Labour pledges to focus on early years with recovery investment equivalent to 400,000 weeks of fulltime childcare
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Labour has pledged to deliver a renewed focus on the early years
with a recovery investment in the early years pupil premium
equivalent to over 400,000 weeks of fulltime childcare, as evidence
shows the hugely damaging impact the pandemic has had on our
youngest children. In a speech to the National Education Union’s
annual conference, Bridget Phillipson MP, Labour’s Shadow Education
Secretary, will condemn the government’s complete failure to
deliver a comprehensive...Request free
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Labour has pledged to deliver a renewed focus on the early years with a recovery investment in the early years pupil premium equivalent to over 400,000 weeks of fulltime childcare, as evidence shows the hugely damaging impact the pandemic has had on our youngest children. In a speech to the National Education Union’s annual conference, Bridget Phillipson MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, will condemn the government’s complete failure to deliver a comprehensive pandemic recovery plan for children two years after schools and childcare providers first closed, despite acknowledging the damaging impacts on young people’s learning, social development and wellbeing. Phillipson will point to Labour’s ambitious Children’s Recovery Plan, stating that if Labour was in charge early years would be a key priority, with a recovery investment in childcare and early learning of £112 million this year. Labour’s plan targets children eligible for free school meals who, after 12 years of Conservative government, arrive at school an average of five months behind their better off peers. Phillipson will say that under the Tories childcare is becoming increasingly “unavailable and unaffordable” with the price of a nursery place for three and four-year-olds having risen by 12 per cent in five years. Bridget Phillipson MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said: “The Conservatives are sacrificing children’s futures in their utter failure to deliver a proper recovery plan for our children. “Labour has been clear for months - we would be delivering the recovery plan that children need, want and deserve, with investment in early childcare supporting our youngest children.
ENDS Notes to editors:
Source Coram Childcare Survey 2018 / 2022
***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY*** The last two years have been a time unlike any other. In all our lives, across every public service and every profession. While everyone faced disruption, our education system had to adapt to undreamt-of challenges. I want to pay tribute to all of you as teachers, who have been on the front line. … And done all that through a time in which our government’s role in schools has been not to support, to empower and to enable. But too often, to delay, to disrupt, and to fail our children. Long waits for children to get the laptops, tablets, or even pens and pencils they need. Last minute changes to exams and even to grades. Ministers whose interest in classroom teaching has been in picking fights on the curriculum, rather than improving ventilation to keep children in class. You deserve better, our children deserve better. I want to thank you today, for all that you did, and all that you are doing. … Above all, what we needed, was a clear Children’s Recovery Plan. If I had been Secretary of State then on the very day schools closed to most children in March 2020, that was the day I would have started work on three plans. An immediate plan, to support children’s learning and development remotely, and as fully as possible, while lockdown went on. An urgent plan, to reopen schools safely and quickly, and to keep them open so children could learn together and play together. And critically, a plan to ensure that when lockdown ended, children’s education and wellbeing did not suffer in the long term. … We’d have pumped in investment, increasing the early years pupil premium more than fourfold, to drive up the quality, affordability, and availability of provision. Early years childcare and education in this country is too often unaffordable, unavailable, inaccessible. The government is failing parents and failing children alike because it’s in those first few years that the attainment gap opens up for our children. It’s also the first chance to step in and help in the lives of children who need that support. You see that in schools, when it happens, and when it doesn’t. We all see that in our society. In power, Labour acted decisively to tackle that disadvantage, support families and children, and to close that gap. A generation grew up with Children’s Centres. A generation, like me, were supported after sixteen with Education Maintenance Allowance. I saw in my own community the difference those changes made. I see it in the lives of young people who grew up with that advantage, with the support it unlocked. Some 20 years later, the evidence around both attainment and early intervention is clearer and stronger than it was even then. And yet, too many children don’t have the chances they all should have. Too many children arrive at school already behind their peers, and that inequality gets worse as the years go on. Too many parents can’t afford breakfast clubs, after school clubs, extra activities. That ongoing failure on childcare means the attainment gap gets worse. That is exactly what the Conservatives should be tackling. It is exactly what Labour would be tackling. … In these last 12 years child poverty has soared. It was rising before the pandemic, and Conservative choices are making it worse almost every day. The cost of living crisis, is a crisis made worse in Downing Street. It is piling extra costs on to families and children. Income tax thresholds frozen, council tax up, National Insurance up, energy prices soaring, petrol costs through the roof, food prices up, Universal Credit support slashed. Again and again we see this government making choices about taxation, about spending, and about action, that mean less money and less support for working people and their children. You will know better than I do how that plays out in the classroom. Issues of attainment, behaviour and attendance don’t start and stop at the school gate. Supporting children at school is not a responsibility that stops when children get home. To me and to Labour, education is about opportunity, and government’s role must be to empower and enable all our children with those opportunities. … Too many children today are held back by virtue of where they’re born, their circumstances and family background. I want every child, in every school, in every corner of this country, to benefit from a brilliant education which instils in them a love of learning they carry throughout their life. It did for me. And my mission is simple. I want that for everyone. So when Labour comes to power, I ask you to remember when you saw a Conservative government that treated our children as an afterthought. When you saw your class sizes increasing. When you had to reach into your pocket, as I know too many of you, too often, feel you have to do, for pens, pencils, books, even food for the children you teach. When you had a child at the back of the class, on free school meals, not sure if she fitted in, with no winter coat for the playground, nervous and anxious about her future, I want you to remember. That child grew up to be the Secretary of State in a Labour government. The success of every child in every classroom is the measure by which you and I and the government that Keir Starmer will lead, will all be judged, the yardstick of Labour’s success in our schools. Teachers transformed my life. I know you can transform every life. It will be my mission, to ensure you do. |