Examination of Witness (Questions 280-299)
17 DECEMBER 2003
BARONESS ASHTON
OF UPHOLLAND
Q280 Chairman: So it will be not with
the Chairman of the new Children's Trust?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
No—not alone, but clearly he/she will have a significant
role. One of the issues that came out of the Climbie« inquiry,
and I asked Lord Laming myself whether he met some heroes and
heroines within that terrible tragedy and he said yes, but what
he found was very unresponsive management structures and the failure
of people to recognise their responsibilities—both officers
and members. All MPs will come across cases, I am sure, where
they see children being looked after by 9 or 10 different agencies
but somehow they do not perhaps provide the key support that will
help.
Q281 Chairman: But you seem to be replicating
that problem. You have not answered my question. Why not a children's
commissioner in every area?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Because I think the critical thing about the role of the children's
commissioner is being able to represent the voice of children
at a national level, and the critical thing about the Director
of Children's Services is to make sure that the services provided
in that community reach the children and take responsibility for
ensuring that we support particularly our most vulnerable children
well.
Chairman: I am not all that convinced
but we will come back to this.
Q282 Valerie Davey: Minister, the Members
of this Committee have admitted that they have not read the EPPE
research; however, I am glad to tell you that members of the Committee
staff have and they have told us that EPPE stands for Effective
Provision of Pre-school Education.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Thank you very much!
Q283 Valerie Davey: It brings out a lot
of very good information, as you well know, not least that it
is absolutely critical that we have as much Early Years care as
possible. There are two aspects of it that I would like to bring
out—first of all, the emphasis on 0-3. How is the foundation
stage which I referred to earlier being brought through those
Early Years, because I gather that they do better in Europe perhaps
in that very early stage than we do, so how are we going to develop?
I know we have Sure Start, but how generally do we ensure that
the qualities and good practice of that foundation stage are there
in the 0-3 years?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
It is a very important area and I am delighted you have raised
it. There are two aspects to that. First it is Birth to Three
Matters which in a sense was our way of describing the opportunities
for learning that young children have. Children begin to learn
from the moment they are born and it is not about enforced learning
or being made to work in a traditional education setting, but
it is important that when we provide services for children the
watchword is quality, so Birth to Three Matters is, in a sense,
our description of what a child will learn. Secondly, I went into
a nursery recently and on the wall it had the foundation stage
with "This is for parents". It was a huge description
using pictures of the children doing things and so on that said
to parents in a very simple way: This is what we are doing with
the children in Early Years education. On an equal and opposite
side of the wall was a Birth to Three Matters and it described
what children were doing and learning in that stage as well. I
am not trying to suggest that we see them as being all parts of
a curriculum, but I do think it is important that all settings
recognise the opportunities and the need to give children to learn
and to develop their skills, if you like, as little children and
to give them the opportunity to develop them in all the settings
we have.
Q284 Valerie Davey: I think one of the
things which Margaret Hodge was telling us is that the most recent
research she has been reading emphasises how important the parental
role is, and we have all known that but in particular with regard
to child's educational development. We cannot enforce work with
parents. How can we ensure that in your 0-3 work the whole family
is helped and supported in the way you are suggesting? It is wonderful,
and I can take you to nursery provision in my constituency where,
again, they have the mother and toddler group, but those are the
same people, and it is a bit like the Chairman's earlier concern,
who already recognise the need and value of nursery education
so that is why their other children are coming and why they are
likely to see displays on the wall. How do you get this message
further afield and outside?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
One of the really critical parts about the Sure Start programmes
is the outreach to parents which is not only about supporting
parents to be parents, but about helping them to be able to provide
their children with the right tools and to develop well. I see
lots of projects where you see, for example, particular parts
of the toy library where not only do parents borrow from the toy
library but give them alongside it a description of what their
child is learning when it is playing with this toy. What is very
important, and I think Frank Dobson in the play review would raise
this point were he here, is helping parents understand the value
of play and what children are doing when they are playing, because
there is no wrong way of playing but they do develop huge skills
and a lot of parents do not understand what is happening when
a child is doing that, so in a best possible sense it is about
giving parents and equipping them with the tools they need to
help their child develop—not only so that children get that
early start but also so they recognise issues and problems their
children may have and be able to access the professional support
they need. It is then as well the opportunity for those parents
who wanted to do parenting courses. There are lots of good examples
in a very positive way where parents have really enjoyed and benefited
from the chance to come and talk about "living with your
toddler" or whatever it is, and understanding behaviour and
support, and I heard recently that it has helped quite a number
of those usually women, in their relationships too.
