Memorandum submitted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL)

 

Executive summary

u ATL supports the Sure Start children's centre initiative in its attempts to bring together high quality education and care alongside other services to help families to support their children's learning and development, and in its attempts to focus on the particular needs of areas of deprivation.

u We believe that the support for children and families offered through children's centres can impact positively on children's development of language skills, social skills, and independence. It can also have benefits for parents' confidence in supporting their children's learning and in working in partnership with teachers in the best interests of the children.

u We believe that the professionals who work with the youngest children should be highly qualified, and that teachers should be employed in children's centres both to support education planning and provision, and to work closely with children on a daily basis. Those teachers should all be employed on school teachers' pay and conditions.

u Cost-effectiveness measures may show that spending money in the early years may lead to decreased spending on crime and anti-social behaviour later; however we need to recognise that effective early years provision may also lead to increased education participation rates, which will require higher spending. The most vulnerable children may need continued support throughout their education, which again implies increased cost.

 

ATL, the education union

1. ATL, as a leading education union, recognises the link between education policy and our members' conditions of employment. Our evidence-based policy making enables us to campaign and negotiate from a position of strength. We champion good practice and achieve better working lives for our members.

2. We help our members, as their careers develop, through first-rate research, advice, information and legal support. Our 160,000 members - teachers, lecturers, headteachers and support staff - are empowered to get active locally and nationally. We are affiliated to the TUC, and work with government and employers by lobbying and through social partnership.

ATL policy

3. ATL members work in children's centres, as teachers, support staff and leaders. ATL members also work in schools that have close links with children's centres. Most crucially, effective early years work has also been shown to raise the aspirations of children, including the most vulnerable, and that this in turn can enhance their lives and promote their inclusion and participation within their communities.

4. Thus, ATL welcomes the growth of Sure Start Children's Centres. Research from the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) project shows that the quality of provision is higher overall in early years settings that integrate early education and care. We believe that co-locating services for young children and for their parents means that those services are more likely to be accessed by parents, including the more hard to reach families, to the benefit of themselves and their children. And we welcome the focus on the youngest children and their families in order to combat disadvantage; both within Sure Start Children's Centres and within the wider Early Years entitlement.

5. ATL believes that professionals working within schools, children's centres education and other services must be recognised for their knowledge, expertise and judgement, both at the level of the individual and in articulating the role of education in increasing social justice. Within light national parameters, development of the education system, in its widest sense, should take place at a local level: with increasing emphasis on collaboration and supporting well-being across a local area. Accountability mechanisms should be developed so that there is a proper balance between accountability to national government and to the local community, which supports collaboration rather than competition.

ATL response

The range and effectiveness of services provided by Children's Centres

6. As the education union, ATL is concerned with the effectiveness of children's centres in supporting early education, and in particular whether children from families supported by children's centres are more 'ready' for school. This is not to say that the purpose of children's centres should be to prepare children for school. But our members report huge differences in children's language skills, their behaviour and their physical independence (being able to feed themselves and get dressed by themselves, being toilet trained). We look forward to the next stages of the national evaluation of Sure Start which we anticipate will consider how far take up of children's centre services has an impact on these skills.

7. Our members also report a wide variety of parental support for children's learning. This reflects a range of factors: parents' own level of education; their experiences of their own schooling; their feelings (positive or negative) about school; their familiarity with the school system; how much the culture of school resonates with their own culture and their aspirations; their confidence in dealing with professionals; and their confidence in managing and supporting their own children. We believe that children's centres have a role to play in supporting parenting skills, and in helping parents to fulfil personal and work ambitions, and in challenging any poverty of aspiration. This is not to argue that the purpose of children's centres should be to prepare parents for their children's schooling but children's centres will be most effective when they work in close partnership with schools so that children and their families can move confidently between both.

8. We appreciate that it is very difficult to separate out the benefits arising from the early years provision within children's centres from the benefits arising from other forms of participation in children's centres; or from the effects of other issues affecting children and families living in areas of great disadvantage; or from the impact of other initiatives, outside children's centres, which aim to address these issues. In this context, it would not be enough to judge the early education provision in isolation, either within the Sure Start initiative, or within individual children's centres. Such a measure of effectiveness would be too crude, and simple comparisons with other providers should not be used to hold children's centres accountable for outcomes.

9. We are also very clear that judgements of effectiveness are dependent on the measures used and the target group referenced. There is a difference between judging the effectiveness of children's centres in terms of measuring outcomes of those who use the children's centres services, of those to whom outreach is directed, or of the community in which the children's centre sits. We would also caution against burdening schools and teachers with further evaluation of outcomes as children start school. Schools (and children's centres) should not be required to evaluate a whole range of well-being measures, which should be the area-based responsibility of local authorities.

