Examination of Witness (Questions 300-319)
17 DECEMBER 2003
BARONESS ASHTON
OF UPHOLLAND
Q300 Chairman: Can we not commission
someone like the OU or the LSE—
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I am sure what you are saying makes total sense. I just hesitate
to say they are definitely going to do it because it is for Margaret
to decide what research she wants within the work force unit.
Q301 Chairman: Will you come back to
us on that?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Yes, of course. I would be delighted to.[6]
On what you are describing, what we find with Sure Start is we
reach a lot of people who are exactly the category you describe,
who do not have a good education, who do not feel school was for
them, who have often bunked off or left long before even the end
of Key Stage 3, and who end up with no qualifications but are
very talented. When I go to Sure Start I say, "The only thing
you have to promise me is that a parent will make a speech before
me or after me", and without exception, whenever they do,
I say: "Did you ever expect to find yourself standing here
making a speech in front of what can be hundreds of people",
and they always say "Never", and they are always people
who have found through this work, through the volunteering in
a sense, opportunities for themselves to be valued and recognised
for the talents they have, so there are some very basic steps
we need to make in helping people see themselves as having talents,
and one of the things that happens particularly with parenting
is people sometimes under-value what skills they bring to that
and the ability they have to work with children and the ability
to help children learn, so there are real opportunities I see
all the time, and one of the things about being a joint minister
with the Department for Work and Pensions is we make sure we translate
those opportunities in our poorest families and communities into
opportunities for work and training as well. The link with Jobcentre
Plus into Sure Start is absolutely critical in making sure we
make those links with parents that are easy. But I would just
hesitate to say what it sounded like you were saying—"If
you have not got qualifications, well, Early Years might be for
you"—
Q302 Chairman: No.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I know that is not what you meant, but it is quite important to
say within the development of basic skills that all the opportunities
are available to people who do not have qualifications if we can
harness their talents, whether that is engineering or being involved
in lots of different parts of life of which Early Years is just
one, but Early Years, because you are focusing on the child and
the family through the child, gives you the opportunity to grab
them. So one plug is a step into the learning programme that we
have developed where we have trained now over a thousand of our
childcare workers to recognise basic literacy and numeracy problems
in parents and help them to be supported to address those basic
skills.
Q303 Chairman: Which Sector Skills Council
does all this come under?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Does all what come under?
Q304 Chairman: Training of people for
Early Years.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
It will come under the Children's Sector Skills Council if we
set one up.
Q305 Chairman: Does that have its licence
yet?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Not as far as I am aware.
Q306 Chairman: Still not, after all this
time?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
One of the interesting things about bringing all of the services
together in one Department is trying to work out how you develop
the right kind of Sector Skills Councils to support all these
workers. It may feel to you like "after all this time"
but—
Q307 Chairman: It is!
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
—in terms of what we are trying to do it does not feel quite
as long as perhaps it does for you. There are lots of issues because
what do you include or not, and I hesitate to get involved in
this because it is really the Secretary of State's territory and
not mine, but I do not think he would mind me saying that it is
quite important when you are dealing with the children's work
force we are also very clear about what is included or not in
the different sector skills councils. If I just take the example
of working with health, it is quite important that we recognise
there are areas of expertise, paediatrics being one, where you
could argue it is part of the children's work force but is also
more legitimate to argue that it is part of a medical work force
geared to children, and just making sure those fit together properly
is important for detailed work.
Q308 Valerie Davey: One of the successes
of this Government which I would have expected every minister
to be trumpeting which you have not mentioned in this context,
and I wonder whether it applies, is learndirect. Is this an avenue
and are we pushing this? It seems an ideal way for many of the
people we are talking about, whether parents or volunteers or
people coming into the employment area, to enhance their skills.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I agree with you completely, and lots of the Sure Start programmes
we have have learndirect on site. For all the reasons you say
it is absolutely critical. Learning for families, learning for
the community is a critical part of that—as it is in extended
schools, and there are some very good examples of it, so I could
not agree more with you.
