Examination of witnesses (Questions 480
- 504)
WEDNESDAY 28 JUNE
2000
MS MARGARET
HODGE and MR
ALAN CRANSTON
480. You are getting on well with your friends
in the Treasury?
(Ms Hodge) Trying.
Mr O'Brien
481. The only other point, a point on which
I have corresponded with the Minister, is the undermining to a
degree of these initiatives by a sense of inequity in some schools
in my constituency which I have visited where there is a certain
disparity between the provision for those who are getting one
term or two terms or in some cases three terms from the age of
four before the compulsory starting age of five. This is dividing
parents against each other and it is causing a great deal of harm
in terms of these intiiatives. I wonder whether you could comment
on that.
(Ms Hodge) Every child is entitled to three full terms
of nursery education, as I have written to you, depending on their
compulsory school age, and we are down to the admission arrangements
of individual local education authorities and schools. All we
have done is urge that they adopt flexibility. There is a real
issue which I probably have not dealt with which is that they
are a declining cohort in this middle group. Ironically the market
out there is changing and money follows the child. There is an
issue we are thinking about there about funding arrangements,
as to whether, in reviewing those, we can make it less pressure
to transfer children because of funding arrangements.
482. How long might that process of thinking
that through take? I am sensing quite a sense of anxiety on the
part of parents. Of course every parent is concerned that their
children should not just be in that period when a consultation
is going on rather than action.
(Ms Hodge) There are real problems around it because
if you fund places and they are kept empty that is not a sensible
use of resources and we are trying to expand this sector. There
is not an easy answer to this, if I am honest, Chairman. We are
looking at this at the moment. I think probably as we start in
the next financial year we will begin to have a better idea of
what we can do.
Chairman
483. The funding formula is not perfect, the
Committee has seen the logic and celebrated the fact the money
follows the child and that leads to diversity. We did find some
worry that a three year old in certain settings had special educational
needs, the funding mechanism was a bit blunt there. They were
saying "How do we know we are going to get the resources
at that age both for identifying special educational needs and
meeting those needs".
(Ms Hodge) I think there is not sufficient investment
in the special educational needs of children in their early years.
We deliberately this year, for the first time, gave partnerships
a ring fenced £3 million specifically to identify and support
children with special educational needs. That is not enough, it
is a start. Again, as part of our spending review, we have put
proposals forward which will ensure a much better and stronger
infrastructure to support children with special educational needs.
484. Does that not go to the heart of it in
a sense? I started off listening to Stephen O'Brien, he is passionate
about the role of the gifted amateur. I was with him at the beginning
of this inquiry. We are getting towards the end of this inquiry
and I am less with him because I think the real nub of this, surely,
is well paid, well motivated, well qualified staff. I would not
trust the amateur to identify a child with special educational
needs, certainly an amateur that who poorly trained, poorly paid
in certain settings that we saw. It is about pay and it is about
training, is it not? There is a dichotomy, is there not? On the
one hand we met parents who would put their children into a pre-school
setting with no training, people with no training, poorly paid
minimum wage, whereas they would not hire a plumber who had no
qualifications to come and fix a problem in the kitchen with the
washing machine or the dishwasher.
(Ms Hodge) Hopefully the work that you are doing here
in this Committee and the work I am doing will raise the status
and the importance of the early years. When we get that right
we will hopefully start seeing more very good people. There are
lots and lots of good people out there, do not let us diminish
that, more and more of the good people are choosing to work in
this sector.
Chairman: Right. Can I move on to the last section
of our questions. Evan wants to come in.
Dr Harris
485. I want to ask you about the relationship
between child care and early years, particularly nought to three
year olds. A child born, let us say, on 1 May 1997, to choose
a date at random will be—
(Ms Hodge) I have got to work this out, go on.
486. I will help you.—will be three now,
Minister, by my calculations.
(Ms Hodge) Yes.
487. What percentage of those children will
have guaranteed access to even a part-time state funded nursery
place?
(Ms Hodge) By?
