Examination of witnesses (Questions 434
- 439)
WEDNESDAY 28 JUNE
2000
MS MARGARET
HODGE and MR
ALAN CRANSTON
Chairman
434. Before I welcome the Minister may I welcome
Dean James Fraser and Dean James Stellar from the Eastern University
of Boston. When there was a previous Chairman but not the Chairman
who is now Minister there was a visit to the United States where
the two Deans who are visiting us today went out of their way
to be both informative and hospitable and we welcome them to our
proceedings today. May I welcome the Minister this morning and
say what a delight it is to have her back here. Whether she is
poacher turned gamekeeper or gamekeeper turned poacher I do not
know. We know that this is an area that she has in a sense made
her own but that does not mean to say we are not going to push
her hard this morning in terms of her responsibilities. Can I
just say, Minister, that we are getting towards the end of the
inquiry and we are getting quite dangerous because we think we
know a lot. You will probably find that that is not as true as
we think it is, but certainly on this Chair's part, I was new
to early years and it has been such a pleasure learning about
it that I am reluctant to come to the end because it has been
so interesting. We have been to Denmark, we have looked at a lot
of experience on the ground around the United Kingdom and I think
we are getting there. May I start by asking you to give a two
or three minute introduction?
(Ms Hodge) Thanks very much, Chairman. I am delighted
to be here talking about this and I am really pleased that the
Select Committee is doing this inquiry in what I consider to be
a crucial part of education from cradle to grave. For this Government
the priority has been to ensure that children do get a solid foundation
on which they can then build effective learning. I remember when
I was sitting in your chair, Chairman, that we were very concerned,
if you look at OECD comparative figures, that we probably invested
less than any other country in the early years. I hope that by
the action we have taken in the three years we have been in government
that we are turning that round. Certainly in the recent visit
we had from the OECD I felt that they were looking at what we
were doing as an exemplar of cutting edge practice now and policy
development, so there has been a real shift. Our approach has
also been to work very much in partnership with all the key players,
so that is partnership with parents, with the child's prime and
most important educator, particularly in the early years, and
also in partnership with all practitioners in the private, voluntary
and statutory sectors, and of course a lot of the early years
professionals, some of whom I note advising you, who also support
the work we are doing as the Government. We all recognise, and
you will now be fully au fait with, the importance of the
early years in a child's development. There is an increasing body
of research now around both brain development and an assessment
of early years' investment which demonstrates that if we can get
it right it really can make all the difference to young children,
particularly those who do not have the advantages of background
that others do. As a Government committed to ensuring opportunity
for all our children, if we can get it right in the early years
I think we really can enhance opportunities as they move through
the education process. We have put a lot of money into increasing
access. Four-year-olds now all have access to a free place. For
three-year-olds we are doubling the number of free places available
in this period of government, working towards a target of universal
nursery education for all three- and four-year-olds. We are also
involved in a series of new ways of delivering services, trying
to get an integrated service across care, education and health
with the Sure Start programme and the Early Excellence programme,
and there are some interesting and very positive results coming
out of that work. We have also put a lot of work into enhancing
the quality of the Early Years offer. It is not just enjoying
it that matters. It is the quality of what the children experience
which is absolutely crucial to later effective learning. There
are a number of measures we have taken there, such as the early
learning goals and the introduction of the Foundation Stage; I
have brought my copy of the curriculum guidance which I hope you
have all got too. We have invested in supporting the establishment
of national training organisations and the development of a national
framework of qualifications. We are bringing together the regulation
and inspection regime. In fact I spent yesterday in committee
taking through in the committee stage the establishment of the
new and distinct arm of OFSTED to bring together the best of care,
regulation and inspection with Early Years regulation and inspection.
We are supporting all the sectors to build on the diversity we
have got to create a level playing field, so there has been very
generous support of the pre-school movement on the one hand and
money into reception classes on the other hand to do something
about the ratios there, where we want to move to a 1 to 15 ratio.