Q285 Valerie Davey: I could go on with
that but I will move on. You mentioned the word "quality"
and I recognise the value of it. Perhaps going back to the billion
pounds you were offered by the Chair earlier, some of it should
have been spent in HE for training. One of the things this research
project brings out is that the value to children of Early Years
provision is proportional to the quality of the carers involved.
How do we ensure that we get the training and, indeed, the pay
relevant to the needs of these children?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
The critical part of that for us is about the qualification levels
that we expect in every setting, and that is a very important
factor because, as I say, people are brought out. The issue is
about the quality of the input and that must be what we provide.
It is not about doing things on the cheap but it is about high
quality. I think part of the work of the new workforce unit within
the Department is to look at issues like pay, like opportunities
for people who come into working with children. Giving the classic
example, the person who comes in as a child minder may be extremely
good and will probably stay as a child minder for an average of
seven years and then go and do something else. I would like that
something else to be working with children in a different way,
so creating a way in which they can develop their skills within
a workforce for children is very important to ensure quality,
to bring in more professionalism. It is also I think from a government
point of view about saying "This is a profession", and
when I removed the right of smoking and smacking by child minders
I did so not because I was trying to make a statement other than
saying that if you are part of a caring profession you live by
the same rules and regulations as the current caring professions
do. That was something that child minders felt very strongly about
and they wanted to be seen as that. So there is a lot about raising
the professional status of people and also working with them to
give them the right kind of qualifications and support.
Valerie Davey: Thank you, Minister, for
that, and thank you for following what was also, on the issue
of smacking, this Committee's policy.
Q286 Chairman: Did that mean you fell
out with your colleague in the House of Commons, because she pretty
fervently stuck to allowing smacking and smoking for quite a long
time?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
If you recall the issue when it was first raised, a lot of work
was done to see whether it was felt to be appropriate to remove
it at that time, and the evidence seemed to suggest that this
would not be particularly welcomed. In the ensuing time I received
lots of representation particularly from child minders, and we
began to think about the professional issues of this group of
workers. My view is very strongly, and I approached it saying
that if you have a profession working with people—elderly,
adults or children—you have to have the same professional
ground rules, and child minders felt very strongly they could
not be recognised as professionals unless they had the same ground
rules. Margaret Hodge supported me in that actually.
Q287 Chairman: But can I re-emphasise
this point on the importance of having more qualified people?
All the research shows that and we have wonderful advisers on
Early Years, and Rosemary Peacock, Kathy Sylva and Chris Pascal
constantly, although we are not conducting an Early Years inquiry
at the moment, seek to remind us of how important it is, and when
it looked like children centres were not going to have a qualified
teacher in them they were very upset indeed. I would not say I
was exactly scared—well, yes, I am scared of these three
women and I hope you also would not cross them. It is very good
advice. We need the high quality people in these children's centres
at every level?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
One of the great joys of this area of work is we have some formidable
experts who really do know the reality on the ground and what
is needed. We did respond to the research and put in the minimum
of the part-time teacher. It is about building a new infrastructure;
I have said this on many platforms. We are creating something
new, and I want it to be as enduring as schools and the Health
Service are now for all our communities, and it is working with
the foothills of this. So quality is absolutely critical, making
sure we roll out these centres appropriately is absolutely critical;
and continuing to develop the communication levels of everybody
is critical. We are not there yet: I am not complacent, we have
just begun, so I hope as it develops that they will see that the
watchword of quality is there but that we recognise that by not
only bringing in qualified people but making sure the people we
have got who are good get the opportunity to get more qualifications,
more training and good support.