488. Now, by the time they are three, having
lived all their life under a Labour Government, putting education
first.
(Ms Hodge) I have to say we are the first Government
ever to have put money specifically into three year olds. Some
local education authorities have done it before but it has never
come from Government. In this financial year, 50 per cent, half
of the children, will have access to a free nursery place. By
the end of next financial year it will be up to two-thirds.
489. That is part-time?
(Ms Hodge) Yes.
490. If I can look at full-time, what are the
prospects for a child born, say, in May 2000, naming no names,
who perhaps does not have wealthy parents, having access by the
time they are three to full-time state funded nursery education?
(Ms Hodge) We are in the process of setting targets
to ensure universal funding of nursery education for three or
less.
Dr Harris: By the time they are three, let us
say, 2003, which is six years in, I suppose you would say Lord
willing, to a Labour administration, would you say that at that
point three year olds would have access to a full-time—
Chairman: Is this a new Life Peer that I am
looking at.
Dr Harris
491. I do not want to lose the thread of this
question. It is out there, your own research, papers by Prior
and the Day Care Trust, which show that access to child care and,
indeed, to a certain extent full time nursery education for three
year olds is as much about child care, setting people free to
work, is dependent on affordability. That is DfEE's own evidence.
(Ms Hodge) There is quite a lot jumbled up in that.
We are in the process of setting targets for universal nursery
education for three and four year olds. We are well on target,
in fact exceeding our targets, in terms of developing child care
places. We said we would provide sufficient places for a million
children in this Parliament and I think we will probably exceed
those targets. We have introduced the Working Families Tax Credit
which will support low income families in ensuring that they can
have quality affordable child care. But in building, again, a
national child care infrastructure, as well as building an early
years education infrastructure, it takes time. There are huge
issues that we are still needing to tackle: workforce issues,
ensuring we respond to children with special educational needs,
ensuring that we get appropriate facilities in rural areas, ensuring
that we sustain provision in deprived areas, expanding the services
for nought to three. All those things are issues that we are thinking
about, planning for and seeking resources for.
Chairman
492. Evan has made a very important point. We
all know you are passionate and concerned with early years. I
think you said earlier it would take five to ten years really
to get there. How confident are you that the commitment will remain
in early years? We have seen the commitment, we have seen the
resources, how confident are you that this will remain a priority
of this Government?
(Ms Hodge) No doubt. Absolutely no doubt. It is a
top priority right across Government.
493. You might move on to greater things, Minister.
(Ms Hodge) The priority will remain. It will stay
there.
Dr Harris
494. I am just a little concerned. We are going
to do a report on early years, it would be nice for the Committee
to give a view on whether the targets you set are appropriate.
I know you have not provided—yet—100 per cent access
to part-time nursery education for three year olds but can you
give us an idea of the sorts of targets we should be looking at
so that we can come to a judgment on whether that tackles this
access to child care and early years for people regardless of
their means?
(Ms Hodge) No, not at this point is the truth. What
we have done is we are meeting the targets we have set ourselves
for this Parliament. On four year olds we replaced the nursery
voucher scheme with a planned system of places for four year olds
within a year of coming into Government, which is not bad going.
We are now setting on the expansion of free places for three year
olds. We will reach two thirds of three year olds by the end of
2001-02. We are now in the process of setting a further set of
targets. On child care there is such a dearth of provision in
this country. You went to Denmark, I have not been there for years
and years and years but I went there ten years ago and it just
is a different scale of provision.
Chairman
495. It is a different culture.
(Ms Hodge) Completely different culture. You cannot
build that up overnight. It will need a lot of public investment,
it will need massive increase in workforce, all the things we
have been talking about this morning.
Dr Harris
496. Clearly you started from a low point, and
I certainly accept that, but on new initiatives, if you look at
Denmark, then there have been criticisms that have been made,
I think you will recognise this, of existing Government policy.
