Examination of witnesses (Questions 440
- 459)
WEDNESDAY 28 JUNE
2000
MS MARGARET
HODGE and MR
ALAN CRANSTON
440. I think that is very helpful and it perhaps
answers one of the questions that we raised when we had the Chief
Inspector giving evidence to us. But while that is relatively
easy to institute in schools, how will you ensure that in the
private and voluntary sector children are receiving the same quality
of experience? Are you convinced that all the staff operating
in those areas have the necessary expertise to introduce those
elements of literacy and numeracy in a way which is appropriate
to the age and stage of development of the children they care
for?
(Ms Hodge) Not yet. We inherited a huge diversity
of offer and that is part of the United Kingdom strength and we
want to build on that, but we need to enhance quality and the
early findings from the EPPE research, which I know you have had
before the Committee, demonstrate that there is diversity in the
quality of settings. I think the Inspector's own reports, although
they all demonstrate an improvement in quality, also give evidence
of a diversity in quality. How are we trying to tackle it? Through
training and through investing in the workforce. I am launching
at the end of this week a campaign to recruit more people into
the early years sector. We are spending quite a lot of money,
three to four million pounds a year, on that. We need to invest
in training as well. It is a mixture of training, providing appropriate
guidance, encouraging recruitment. Sharing good practice I think
is another element of it. The Early Excellence Centres, of which
we have 29, are centres where very good practice is currently
going on and we want to extend those and use them perhaps as training
capacities for other settings within that area. We deliberately
this year put eight million pounds into establishing the training
programme around the early learning goals and Foundation Stage.
Next year there is £13.5 million in the standards fund to
that purpose, not enough but it is a good start. A lot of that
money is being focused on the private and voluntary sector.
Chairman
441. Can we have a copy of that letter to Chris
Woodhead?[1]
(Ms Hodge) I will have to ask him. Is
that all right?
Chairman: That is fine.
Helen Jones
442. It is encouraging to hear about training
and it is something all the members of the Committee would support.
In the meantime it is fair to say that while the Committee has
seen some examples of very good practice we have also seen some
examples of very bad practice where people genuinely believe they
are doing the best thing—children tracing out letters and
so on. How do you get the message across to people running the
various types of setting in the meantime that that is not necessarily
the best way to teach children the elements of literacy and numeracy,
that that is not what we are asking them to do?
(Ms Hodge) First of all I have seen good practice
in all kinds of settings, so I have seen good practice in reception
classes and poor practice. I have seen good practice in pre-schools
and poor practice. That goes right across the setting. I do not
want people to think that one is better than another, although
on the whole in the Early Excellence Centres I have seen brilliant
practice, absolutely wonderful practice in most of those, and
in many nursery schools I have seen really good practice. We are
now working hard and trying to see how we could maintain those
nursery schools at a time when they are financially threatened.
How do you do it? I think it has to be through training, it has
to be through guidance, it has to be through the inspection, it
has to be through the support from local authorities, and it has
to be through sharing good practice. I do not think there is a
magic answer, I do not think there is a quick answer. I think
we are getting it better and again the Chief Inspector's annual
reports on four-year-olds in getting nursery education grant demonstrate
an improvement but it will take time. This was an undervalued
area in the past. Nobody valued the early years. It is not a highly
valued area in the education world, it is not seen as the place
to go. Our job is to raise the status and to convince everybody
that actually the early years are one of the most rewarding and
important areas in which to invest your energy and best people.
443. You mentioned in the section something
that we are concerned with. Do you think that OFSTED has the necessary
expertise in early years to take on the extra role of inspecting
for early years settings?
(Ms Hodge) Yes. They have not got it now. The new
distinct arm of OFSTED will have the expertise because we are
building it in a way to ensure that it does.
Chairman
444. It was a bit worrying though, Minister,
when Chris Woodhead came here last week and said he did not think
it was necessary for the person who might be the head of that
unit to have any early years experience. We thought that very
disturbing as a Committee.
(Ms Hodge) We need a range of skills in the person
who will be heading that Early Years Directorate and we have yet
to see who is in put in post. The post has not even been advertised
yet.
445. Do you not think that the person in that
critical role should have some experience of early years?
(Ms Hodge) I think that it would be absolutely crucial
to have firmly embedded in this new and distinct arm of OFSTED
strong experience of the early years. But just to explain what
we are doing, it has always been a nonsense to me to have separate
regulatory and inspection regimes for care and education. Kids
do not distinguish and we do not distinguish and life has changed.
Bringing together the inspection and regulatory regimes for early
years is a huge advance. What we need to be very careful of when
we establish it is that we establish a presence which brings together
the best of child care, early years inspection and regulation
with the best of early years education inspection and regulation.