Q288 Chairman: We will come back to that
in a minute. Qualified people should be paid well, and we saw
too many people on a minimum wage, but I do warn you and, as its
Christmas I can give you an explanation of why it is a warning,
that if you go round schools looking at notice boards you can
get yourself in trouble. This Committee went to a New Zealand
school and our very first visit was Mountain View Primary and
Junior, where we had a wonderful Maori welcome and a little Maori
child led me to a board and pointed to her favourite notice and
said, "I wish I was a glow worm, a glow worm's never glum,
it's hard to be downhearted when the sun shines out your bum"!
It was a wonderful visit—
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I am struggling with the relevance of this!
Chairman: Be very careful what you read
on children's notice boards in schools! Let us move on to children's
workers.
Q289 Mr Chaytor: Minister, can you just
say a bit more about your view of the role of qualified teachers
in Early Years education? You have talked about the general need
to increase the level of qualifications and increase professionalism,
but what is the evidence about the impact of qualified teachers
on Early Years settings?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
The evidence is that the level of qualification is critical to
the outcomes for children, so what we have tried to do is mirror
what we see in our nursery schools with our children centres and
require that they have that level of teaching expertise. What
is interesting from the experience of other countries has been
the pedagogical approach from the 0-3s, and we need to look quite
carefully at what that means for younger children, where our teachers
are not qualified directly to—though many could—work
directly with children under 3, making sure that the levels for
qualifications for younger children reflect what they need to
develop and grow as well.
Q290 Mr Chaytor: Given we have still
got a very fragmented set of arrangements for Early Years provision
and we have settings which are run by voluntary groups—we
have private sector, the Early Years centres, we have nursery
classes in schools—are you going to set any specific targets
for the whole of the sector? Are you going to require that all
private sector day nurseries, for example, have a qualified teacher
in charge?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
We are looking at that now. That partly depends on the priorities
that go into the spending review because we would have to do some
funding in different settings. We are working with our colleagues
in the private sector to make sure they have the standards we
require, level 3 NVQs and so on, and we have fairly strong and
stringent rules about numbers and so on which they meet. We have
to keep looking at it. I am not trying to give you a nebulous
answer but I think, first of all, we have to make sure we understand
all the things research tells us—particularly when you have
centres working from 0-5 or 6-year-olds, that we have enough of
the right qualified staff to deal with children at the younger
end as well as the older, and what that implies in terms of the
future for the approach we take and, secondly, that we have good
targets realistically set that people can get to within the funding
regimes we have, so as a real portion, again, and this is something
Margaret Hodge feels very passionately about, making sure we have
the right level of teaching qualifications within all our centres
within the right time scales. We will set targets but have not
yet.
Q291 Mr Chaytor: You mentioned funding
regimes. Can you describe to us the different funding regimes,
because I think this remains a mystery to most of us. We know
how local authorities work but what other funding regimes are
there? How does the money get into the different Early Years settings,
and what efforts are you making to try and bring coherence to
those very different funding arrangements?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
If you look at the private sector the funding regimes in a sense
are run by the private sector. They run private nurseries and
other provisions. Our support is in helping with training and
working closer with them to listen to their views and see what
more we can do to ensure they are able to develop and grow so
we are key partners in this. With the voluntary sector, too, there
is a combination we fund through, for example, organisations like
Kids Club Network in particular and the work they are doing mainly
around after school clubs and so on, and again on quality issues.
Through the Early Years education is now funded through local
government directly. It is part of the requirement but part of
the education settlement that they must provide a place for every
4 and 3-year-old for any child whose family wishes him to have
a course, the take-up rates are very high, and they need to develop
in combination with their Early Years partnerships the wrap-around
care that makes such a difference in terms of family support too.
So the regimes are getting easier. We did have a huge number of
funding streams—I think it was 44 at the last count—and
that was a combination of work done by Margaret herself in getting
many different kinds of money into the sector from a standing
start. We have now been able to rationalise that considerably
into far fewer funding streams, mainly working through local government
schemes but directly into schools and so on.
Q292 Mr Chaytor: But in respect of the
local education authorities' funding stream, have there been some
changes recently in terms of the basis of the formula and the
assumptions about part-time places as against full-time places?