Denmark has a co-ordinated system to encourage the high participation
of women in the workforce and one of those is the fact that parental
leave is very generous and paid. People have criticised this country
for being, I think, one of only two countries in the European
Union that do not offer funding for parental leave which puts
it out of the reach of people in low paid jobs who do not have
the resources of a second big earner to pay for that parental
leave. Has the DfEE got any pressure it can put on colleagues
in other departments to have a more joined up policy?
(Ms Hodge) We do have a joined up policy. As you know,
Stephen Byers is chairing a group of ministers, of whom I am one,
where we are looking at the whole range of maternity rights and
parental leave and other arrangements to see how we can get a
better work/life balance whilst maintaining our competitiveness.
That also will report in due course. If I can just say on a very
personal point here, when children are little it is far easier
to manage that balance between work and home because when you
come home they plug in to you immediately and quality time is
easier to give. It is when they get to 12, 13 and 14 you come
in and say "I am here for you now" and they are busy
watching Eastenders or Coronation Street that the
problems really start. It is not something which is contained
in the first three to five years of a child's life, important
as they are.
Chairman
497. I must say that most of us who went to
Denmark did not want to transplant it here. The system certainly
has its own problems.
(Ms Hodge) Yes.
498. In a system where many, many children go
into care or education from seven in the morning until five in
the evening and then what is known in Denmark from five to seven
are called the wolf hours because they are always so beastly to
each other. We found actually when we looked at the system it
was a system going through transition and some of them are looking
at us in terms of what we are doing in terms of greater diversity
and choice.
(Ms Hodge) Yes.
Mr St Aubyn
499. Just on that very point, Minister, we actually
met a mother out there who happened to be English, her husband
worked out there, who was saying even from the age of 12 to 18
months she felt under enormous pressure, both social and financial,
to put her child into day care. What assurance can you give to
those mothers, and indeed fathers, who firmly believe that at
least one of them should be with the child until a much older
age, that the system that you are building here is not going to
create those social and financial pressures as well?
(Ms Hodge) It is quite the opposite. I think this
needs banging firmly on the head. We are not about in any way
forcing mothers into work. What we are about is ensuring that
those mothers who need to or choose to work, and eight out of
ten mothers now do so, are given the appropriate support in the
child care infrastructure so that they do not have to choose between
children they love and jobs they need. It is providing choice
to those mothers that underpins what we are doing in all these
policies around children and family. It is not about changing
or forcing mums to go into the work place. I have to say, Nick,
when I was bringing up my kids there was hardly anything out there,
you had to work hard to find high quality appropriate child care
when you were working with children. What I am hoping is that
for my grandchildren there will be proper choice for parents so
that you are not torn apart by feeling the needs to have your
children in a high quality situation and the demands of your job.
That is what it is about. It is all about providing choice, it
is not about forcing anybody into work.
Chairman
500. Right, Minister, in the very last couple
of minutes, I can only ask you this because you were the chair
of this Committee, and this is the last of the oral evidence—and
thank you for that—and we are going to be writing up this
report now. Where are the areas you think we could add value in
terms of how you have seen the early years from both sides, both
in this chair and as a Minister in the Department?
(Ms Hodge) My goodness, dare I presume.
501. You can presume. We are giving you a licence.
(Ms Hodge) I think the challenge is how we maintain
the diversity and enhance the quality whilst we are expanding
the services. Adding value to that debate, that is the challenge
that I think about all the time. How do you keep the diversity
you want, enhance the quality and expand the services and make
sure that they are truly accessible to everybody: rural areas,
children with special educational needs, all those groups that
are currently vulnerable as we extend the offer.
502. Minister, I can assure you that we have
done a thorough job on this inquiry and we will write it up.
(Ms Hodge) Good.
503. I expect a very good report which will
be, I hope, of use, both of advice to the Government and really
some information to the public. Just as a housekeeping matter,
you did mention and I did mention your letter to the Chief Inspector.
If it is possible to get your letter to him and the reply you
get back, it would be most useful, if it is possible.[3]
(Ms Hodge) Right.
504. Thank you very much.
(Ms Hodge) Thank you very much. I look forward to
seeing your report.
3 See supplementary evidence, below. Back
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