We have replaced the market driven philosophy of the previous
government with planning through the early years development and
child care partnerships, and I think they are now developing into
a very powerful local community facility. I never cease to wonder,
when I go to visit partnerships, and I am sure you have had that
too, that you can get 200 people in the locality giving up a Saturday
to think about and talk about and plan early years in child care
services in their locality. We are developing partnerships with
parents through information services and through our Sure Start
and Early Excellence programmes. It is an unusually ambitious
agenda, Chairman. We will need time to make this work. I have
never thought that this was a programme for one Parliament. To
get it right I think is a good five to 10-year programme, particularly
if improvements are to be lasting, but I think we have made a
fantastically good start in partnership with all those who are
providing early years education. I do not think there has been
a more exciting time to be in the early years world. I was just
thinking about it this morning on the way in. You and I are contemporaries.
At our higher education institution we both struggled I think
to find appropriate early years settings for our children. I just
hope we can get it right for our grandchildren.
435. Thanks very much, Minister. I was remiss
in not introducing Alan Cranston. That is because he did not have
a name plate. Welcome, Alan, and you will be contributing, I know,
to our session. Can I start, Minister, by taking you up on the
question of the Early Years partnerships? We have found as we
have gone round the country that where they work well they work
very well indeed. As you said, we saw in Bristol people giving
up their evening to go to hear this Professor Pascal talk about
best practice and so on. There were an enormous number of people
there, great energy. You could see in that instance the partnership
working extremely well. But the fact of the matter is that in
some places we have been to it is not working very well. I know
you have approved all the partnerships but there are areas where
you can see that there perhaps is a dominance of one party that
does not really want to share. Sometimes they needed to go for
an independent chair and did not do that and perhaps diplomatically
took a local government chair where it could possibly have been
better with an independent chair. In a sense what I am saying
to you is that where the partnerships are not working that well
what can you do as a Minister to shake them up and make sure that
they learn from best practice as quickly as possible?
(Ms Hodge) The first thing to say is that they are
very young and I think it will take time to evolve. The second
thing is that we are bringing together people from very diverse
backgrounds and interests and professional expertise and experience,
and expecting them to focus perhaps on one particular topic. That
is I think releasing a lot of innovation but we have got to get
those relationships working well for it to be effective locally.
I want to celebrate the good, is really what I am saying. We are
putting into place a lot of structures to support partnerships
and particularly to support the weaker partnerships. For instance,
we do hold regional network conferences with chairs. We also hold
them with the Early Years development officers and with the members,
so we have a series of those. We have good practice guides. I
hope the Committee has seen some of them but we have put those
out to partnerships. We are launching an award scheme with Cherie
Blair to help us spread good practice and celebrate innovation.
We have an annual conference which I went to last year where we
were at the Business Design Centre, and it was so overflowing
with people that we decided we have to go to the Millennium Dome
this year. We are not quite going there but it was incredibly
good. We are running funding strategy workshops for the partnerships.
We are running seminars in rural areas where there are particular
problems. Probably most importantly, we are also in the process
of recruiting six consultants whose prime job will be to support
the weaker partnerships to bring them up to the quality of the
best, and we are looking at how we can twin partnerships so that
those that are working well can support and help those that are
working less well to develop better. There is a whole range of
steps we are taking.
Charlotte Atkins
436. What are your criteria of a failing partnership?
Where you have a partnership effectively grafted on to an unenthusiastic
and even obstructive LEA, what action is open to you to take against
that partnership or against that LEA?
(Ms Hodge) I do not think they are failing yet. We
approved 146 out of 150 plans. I know that yours was one of those
that was not approved. At this stage I would say that I would
like to be two or three years down the line before I described
them as failing. Some are weaker than others. The sort of criteria
that we have regard to are whether or not they are working effectively
in partnership. There are some, let us be blunt, where the local
authority dominates the effort that takes place locally and we
do want to see diversity in the partners who come together to
develop and create a local offer. We would look at the partnership
working as one, the ability to meet the targets that we set for
four-year-olds and now for three-year-olds and for child care
places as another. As they evolve we are setting them greater
tasks. Training strategies are important, looking at what they
are doing for children with special educational needs. We have
put money aside for that. Whether they have got their information
services up and running properly is important, which has been
a really exciting development. Parents hopefully will be able
shortly to go into supermarkets or post offices and plug in what
their child care needs are in a kiosk and get out the local child
care provision. Those are the sorts of criteria. I am looking
to Alan to see if I have left anything out.
