young children and I want them and every single child
in our country to have better life chances than we had,
regardless of their background or where they live.
We all want more accessible, flexible and affordable childcare
and early years education, with every child having the best
possible start in life. We all want every single school to take a
whole-school approach to mental wellbeing and to ensuring that
the children and young people get the mental health support that
they need when they need it.
I turn to hon. Members’ contributions, starting with early years
and childcare, which have been raised the most. I join my hon.
Friend the Member for Bolton North East () in rightly thanking all those
working in education, early years and childcare. I agree that the
early years are often not recognised as much as they should be,
which must change. Early years are very much educators and they
improve life chances, so let me say from the Dispatch Box: “Thank
you.” I cannot let the moment go without saying happy birthday to
his daughter Brannagh—I thought it was Princess Elsa of Arendelle
up in the Gallery, but I will “Let It Go”.
On early years, the hon. Members for Walthamstow (), for Mitcham and Morden
(), for Newcastle upon Tyne
North () and for Bolton South
East () raised the issue of
childcare costs. They are passionate campaigners and advocates
for change in this area, in which we need change. They are right
to point out that there were challenges pre-pandemic that were
exacerbated by the pandemic, and that we have to fix our
childcare sector and market. They are right to focus on
under-twos where the cost is often highest and on school holiday
provision, which are certainly priorities for me.
I am certainly aware of the impact on women in particular,
because we know that childcare costs fall disproportionately on
women, which comes with family planning decisions;
disproportionate costs and salary disparities; and women deciding
not to work. That is an issue for business, because we are losing
a huge talent pool across our country, not to mention the impact
on our economy.
The hon. Member for Walthamstow was also right to mention
paternity leave. I will certainly look into the stigma issue that
she raised and I will raise flexible working with colleagues in
the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. I do
not recognise her figures in relation to nursery and early years
funding, which I will come on to in a moment. Let us not forget
that, for under-twos and for three and four-year-olds, there is
tax-free childcare and up to 85% of the cost is available for
those on universal credit.
The hon. Lady was right to pay tribute to the campaigning group
Pregnant Then Screwed. I have met with its representatives, I
have heard what they have to say and I look forward to continuing
to work with them. I cannot say that I agree with them on every
single issue, but they raise some good points and there is no
question but that change is required in this area.
The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden raised academies, and I
agree that academies are excellent. She also said that work is
the best route out of poverty, and I totally agree. I am sure
that she welcomes the reality that far fewer children—in fact,
hundreds of thousands fewer—are growing up in workless
households. She was also right to focus on childcare. I
understand that she is working cross-party to look closely at
childcare costs more generally. I look forward to that
committee’s recommendations.
The cost of breakfast and after-school clubs was raised, which is
an important factor. The hon. Lady also raised Sure Start, but I
have to say that that was not early years education. It did not
often provide childcare, and when it did, it was private sector,
but I may come on to Sure Start later.
May I make a suggestion to the Minister? There is a significant
lack of uptake of so-called tax-free childcare. I say “so-called”
tax-free childcare because it is not tax-free; it meets 20% of
the cost up to a certain threshold. It could be that, in the
desire to create the impression of cutting taxes, the Government
have failed to explain to parents what the system actually is,
and it may be that, in naming it for political purposes, it has
lost its practical application. Perhaps the Government should
look at giving a more honest label to the scheme.
I may not agree on that particular point, but where I do agree
with the hon. Lady is that the take-up of tax-free childcare is
far too low. I am looking very closely at that and at what more
we can do as a Government to promote it. I would certainly
encourage all Members from across the House to promote our
childcare offer more generally, of which tax-free childcare is
only one part.
More broadly on the point about childcare, I will say this: I
have two young children, and I get it. They have both been
through nurseries and childminders, and I understand the costs. I
know that many parents up and down our country are paying as
much, if not more, than their rent or their mortgage on childcare
costs. We are very much committed to ensuring that all families
get the support they need when they need it.
We are already supporting families and investing to support the
cost of childcare. We are offering free childcare to every three
and four-year-old—that is the 15 and then the 30-hour offer. We
are providing free childcare to disadvantaged two-year-olds—that
is the 15-hour offer. We are cutting the cost of childcare for
working parents through our tax-free childcare offer, which I
have just mentioned to the hon. Lady, and of course paying up to
85% of the childcare costs for those on universal credit,
supporting the families who need it most. In total, that comes at
a cost of £5.1 billion.
Obviously, “Frozen II” has many lessons that we all need to
follow, but one is not just to “Let It Go” but to be truthful to
yourself, so can the Minister clarify this? He said he did not
agree with the figures I cited from the National Day Nurseries
Association, which has been looking at the impact of the subsidy,
but he has just said how much money it costs.
Obviously, many parents would say to him that 15 hours’ or indeed
30 hours’ free childcare is not the childcare they need in order
to maintain their jobs. Is he saying that the Government believe
that the money they are currently providing fully covers the cost
of childcare? If he does not think there is a £2,000 differential
between the cost of childcare for a three-year-old and what the
Government are paying, what does he think the gap is?
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I will come on in
just one moment to exactly the funding we are putting into
childcare. However, in total, it is £5.1 billion. On the free
entitlements alone—the entitlements the hon. Lady references—it
is £3.5 billion.
I know that there is more we need to do, and that is why I am
working across Government to take a renewed look at the childcare
system, finding ways to improve the cost and availability of
childcare and early education for families across England. We do
have some of the very best early years provision in the world,
and I will continue to be hugely ambitious for working parents,
ensuring flexibility and reducing the cost of childcare wherever
we can.
A number of hon. Members across the Chamber during this debate
have raised international comparators, which are of course
important. So far, I have visited the Netherlands, and I will be
visiting Sweden and France. I hope to visit more because it is
very important that we take an evidence-based approach to this
issue and look at the international comparators. [Interruption.]