The reason I ask that is that schools in my constituency, and
therefore I assume all others, are very much exercised by the
changes recently whereby primary schools have nursery classes
that have been offering full-time places are going to lose significant
amounts of money because of the changes that have been required
of LEAs for the next financial year.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I am not aware of that. What I am aware of is that the money has
gone into the overall formula and is not ring-fenced any more,
so they may be describing changes made at local education authority
level. I have no representations from any one of those issues
but if you let me know I am happy to look into it in case this
is something that is a change.
Q293 Mr Chaytor: I will. On the training
of workers, you launched an advertising campaign a few weeks ago.
What is the impact of that? Is there a considerable amount of
interest in that? How do you view the labour market generally
for childcare workers? Do we have shortages or is there a good
match of supply and demand?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I think the market is improving. We launched the campaign a while
ago and did two things; one was a general campaign aimed at reaching
people who would be likely to or possibly interested in becoming
involved in childcare, and then very targeted campaigns of particular
groups of people who were under-represented, so specifically for
men who might be interested in being involved in childcare, for
disabilities people who often see themselves as being debarred
in some way, and from different ethnic backgrounds too. All of
those campaigns have brought in substantial interest, I think
over 10,000 inquiries in the first 5 or 6 weeks. The translation
of that into people taking it up, of course, is the tricky bit.
We have been learning a lot from the teacher training agency in
terms of their sophistication about what I call use of funnel,
which is an initial inquiry funnelled down through the different
processes to end up with somebody on a training course, and I
have asked for information on can we find where people have gone
and track at least a sample of people right the way through the
process to see what has been most successful and why. We also
run through Sure Start Month campaigns in a locality which allow
people to come in and look at opportunities in childcare too.
Child minding numbers which we were most concerned about which
were dropping have now stabilised and are beginning to show a
slight increase which is good news. Our concern then is to be
able to support them more effectively. I have set up some pilots
of buddying child minders to enable people who are currently child
minders to buddy somebody through the process, through the CRB
checks, Ofsted and so on, and to enable them to have a friend
who they can talk to about being a child minder, and those are
being run with the National Childminding Association for us in
seven areas, starting in April. So I am pleased with that. In
terms of people coming into the sector through the private nursery
sector, what we are hearing is there is greater interest, partly
through the campaign and trying to get them to pick up people
early on in the process, so people who had expressed interest
get more information and so on. The figures in terms of ethnic
minority groups are also increasing which is good news, and we
are seeing men coming into the sector, largely into the after
school work which does not surprise me, but increasingly people
coming in through childminding where, for example, you might have
a husband and wife or man and woman working together as childminders.
Q294 Mr Chaytor: Of all people working
in the sector at the moment, both public and private, what is
the proportion of those with the relevant NVQ as against these
who are completely unqualified?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I cannot give you the figures offhand because we track them for
different subsections so I will send those to you. We track them
in the private sector and then within different settings and we
track them within the public sector in different settings, so
there are lots of different figures but I will send you a complete
set of them.[4]
Q295 Mr Chaytor: Do you have any idea
of the pace of transition from qualified childcare workers to
people going on to initial teacher training?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
We do not yet. We have some examples where that is happening but
it is quite new still for people to think about that route, and
the latest figures I saw were in the hundreds rather than the
thousands but it was early on in the process. Again, we will make
sure we give you the up-to-date figures on that.[5]
Again, it is part of trying to create this scaffolding where people
see the opportunities to come through. There are some successful
examples and the foundation degrees in childcare have been helpful.
Q296 Mr Chaytor: Finally, could I ask
about the gender balance? You have mentioned men as a result of
recent developments but overall do you have a view about the gender
balance, and is it the Government's specific objective to increase
the proportion of men working in the childcare field? And, if
so, are you doing anything specifically about it?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
The balance is 2% of men in childcare which is not particularly
surprising. What we have done is produce I think an excellent
video which we give to all men who through the advertising campaign
come forward. They immediately get a copy, and it is a series
of examples of men working in different childcare set-ups, from
child minding through nursery to after school clubs and so on,
and what we have tried to do is take away the barriers that exist
and perception about whether this is for them or not. I think
there are issues for men coming into this sector in terms of making
sure that they get the right support because there are still lots
of preconceived ideas about men coming into childcare that we
need to make sure they are not victims of in a sense, and certainly
I was speaking at a course quite recently at a college of different
kinds of childcare workers, and there were still very few men—only
two—on the course. It is very important that we do allow
men to have those opportunities, and I am quite keen to reach
men who do a lot of work with children, for example, through ICT
clubs, through drama at the weekends, through working with children
in sport who in a sense are providing childcare—because
if you run a three-day tennis club in the summer it is childcare
for the working parents—and saying to them: You do two things.