Q309 Paul Holmes: There is a clear view
from Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions that mothers
are better off in employment, and you can think of things like
New Deal for Lone Parents, Compulsory Interviews, Benefit Sanctions,
If You Do Not Take Part and so forth, and Margaret Hodge has recently
said, "There is incontrovertible evidence that a vital way
of removing children from poverty is to increase household income
by providing employment opportunities". Now there are those
who fear that the Early Years and Sure Start agenda has a hidden
agenda which is getting mothers into employment. As a minister
who straddles the two, DWP and DfES, do you have a view on that?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I feel it is very important that what you provide through Sure
Start are opportunities for people to increase and enhance their
skills, their employability and, through that, their family income.
We have just run a pilot called a Discovery Week, which was geared
to bringing together lone parents, first of all, in Islington
but we are going to run a series in the coming year, which brought
together in different weeks for a week women not on the New Deal
for Lone Parents—and I say women because they all happened
to be women but it was lone parents—and providing them with
a week where they got the chance to talk about what they wanted
to do and meet with people and talk about interviews and think
about their aspirations, and to provide them with childcare for
a week so they could see what that would feel like. It was very
interesting that all the women who came, bar one I think, remained
on the course for the whole week. I sat and had lunch with many
of them at the end of the first week and heard them talk about
their aspirations for their families, and they invariably talked
about them wanting to get into employment because they saw a number
of things that would bring. Firstly, it would bring income to
the family which they needed, it would give them a longer term
future and the opportunity they felt to be able to move on and
up in life, provide them with a new network of people to work
with, and underneath all that there was something about self-esteem
and belonging and all those rather nebulous but quite important
issues, and they then talked about the barriers that prevented
them from doing it. Childcare was one—not only whether it
was available but more importantly they were not sure about leaving
their child and the great thing about Discovery Week was there
was a cre"che on site so they could leave them in a measured
way and get to understand what that could be like, and we are
doing more about childcare tasters as a result of that next year
to give them the opportunity to explore childcare and remove that
barrier. They talked about the need to have more training and
qualifications and finding things that worked for them. To my
surprise in a way it was a real, huge success, and surprise only
because, if you try something brand new you are not really sure
what is going to happen. I think that for most families who are
what we call workless households there is a need and a desire
to think about what the difference would be for that family if
at least one of the partners was in work. What Sure Start is not
about is saying, "That is it, you have to do that",
because for some families it is not appropriate, but it is about
finding ways of supporting families to get the best for themselves
and particularly parents, so training through ICT and so on, getting
people to think about their skills and recognising their abilities.
Even if, at that point in their lives, they are not ready or they
do not feel they wish to go back to work, at some point they can
recognise that is a real opportunity and a real possibility for
them.
Q310 Paul Holmes: One of the criticisms
of the New Deal programmes is that the emphasis in all the different
programmes is so much on getting into employment rather than in
longer term training, education or skills. If you are looking
at a mother in this situation, talking about the childcare, in
one of the 20% most deprived areas in the country where Sure Start
concentrates, is it in their best interests to get a job, any
job, unskilled, low paid, part-time, etc, or is it in their best
interests to get some more serious levels of education and training?
Again, as a minister straddling DWP and DfES, what approach are
you pushing internally in negotiations between different departments?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I do not push an approach; individuals are individuals and different
things apply to them. For many people getting into work leads
them on to the opportunities of training and so on. We do not
just leave them there; it is about moving them on from where they
are, but it is very important we provide educational opportunities,
volunteering opportunities and training opportunities alongside,
so it is a rounded approach I am trying to push if I push anything.
Q311 Mr Gibb: Can I ask you about the
reading in primary schools and why it has stalled at 75% reaching
Level 4? What is the reason for that?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I am not sure I like the world "stalled" but I absolutely
see why you use it. I am not responsible for the primary sector
now so—
Q312 Mr Gibb: But you answer for schools
generally in the House of Lords, do you not?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I answer for everything to do with education and children in the
House of Lords. I think I have one and three quarter departments,
I calculate, to deal with so forgive me, I am not trying to evade,
but Stephen Twigg could give you a better answer than I would
be able to. I think the issues are around trying to make sure
that the strategies we have in place give children those early
reading opportunities. Secondly, they are about addressing the
particular needs of particular children which brings me on to
my real brief in school which is special needs, so checking we
have in place strategies recognising children who have dyslexia,
children who are what used to be called slow readers but who need
support to do that, and beginning to put in place beyond the general
strategies very particular pieces of work to support children
who are struggling with reading for different reasons. The other
part, of course, is that the recognition of the development of
children is speaking in those very Early Years and the subsequent
development into reading, so we are making sure that in the Early
Years we are helping children get speech and language development
which translates into reading development.