On day trips, I hasten to add, on the Eurostar—these are
certainly not jollies. We are very much looking at the evidence
and ensuring that we get it right. It is a hugely complex
issue.
The Minister is very generous in taking interventions. Could I
press him on the point that he is doing some case studies and
doing some visits? That is all very helpful, but 12 years have
gone by, and this is a crisis, an emergency, and we need to get
women back into jobs because the economy is crying out for more
workers. Provided that there is a high-quality work environment,
I think we all support people getting back into the workforce,
but they are saying they cannot afford it. There are the other
costs such as the energy bills, the rent or the mortgage: if we
add childcare to those, they just cannot make the sums add
up.
Of course that is an important point, but let us not forget that
this is the Government who introduced the 30 free hours and the
offer of 15 hours for disadvantaged two-year-olds, so we do take
this issue incredibly seriously. We do understand that parents
are struggling now, and I am genuinely looking at what I can do
with our spending review settlement to support parents with
childcare at the moment.
It is also important that we take a step back and look at the
broader issue in the round. The countries that the hon. Member
for Hornsey and Wood Green () rightly referenced in her
speech have taken many years to get to their position. They have
taken an evidence-based approach, looking at the economic
situation in their own countries, and particularly at female
participation in the labour market and the difference that makes
to the tax yield. I know that we will do the same.
[Interruption.] As I said, we spend £3.5 billion, and we have
done every year over the past three years on our early education
entitlements. In the most recent spending review, we committed to
an extra £160 million in 2022-23, another £180 million the year
after, and £170 million the year after that, compared with the
2021-22 financial year.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North () is, of course, a
passionate advocate for his great city, and he referenced the
holiday activities and food programme, and family hubs. I had the
fortune to visit one of the holiday activities and food
programmes, organised by Port Vale football club and Adam and
Carol. They are doing amazing work, offering enriching
activities, healthy nutritious meals, and nutritional education
to students across the city, and I very much thank them for
that.
We will continue our investment in the holiday activities and
food programme throughout the spending review period, so an
additional £200 million per year over the next three years will
ensure that those programmes continue to go from strength to
strength. Stoke-on-Trent has been a successful beneficiary of
family hubs, which represent a £500 million investment
nationally. I very much look forward to the results and
contribution that the great city of Stoke-on-Trent will make,
because I know it has a huge ambition of going much further, and
above and beyond the expectations of the family hub model in
terms of the one-stop shop it can deliver.
There is no greater champion for Swindon than my hon. Friend the
Member for North Swindon (), and he is a strong
advocate for parents within his constituency. I welcome the
addition to his family just a handful of weeks ago. He rightly
referenced the importance of provision for special educational
needs and disabilities, and I would expect nothing less from a
former disabilities Minister. He is right about the importance of
units within mainstream schools, and that will be very much at
the heart of the SEN review. As part of the spending review we
secured an additional £2.6 billion of capital funding, £1.4
billion of which will be allocated for the next academic year.
That will ensure that we build not just special school places,
but those places within mainstream settings that are so
important.
I was fortunate enough to go on a number of visits to nurseries
with my hon. Friend, and I thank him for his words about early
years staff and the role they play. I also thank Councillor Jo
Morris for kindly showing me some of the challenges. My hon.
Friend rightly raised the issue of business rates, which I will
look at with the Chancellor. I must, however, correct him on one
point, because schools pay business rates, but the issue is
settled by the Department for Education.
To allay my hon. Friend’s concerns about ratios, I should say
that we are consulting only on one extra child, and moving to the
Scottish model, which has operated in Scotland for some time, but
safety and quality are at the heart of everything we do. Finally,
he mentioned the holiday activities and food programme and
Draycott Sports Camp. It was a most fantastic visit, and I hope
that the three-year funding settlement provides certainty that
that funding will continue, and allows providers to be more
innovative.
The hon. Member for Twickenham () rightly referred to free
school meals and food insecurity. This Government have extended
eligibility for free school meals several times, and to more
groups of children than any other over the past half century. It
would carry a hugely significant financial cost if we were to
increase the income threshold, and it is right that provision is
aimed at supporting the most disadvantaged, and those who are out
of work or on the lowest incomes. I will, of course, continue to
keep free school meal eligibility under review, to ensure that
the meals support those who need them the most.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner
() speaks with great
authority on this subject, given his experience. We always take
an evidence based approach, and we focus not just on money in,
but on outcomes and on what we are aiming to achieve. He was
right to reference Sure Start. We are shifting to family hubs. I
am not one to hugely criticise Sure Start, but there are a number
of differences in the approach. He was right to focus on
nurseries and maintained nursery schools, and that is an area I
am looking closely at.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle () rightly raised oracy. We are
making significant investment in early years, but I and the
Minister for School Standards would be happy to meet her and the
APPG.
I thank all hon. Members for their contributions to today’s
important debate. The Government are determined to create an
education system that offers opportunity to everyone, no matter
their circumstances or where they live. That is why we are
leading the way and have announced a wider programme of ambitious
reforms to truly level up outcomes and ensure that we build back
better from the pandemic.
(Tynemouth) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Main Question accordingly put.
Question agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes it is a year since the resignation of the
Education Recovery Commissioner Sir ; condemns the Government’s
continued failure in that time to deliver an ambitious plan for
children’s recovery, including supporting their mental health and
wellbeing; is concerned that the inadequate attention being paid
to childcare, both for the youngest children and around the
school day, is allowing the attainment gap to widen and costs to
soar for parents at a time when there is significant pressure on
household finances; and calls on the Government to match Labour’s
ambitious plan for children’s recovery, including measures to
keep childcare costs down for parents while the cost of living
crisis continues.
|