One is you have a key skill which is very valuable to children,
but you are also working with those children. Can we encourage
you to think about doing that on a more full-time basis, or even
expanding and extending what you do, so maybe you will come into
a school and run clubs after school which both provide activities
for children which are critical but also provide that childcare,
and in a sense get away from the idea that childcare is always
about babies and nappies and that it is about providing good activities
for children that keep them interested and happy, and support
families that way too.
Q297 Mr Chaytor: But so much of your
recruitment advertising is done through women's magazines. Is
there a parallel approach for men?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
We have been doing work specifically on both radio and television
and the press to recruit men, but we also find that producing
information of men talking to men about it has been very important,
so we have targeted in our video and our other advertising men
as well. That is having some impact of the translation of inquiry
into people ending up as childcare workers because there is a
long process in that, but it is certainly having the effect of
engendering interest, and nurseries say they are getting more
inquiries from men which is good, because these things have to
enter by osmosis into the system. But I do believe part of that
is thinking more creatively about what will bring men into the
centre and what their skills are. In some of the adverts you will
see across the press we show men specifically working with children,
either in activities to do with sport or technology or whatever,
which may be stereotypical in themselves but nonetheless I think
have aided that recruitment.
Q298 Chairman: Are you as a Department
blundering around in the dark here, or are you commissioning really
the Nick Gibb question in a sense in this setting? Are you doing
research on this? What we found when we took evidence on the recruitment
and retention of teachers is that there is a very big change in
teachers' aspirations. Many teachers want to come into the profession
and do it for 10 years and then move out and come back and it
is a very different world. When we did our Early Years inquiry
there was no doubt that there was a very interesting possibility
and potential of getting people coming in as part-time helpers
in Early Years who then get to like it and start off at the bottom
rung and then get a qualification and finish up as a qualified
teacher. That is not necessarily progression but bringing people
in. Have you commissioned any research about what is the potential
out there? How best to do it? What is good practice?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
We have done two things: we are looking at the impact of the campaigns,
and looking at what the work force unit will commission on research,
because that will be critical for all the reasons you rightly
give. We are also learning from what the teacher training agency
have done and, whether one hates or loves their adverts, nonetheless
they do a huge amount of research—not only in terms of the
impact of those advertising campaigns but also the segmentation
of who they are trying to reach for what. They do lots of things
you do not see on the TV screens in terms of their marketing and
selling opportunities to people at university or thinking of going
to university with I think quite a lot of success judging by the
numbers that come through. So we have had them advising us in
a sense about how we develop because we do not have the infrastructure
at all about how you turn a campaign in a general sense into a
specific series of campaigns aimed at different people, and how
you find out what the impact has been in terms of recruitment
and then retention. So we are at very early stages of that. That
has very much gone into the work of the work force unit now because
we are trying to bring all those things together, but I would
imagine and hope they will be doing that kind of research and
continuing those links with the TTA and other agencies who have
been doing that very well.
Q299 Chairman: In the House of Lords
last night there was a wonderful launch of the new document on
the future of education launched by some of your colleagues—a
very good document, but what it reaffirmed is that 40% of people
do not do well out of our education system at present, and it
just seemed to us when we did the Early Years inquiry that a very
high percentage of that percentage have got a lot of talent and
never found it used or opened up at school, and a way to getting
many of those people into education again is by targeting them,
finding out their potential, getting them into Early Years. I
do not think you have quite answered my point—is there research
on that potential?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I do not yet know because with the new work force unit being set
up all the research projects are being looked at by them to see
what they need to find out.
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