Examination of Witness(Questions 80-99)
BARONESS ASHTON
OF UPHOLLAND
MONDAY 2 DECEMBER 2002
80. In the main?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) Yes.
81. But it is not restricted to those?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) What we are trying
to do is mention them because the Neighbourhood Nurseries' programme,
as I say, is up and running for this spending review. What I am
in the middle of doing—and I happy to write to the Committee
when I have finished these discussions with colleagues and officials—is
to look at how you develop that programme alongside the Children's
Centre model, so that it allows for that discreet operation which
is about nursery provision.
82. Let us build on David's question and let
us be clear. Sure Start is for the 20% poorest wards in the country
or it is concentrated on the impoverished areas?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) Children's Centres.
83. Sure Start, we know Sure Start is for the
20% most impoverished neighbourhoods. We know what the criteria
is, where they go. Is that the same criteria for the others?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) At the moment the Neighbourhood
Nurseries' programme is based around the most disadvantaged communities,
yes.
84. 20%?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) Yes, I think it is
the same thing.
85. So you do not mind having Neighbourhood
Nurseries outside Sure Start areas?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) We want Neighbourhood
Nurseries to be wherever Neighbourhood Nurseries need to be. The
question is where does Government put the major part of its resources
in order to support that; at the present time that would be the
most disadvantaged wards.
86. The 20% most impoverished wards?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) I think it is 20%.
The reason I think it is because we only have 91 up and running,
so I need to just confirm that covers 20% in terms of the breadth.
The issue now will be how do we develop that nursery provision
in the context of Children's Centres and wanting to get the development
of public, private and voluntary sectors together. One of the
questions for the group of voluntary sector organisations who
I am working with is where do we take that next part into the
next spending review. That is why my answer is not definitive
but I am happy to keep you in touch.
87. But Early Excellence Centres are all in
the 20% Sure Start areas?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) No, they are not.
88. Where are they?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) Early Excellence Centres
are designated by the kind of response we get.
Mr Pollard: We have one in St Albans.
Chairman
89. Some of the people on the Committee know
that, we are trying to get it on the record, why is one of these
pitched up in one part of England and not in another?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) You point
precisely, if I may say, to why the Childcare Review was so important
because the reason we started down the road of reviewing it was
because we had a variety of different initiatives operating to
good effect in different neighbourhoods with people, quite rightly
as Mr Holmes and Mr Chaytor have said, concerned about what does
that mean for the areas beyond that. So the Review is meant to
provide us with a framework into which we can put these initiatives,
we simply have not finished the work we want to do on that.
90. I am trying to join up what Paul Holmes
said at the beginning and what David Chaytor was saying to get
it on the record, okay. After your year's deliberation, can we
have a more specific record of what goes where and why because
I am still not clear where an Early Excellence Centre goes as
opposed to the other two?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) We want to create in
the 20% most disadvantaged wards Children's Centres. These will
be joined up integrated support, Early Years, Childcare, family
support, that is number one. Number two, we have Early Excellence
Centres that are designated by what they do, ie they provide joined
up Childcare, Early Years support and often are places of family
learning or places of health care support and they are designated
by function, by what they do.
91. But not always in the 20%?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) Not always in the 20%
most disadvantaged wards, and many of them will become Children's
Centres. They can become a Children's Centre without being in
the most disadvantaged wards. The difference is where does the
focus for funding go, that is the important differential. It may
be, for example, in Mr Pollard's constituency that the funding
will be for a Children's Centre, which they are perfectly entitled
to do.
Jeff Ennis
92. I do not want to muddy the waters further
on these Neighbourhood Nurseries' initiatives, but if you remember,
Minister, I asked you about Neighbourhood Nurseries last time
you came and, given the fact we have only got 91 up and running,
I think the target figure is to actually get between 900 and 1,200
established by the year 2004. The question I asked last time was—and
this statistic may have changed—that there was a £2,000
capital limit applied per placement on establishing Neighbourhood
Nurseries. I do know if that is still the criteria that you are
working to, but I guess it will probably be around that particular
figure. Given that particular statistic, that does not lend itself
to establishing a brand spanking new Neighbourhood Nursery in
a particular location, so I guess what we are looking for here,
and I am trying to tease out of you what would be the ideal model,
as it were, for an area to get a Neighbourhood Nursery off the
ground, would it have to be through an existing primary school?