If one says to you that this new arm of OFSTED will be three times
as large as the existing arm, I think it will be difficult for
it not to develop its own distinctive culture and presence within
the enlarged presence of OFSTED. Many of the people working in
local authorities who do the child care, the under-8s workers
who do the child care inspection, will transfer to OFSTED so it
will be very much the same people but working alongside and together
with nursery education inspectors, so again that will I think
bring strength to the sector. OFSTED are changing the guidance
they do for their section 10 and their section 122 inspection
reports to introduce care there, and similarly, as they take over
the inspection role under the Children Act, they will change the
guidance for that to bring the two more closely together.
Charlotte Atkins
446. You have said that you have seen a range
of provision in different settings, some excellent, some not so
good. Can you justify the difference in child/staff ratios? It
is 1 to 30 in reception classes, 1 to 13 in nursery schools, and
1 to 8 in play groups. How can we, if we are trying to bring together
early years, justify that difference in resources because obviously
it will have an impact on the experience of the child? That is
one thing they do notice. They may not notice whether it is the
private sector or the state sector, but they do recognise the
ratio and their access to the adults in that room.
(Ms Hodge) We intend over time to create a level playing
field but it is a very complicated issue and we are determined
to get it right. Again we have taken a number of steps to reduce
ratios in reception classes to 1 to 15. We are just starting on
a pilot on ratios in the private and voluntary sector where the
Thomas Coram Research Institute are monitoring it for us, where
in 50 settings in the private and voluntary sector we are looking
at the impact of a ratio of 1 to 13 with a qualified teacher.
Chairman
447. One to 13?
(Ms Hodge) One to 13.
448. We had heard it was 1 to 15.
(Ms Hodge) Two to 26. I think it is 1 to 13, fitting
in with the 2 to 26 ratio. There are all these ratios all over
the place. It is 2 to 26 but with one being a qualified teacher.
We want to learn from that pilot before we make a further move
on ratios. The reason is that adult/child ratios matter but the
qualifications and the quality of the individual working with
the child are equally important and the very early research that
we are getting out of the EPPE research programme is beginning
to give us further insight on that. We are also doing a trail
through the international research, Chairman, to see what other
evidence we have got on ratios. Two members of the Committee were
with us when we went to Switzerland and looked at what they were
doing there.[2]
Interestingly, there they worked on a ratio of 1 to 18 but with
a highly qualified and experienced teacher in charge of the class.
I think the issue of ratios is a complicated one. I think qualifications
may matter as much as if not more than numbers. We need to get
it right before we move to the level playing field.
Charlotte Atkins
449. So what will be the time span of the Government
to achieve that?
(Ms Hodge) I am trying to think when that report is
due.
(Mr Cranston) That is due in December.
(Ms Hodge) We are doing the trawl through of the research.
We will get the EPPE research by about the same time. We will
have our pilots completed by then, so hopefully we will be able
to move forward in the new year on that.
450. Lastly, given that you are very keen on
making sure that staff are properly qualified, what will you do
with those pre-school play groups where you have unqualified staff
and, be honest, sometimes very poor provision? Would you be suggesting
that that sort of provision should be closed down if you felt
it was inadequate?
(Ms Hodge) I do not want to close anything down but
we are currently developing a set of national standards for all
settings against which the Chief Inspector will then inspect those
settings. We will be putting those out for consultation hopefully
in the next two or three weeks, something like that. Within those
standards we will be consulting on the qualification levels of
staff within all settings. Then we will set a timetable for implementing
that over time. We do not want to close anything; we want to bring
people up. As far as the pre-schools are concerned David Blunkett
announced an additional new £250,000 and that is going specifically
to supporting particular pre-schools into moving forward so that
they more appropriately meet the changing needs both from the
early education agenda and also from the child care agenda.
Mr Marsden
451. We have heard a lot from the witnesses
who have come before us about the importance of play activities
in a variety of settings and in a variety of structures. I wanted
to start by asking you, given the demands of the Literacy Hour
although you have already said that those can be delivered quite
flexibly, are you happy that the value of play is sufficiently
acknowledged and recognised in the new structures that you are
putting forward?
(Ms Hodge) Yes, completely yes. I think if you do
have the time to look through the guidance play is very firmly
embedded there in the activities that we expect children to learn.
Can I just say—I always say this but I will repeat it here—that
we need to stop putting learning and play as two separate and
competing objectives. They are very closely interlinked and we
increasingly should be seeing how children can learn through play.
Equally, if you want to create a predisposition towards learning,
which is what the early years is largely about, then you must
make learning fun. I often think it is a false distinction. I
think the more helpful way forward is to see how we can bring
the two together and I hope the structures we are establishing,
both in the Foundation Stage and in the regulatory framework,
will support that thesis.