Q313 Mr Gibb: I am disappointed in that
answer. You are a member of the Government and Education Minister,
and you cannot tell me why, in your opinion, only 75% of children
only reach Level 4 in primary schools. Why is it that a school
in a deprived part of Tower Hamlets achieves 92% of Level 4, whereas
a primary school in a leafy suburb can only achieve 67%? Why do
you not know the answer to that?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
That is not the question you asked me. The question you asked
me was—
Q314 Mr Gibb: Why has it stalled, yes.
It is the same thing.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I can tell you why there would be differences in schools. There
is a combination of factors we know about good primary schools.
The first one is strong leadership, the development of head teachers
who really can strive to ensure that children get the best they
can. I would make a different comparison than what you have done;
what is even more interesting is schools that have exactly the
same kind of intake of children often in deprived areas show quite
a big difference in what happens with children, and one of the
issues for us is about developing that quality of leadership,
ensuring we have high quality primary teachers well trained. The
recent Ofsted report looked at good progress in schools but talked
about the stubbornness, which I think was the word David Bell
used, of some of the lessons that were not moving beyond satisfactory
to good, and how important that is; the continuous professional
development resource we are putting in; additional support through
classroom assistance and so on, so we are trying to factor those
schools where we have strong leadership, high quality training,
good professional development, good support from parents to go
back to the point about parents' role in education, and to mirror
that in those schools that are doing less well—not by attacking
them but by supporting them to have those things in place. Learning
Mentors for example are making a big impact in primary schools.
Q315 Mr Gibb: These all sound like motherhood
and apple pie type issues—strong leadership, all this kind
of stuff. Have you not done any research about the way they teach
reading in the schools that achieve 96% or 92% compared to the
way they teach reading in the schools that achieve 67%?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I am sorry, I am not quite sure I understand. The strong leadership
point comes from Ofsted.
Q316 Mr Gibb: I know, I have read the
report.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Let us not bother with apple pie.
Q317 Mr Gibb: It is, to an extent.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I disagree with you completely on that.
Q318 Mr Gibb: Leaving that comment aside,
what I am trying to get at is are there teaching methods of reading
that are more successful than other teaching methods of reading?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
David Hopkins who is a key official responsible for looking at
the strategy we do recently held a seminar under the national
literacy strategy which looked at the role of phonics, for example,
which is a very important part of children's learning to see whether
there was more that could be done. He brought together an array
of the more serious academics and practitioners in this work who
have developed what we call an incremental approach to developing
the strategies, so that we look at the role of phonics in teaching
and learning. I am sure, if you look at the more successful schools,
they have through strong leadership a more sophisticated approach
in some aspects of reading. We have been exploring through the
work David has done examining how best the national literacy strategy
can move forward from 75% in order to provide those children better
targeted and personalised teaching and learning experiences, for
children particularly who may have a special educational need,
and also through the increased use of methods that have been proven
to be successful.
Q319 Mr Gibb: So, through you, Chairman,
as an educationalist, do you think the synthetic Phonics method
is better for teaching reading than the traditional British method
of Look and Say?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
If you look at the way phonics has developed the national literacy
strategy I am comfortable that the present blend is good, but
we should be looking, through the work that David Hopkins has
done, at developing the role of phonics appropriately even further.
I do not have a view, because I have not been working on that
particular strategy, as to whether synthetic Phonics is the approach
or not. I have met with groups who are very concerned about the
role of phonics which is why we had the seminar to ensure we were
on the right lines. All those who participated gave of their best
views what we might do to further this, and we are very comfortable
that the strategy is moving in the right way.
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