Would it have to be through one of these Excellence Centres or
whatever? What is the ideal model for establishing a Neighbourhood
Nursery in an area of deprivation shall we say?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) At the
risk of muddying the waters even further, the difficulty is that
I do not want to talk about ideal ones because in each locality
it may look very different. If I might just give you a couple
of examples. It may be that in a locality if a nursery school
is able to provide extended wrap around care based on its physical
location to the number of children, that could well be a Neighbourhood
Nursery providing that for children. It might be that a voluntary
sector organisation would be able to look at the principle learning
allowance to teachers who are very involved in the provision to
build on what we used to call the playgroups, the existing pre-school
learning experience, to able to develop that. In each area the
point is to find the right model that works for that community
and to work with our partners to do it. Our ambition for Neighbourhood
Nurseries is to develop places for 45,000 children right across
different localities. I accept that for you this sounds confusing
because we are in this transition, and I will certainly write
to you and actually clarify it, but we are literally in the middle
of trying to work that clarification through in a way that would
make sense.
93. Given that this confusion exists, do you
not think the Department ought to be giving more guidance to local
authorities and voluntary groups and playgroups or anybody else
as to what needs to be done exactly to actually establish a Neighbourhood
Nursery?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) Indeed and, in fact,
we are just about to write to local authorities explaining where
we have got to in terms of the spending review and the activities
for the future. I think there is quite a bit of guidance available
through voluntary organisations certainly and through schools
and local authorities, but I take the point and, if I might, I
will go back and consider that further.
Mr Chaytor
94. On extended schools, can you tell us how
many schools have been designated as extended schools? What is
the balance between primary and secondary? How much money do they
get?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) We are
just starting that programme. We have asked 25 local education
authorities, and so we have given them £200,000 each and
£25,000 specifically for Childcare to run pilots in extended
schools. Surveys we have done indicated in some education authorities,
95-97% of schools actually classified themselves as extended but
the models are very different.
95. Who have already classified themselves?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) Yes, indeed. The first
piece of work which lasts until August of next year is to determine
the different models and to provide support of the right kind
through pathfinders, which are schools. For some schools having
an after school activity would from their point of view make an
extended school, I think that is right. What we are looking for
is where schools have taken on board the breadth of support they
can give, including family learning within that so that is the
programme at the moment.
96. What would you say is the difference between
an extended school and a community comprehensive?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) I do not know how you
would define a community comprehensive. What I would say is that
an extended school is a school that sees itself at the hub of
a community, which provides support for children and works in
partnership with others to provide support for children and their
families and that might include childcare, it might include adult
learning, it might include the school being used in different
ways, for example, by supplementary schools at weekends and outside
of school hours.
Jeff Ennis: It sounds like my definition of
a community comprehensive.
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) It may well be, I do
not know your definition of a community comprehensive.
Paul Holmes
97. If we move on to matters connected with
Childcare. A teacher in a school working with children from four
through to 19 is not allowed to smoke in the classroom, playground
or even in school in a private room these days and they are not
allowed to hit the children in their care and yet the Government
allows childminders to work unsupervised with nobody around, to
smoke in front of babies and children and to hit them. Why the
difference?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) I am actually
reviewing the national standards. Those were standards we put
in place because of the Government's view that it is important
for families to make up the arrangements that they wish to have
with their own childminders. I intend to review the standards
in the next few months. The issue I am going to concentrate on
is the professionalisation of the childminder service and the
recognition that these people are professionals offering professional
services. In that I will be consulting to see whether that means
we need to reconsider standards as they are currently.
98. It strikes me, you say it is to allow families
to make their own arrangements with childminders but when I was
a teacher often I had families and parents say to me "We
are not messing around with all this detention, just hit him".
I would have been sacked if I had done that so it seems strange
that you allow families to make those arrangements at one end
of the scale but not at the other end.
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) I hear what you say.
I am going to review the standards.
Chairman: What you are saying sounds good news
to this Committee, does it not, Paul?
Paul Holmes
99. I have another question in a totally different
area. In the majority of Western European countries children start
school at age six and in some cases even seven, we start at five
or these days even at four. When I go into nurseries and playgroups
in my constituency they say because of Ofsted inspection and more
formal education we are starting at four, even three at times.
Are we right in doing it at five and four or are most of the Western
European countries right in doing it at six and seven?
(Baroness Ashton of Upholland) As a good
member of the European Union I hesitate to talk about the rest
of Europe and condemn them. I think we have always to keep looking
at what we want for our children. I feel reasonably comfortable
the kind of experience we are offering for our younger children
is not the formalised learning, which I think maybe the wrong
way of describing it but we all know what I mean by that. The
kind of sand and water play that you see in every setting is an
important integral part of how children learn, just as the way
that they work together is. At the moment I feel quite comfortable
that the Early Learning goals and the way in which the foundation
stage has been received by practitioners, who will be the first
to tell us what we are doing is right, that does not mean we should
not always be aware of what our colleagues in other countries
are doing and what they are suggesting because for some countries
a formalised learning at six does not mean they are not doing
lots of things pre six, they just call it that. I think we need
to look at that and say is it actually the same thing with a different
name.
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