Chairman
452. We found far too many parents of infants
not understanding that creative play is hard work to organise.
You have to do it well and we saw some really good examples of
best practice, but we saw other examples of children just running
around, doing their own thing, very little mediation of that play
or structure of that play, which did not look very good to us.
It seems to us that there has not been a job yet of really educating
the parents about the difference between children running around
doing their own thing and structured play in the right setting
with absolutely, most importantly, a highly qualified person who
understands it and getting that message across.
(Ms Hodge) I agree with that.
Mr Marsden
453. Can I come back to the point we made about
abolishing the distinction? Most of us would share that view and
it is a very noble aspiration. What I would like to hear a bit
more about, when you are at the sharp end of delivering the (rightly)
demanding curriculum which is now being set up, is what safeguards
have you got in there. We know from when the national curriculum
was introduced of the concerns that were expressed initially about
the literacy and numeracy hour crowding other important aspects
of the curriculum and obviously that has had to be developed and
modified. Are you sufficiently confident that you have enough
safeguards in the structures, in the advice so that when people
are very much at the sharp end of delivering, perhaps initially
with relatively modest resources and in a fairly sharp timescale,
that they will not fall back on a rote response to the Literacy
Hour and neglect the elements of play which you quite rightly
said are so important?
(Ms Hodge) I think it is going to take us time to
get to our objective. We will not achieve this overnight. It is
going to take time partly because of the diversity of the settings
that are out there and with which we are working, partly because
of the lack of qualifications and training within the workplace.
Forty four per cent of people in the last workforce survey we
had, which was 1998 and we are just about to commission a new
one, did not have an appropriate qualification, one in four in
pre-schools do not, 70 per cent of child minders do not. One in
five in private nurseries do not. Those are the figures. There
is a huge task ahead of us in supporting and training those who
work with young children. There is a huge task in changing cultures
in a lot of settings. How do you make sure it happens? It is the
practitioner on the ground planning the activities properly and
then supporting the child and making sure that at every instance
where a child is playing how you can develop that particular experience
into a learning experience, all that sort of stuff which is absolutely
crucial. I think we are putting into place the essential elements
of a framework which will support a raising of quality in the
early years and that is the regulatory regime, the curriculum,
the training strategy, the recruitment and the expansion of services.
We have got all those bits in place and we have now got to work
jolly hard to make sure that every practitioner in every setting
comes up to the quality of the best.
454. Finally can I raise with you a very specific
concern? I think it was the Early Years co-ordinators who discussed
this with us. That is about the opportunities for external play.
I think there is a widespread disturbing view that because of
the social and psychological pressures on parents these days children
simply do not get the experience of outdoor play that perhaps
they would have got 20 or 30 years ago. This is tied into all
sorts of things like fear of crime, fear of strangers and so on.
Whatever the reason for it, it does appear from evidence that
we have received to be the case. What are you going to do to make
sure not that those problems can all be solved but that the outdoor
learning opportunities which you are talking about in the new
guidance will give sufficient opportunity for children to experience
that sort of playing outside element and what are the resource
implications for that?
(Ms Hodge) Across the Department there is a strong
investment now in ensuring not only that we keep the outdoor play
facilities that we have in education, but that we enhance them.
I know that my ministerial colleagues are working hard to both
preserve what we have got and then in the comprehensive spending
review support a planned expansion of that. There is a need for
more capital investment in the early years. For the first time
there was a specific sum set aside in this latest New Deal
round for investment in early years and we have been able to distribute
that to authorities, not a lot but it was a start. We need to
ensure more capital investment again subject to CSR negotiations
and all that. The final thing I was going to say which I think
is quite important is that I hope that more and more early years
settings, particularly in the private and voluntary sector (and
this is a way forward), can co-operate with schools if there is
the space within the school to have a pre-school within the school.
I have seen them in secondary schools and it is a really good
family support way of running things. If you can get more early
years activity within a school, there is there probably still
the opportunity for more outdoor play and then our investment
in making sure that it is appropriate to the age of the child,
I think we can provide that.
Chairman
455. But is it not an attitude of mind? When
we were in Denmark Gordon missed spending an hour in the pouring
rain with lots of little tiny tots—they were dressed for
the weather; we were not. There is an attitude there that the
children go out every day in pouring rain, snow, tiny tots and
they have an attitude of getting out and it is important to their
development. We found a lot of pre-school experience here in poky
old chapels rather than going out, in make-do-and-mend buildings
where it did not come across to many members of the Committee
that there was any role at all in pre-school of taking a child
out into the park, out into the woods, out for an experience that
would broaden their horizon. It just seemed to me and the rest
of the Committee, certainly the ones that went to Denmark, that
their attitude (and we could build this into the curriculum even)
was to have an alertness to the importance of this. We were very
impressed, although we got very wet, by the Danish experience.