(Mr Cranston) I think the only thing I would add is
that they do of course have to agree the plan. That is a requirement
and clearly if they cannot agree the plan there is a problem,
but it is not a problem that we have had.
437. How would you expect them to conduct their
meetings? Would you expect at least some of the meetings to be
open so that parents, governors and others could attend or make
representations, and would you expect an agenda which involved
sharing information rather than just a pre-set agenda by the LEA?
(Ms Hodge) I can see absolutely no reason why the
meetings should not be open. The most effective partnerships have
also developed sub-groups to look at specific areas and that is
a way of involving more people in each locality in developing
real partnership working. Again the most effective partnerships
take a number of steps to ensure that for example the time when
they hold their meetings are convenient and whether or not they
provide child care. Take child minders as an instance. A child
minder having to attend a daytime meeting of a partnership will
have to find alternative child care for the children in their
care. Making arrangements for that sort of instance to ensure
real partnership working and participation is what the most effective
partnerships are doing. I cannot think of a reason why any meeting
should be held in private.
438. Also if a body of people wanted to make
representations to the meeting presumably they should be allowed
to make those representations?
(Ms Hodge) Yes. We would not want to dictate from
the centre how partnerships work, but what we do want is genuine
partnership, open working, an inclusive mechanism which ensures
that everybody feels that they have a stake in the development
of services locally.
Helen Jones
439. The QCA guidance made it clear that the
elements of the Literacy Hour and daily mathematics lesson ought
to be introduced into reception gradually and need not be taken
in a one-hour block. Bearing in mind that many children in reception
classes are now very young, only four, what do you believe is
the best way of starting children to learn the elements of literacy
and numeracy at that age?
(Ms Hodge) Can I just say one thing before we come
on to reception classes? I am sure we will come back to this one
as well. I genuinely think it does not matter where children are.
What matters is the experience they are receiving. I hope that
over time as we improve the quality of what children receive the
distinction of whether they are sitting in a reception class,
in a nursery class, in a pre-school or in a private nursery, will
disappear. It is the experience they are receiving which I think
is of first importance. That is why for instance we are putting
money into reception classes. We have put money into the 60 most
deprived authorities to ensure that the ratio there of adult to
child is appropriate for that age, 1 to 15, not the 1 to 30 that
many were at when we came into office. Again the curriculum guidance
is littered with examples of the sort of good practice which reception
class and other teachers should employ to gradually introduce
the Literacy Hour so that by the end of the reception year the
children are ready to start effectively on Key Stage 1. First
of all the children will be of different ages in the reception
class, and secondly they will be at different stages of development.
The effective teacher is one that responds to those different
ages and different stages. We have been very anxious that in introducing
the Foundation Stage and in introducing the early learning goals
we should not make reception class teachers think that they have
to use the literacy and numeracy hour to its full at the beginning.
As I knew you would ask me this question, Helen, somewhere along
the line, I did bring two documents. One was the press release
I put out at the time that we produced the guidance in which I
said: "In the reception year teachers should teach the different
elements of the Literacy Hour and daily mathematics lesson flexibly
throughout the year, spread throughout the day and appropriate
to the age, and by the end of that final year of the Foundation
Stage children should then be ready for entry to year one."
I have also written to the Chief Inspector along similar lines
in discussing how we see the teaching of literacy in the Foundation
Stage, where I have said: "What is in fact required is that
teachers plan and teach to the objectives in the two frameworks,
that the elements of the Literacy Hour and daily mathematics lesson
are taught throughout the reception year and that the full session
is established by the end of it. Earlier in the year it is perfectly
acceptable for these to be delivered flexibly across the day rather
than together in a single lesson. It is for schools to judge the
pace of introduction appropriate for children in their care, observing
the framework objectives." To reinforce that the national
numeracy and literacy strategy are both producing guidance specifically
for reception teachers around how to introduce literacy and numeracy
strategies.
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