(Ms Hodge) Chairman, if you have the time, and I cannot
remember the name of it off the top of my head, there is one Early
Excellence Centre which basically takes the kids out into the
forest.
456. I thought you were going to say "and
then lost them"!
(Ms Hodge) I will let the Committee have the name
of it because they are also spreading their good practice elsewhere.
The whole of the curriculum is taught outdoors to the children
in all weathers. I was petrified. I saw these little kids with
saws sawing away at the wood, and all their early literacy, numeracy,
everything, comes from their experiences in the forest and play.
There are the wild flowers and the little insects and so on that
they find. It was just fantastic. It is one of our Early Excellence
Centres. I cannot remember the name.
Mr St Aubyn
457. Minister, you said earlier that the diversity
of provision in this country is one of our strengths. Does that
not mean that when all of these children are in the same class
by the age of five they will arrive there at different speeds,
at different stages of development? Are you not worried that those
who have benefited from the Literacy Hour will then lose the advantage
that that might have given to their whole education as their teachers
have to focus most of their time bringing the other members of
the class up to speed?
(Ms Hodge) My ambition would not be that they are
all at the same level because we are not expecting the early
learning goals to be target or a test in the same way
that Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 are. The ambition is that wherever
they come from, whatever setting they have experienced before
they come into school will provide a very similar experience.
We can ensure that if there is a much greater uniformity of quality
across the field then the issue that you focus on should not be
a problem. Some parents may prefer a different setting before
school and ought to have the choice to let their kids do that
and a knowledge that their children will get a jolly good experience
in that setting.
458. You obviously accept the right of parents
to choose what type of setting is appropriate for children. Some
parents, for their own reasons, may believe that a non-academic
setting if you like, one which does not include the Literacy Hour,
is preferable for them. When I raised this matter with the Chief
Inspector the response from OFSTED was, "Only one of our
13 criteria in our inspection relates to the Literacy Hour. Most
of what we are inspecting is about security and other aspects
of provision". Are you saying here that in your view they
must all have undertaken that Literacy Hour component of early
years provision? Without that there will be differences in the
stage they have reached once they get to school, will there not?
(Ms Hodge) The Foundation Stage gives them a framework.
In a sense it is the first time we have recognised the early years
as a distinct phase in its own right, so it gives them a curriculum.
The early learning goals are where we would expect
most children to be by the time they start on Key Stage 1. Some
will have exceeded it; some will not have got there. All settings,
wherever the child is, that attract nursery education grant will
be inspected by OFSTED on nationally set criteria and a nationally
established framework.
Chairman
459. But Nick is right, is he not? I am glad
he has brought us back to literacy and numeracy in the sense that
we found that out. Select Committees with their ears to the ground
do quite a good job of finding out what is going on and perhaps
everyone is not quite as well behaved and on message as when a
Minister visits. We picked up that there were very mixed messages
about the literacy and numeracy hour amongst teachers. On the
one hand there is a message going out from the Chief Inspector
and a different message going out from QCA. We really did find
that on the one hand the brave, well organised team in a school
saying, "We are going to teach literacy and numeracy the
way we know is effective. We are not going to sit the kids down
for an hour at this young age", full of confidence. Others
were less confident about what they should be doing and worried
about it because they were getting this message from OFSTED and
different messages from elsewhere. We did find there was a distance
there. It is not imagined; it is real. Secondly, there was concern
on the ground that some of the transition, the movement of a child
from one stage to the next did, not really connect up sometimes.
The stage that they were at did not lead to a progression. In
fact, you could get a non-progression if you like.
(Ms Hodge) We are not there yet. We are only three
years into this. If you take out the first settling in year it
has probably been for two years that we are really focused on
what we are doing. I find when I go out primary school parents
who are worried that if they do not have a Literacy Hour fully
in place at the beginning from September onwards for four-year-olds
upwards, they are going to fail their inspection. Yes, that exists
out there. Equally, there are pre-schools who, when they start,
if they are having their first OFSTED inspection, are also thinking
that what they have to do is show very traditional literacy and
numeracy activities. Of course there is a huge amount of work
to do to ensure that the framework and the objectives we have
established are right. The curriculum is only coming in in September
this year. We are only now training and that will support a much
better move into Key Stage 1. OFSTED will only start inspecting
in September 2001. That again will take time to lead in. The training
and raising of the quality of practitioners who work with young
children will take a longer time for us to get right. Yes, we
could all find examples of people not understanding our objectives
at this point. I would like you to go back in five years' time,
let us say, and you will probably see a massive improvement.
1 See supplementary evidence, p. 214. Back
2
Education and Employment Committee, Ninth Report, Session 1997-98
(HC 725-I). Back
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