Funding, sustainability and value for money

10. In the rollout of children's centres to every community, it must not be forgotten that the most vulnerable will need the most funding, and may well be the hardest communities in which to measure tangible progress, particularly if the measures of progress used are restricted to short-term measures that do not match the community-based, and trans-generational aspirations of the Sure Start initiative. In evaluating Sure Start, and other early years interventions, a cost-benefit analysis correctly draws our attention to how public spending now will save money in the longer term because of a decrease in the costs of, for example, criminal behaviour and teenage pregnancy. However, we must not forget that likely positive outcomes of the Sure Start children's centres initiative that could be measured could include, for example, increases in staying on rates at school or university entrance - each of which would require increased public spending rather than less - but which are still to be welcomed.

 

11. Similarly, it would is also be unhelpful to view the work of children's centres as constituting a one-off 'inoculation' against the effects of deprivation and disadvantage. If we wish to 'narrow the gaps' between the most and least disadvantaged groups in society, we must recognise that it is highly likely that many of those children and families who most need the services of the children's centre will continue to need additional support and funding throughout the education system.

Staffing, governance, management and strategic planning

12. ATL welcomes the current requirements for children's centres to employ teachers. Evidence from the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education studies (EPPE) shows clearly that integrated care and education which involves early years qualified teachers in interactions with children has the greatest positive impact on children's learning. We believe that the requirements do not go far enough, that more early years qualified teachers should be employed in children's centres, and that they must be involved in day-to-day work with children, not only in strategic planning and management. We are concerned that there is still a discrepancy between the pay and conditions of service of teachers depending on whether they are employed on school teachers' pay and conditions or on the Soulbury scale. We believe that all teachers should be employed under school teachers' pay and conditions, regardless of the 'type' of children's centre in which they work.

13. We also have concerns about who should manage a children's centre. Many schools have children's centres developing on site, which are managed by the school's headteacher. We understand how many headteachers can see this as a vital aspect of their role, supporting their pupils through supporting their local community in raising its aspirations for those children. Nonetheless, many of our members are concerned that this can lead to very 'school-focussed' children's services. Although the services offered by a children's centre are vital to support children's development and learning, ATL believes that a headteacher's main focus should be on teaching and learning. Managing and co-ordinating the full range of services offered within a children's centre takes a headteacher far beyond that core function.

14. We believe that difficulties arise when children's centres are viewed as individual institutions. The strategic planning and the governance of children's centres needs to be undertaken at a local level across communities and effectiveness should be evaluated at these levels too. An undue focus on individual children's centres misses the local authority's statutory duty to reduce inequalities and improve outcomes for all young children, their Public Service Agreement targets, and their responsibility through Children's Trusts to discover and meet local need and to develop appropriate partnerships to meet those needs.

How well Children's Centres work with other partners and services, especially schools and health services

15. We note the recent report from Ofsted that stated that only half of the primary schools contacted during their survey were linking effectively with children's centres. Within the larger framework set by local Children's Trusts, there are enormous benefits to developing strong partnerships between schools and children's centres. There are also benefits to developing children's centres on school sites, where facilities and premises allow.

16. For schools, it can be a strong part of the extended services offered, and can make for seamless linking between, for example, the healthcare offered by the children's centre and that offered as part of the extended services offer. For families, it can support their transition between the children's centre and school, enabling parents and children to become familiar with the school system, building and sometimes staff. It also acknowledges the fact that many families have children who are older than five, allowing families to have all their (younger) children in one place, and offering easy transition between children's centre services and those extended services provided by a school. Of course, this is not necessarily the case in communities where parents have a 'choice' of schools but no guarantee that those attending the children's centre will be ensured a place at its co-located school.

17. Co-locating a children's centre and a school may also risk negative implications. Some of our members who work in such children's centres point to the tendency to give priority for children's centre services and activities to the families who attend the school already, limiting the potential for outreach. Schools may also find themselves using some of the facilities themselves at the expense of use by the wider community. It can also blur boundaries for teachers and support staff, who may find themselves under pressure to provide support beyond education to parents and children using the children's centre, at least whilst systems of identifying 'lead professionals' within a system of multi-agency working is still being developed and implemented. It may also be an additional disincentive for parents whose own school experiences were not positive - evaluations have shown that some non-users of children's centres perceive children's centres as being about professionals telling them what to do.

Whether services are being accessed by those most in need and how effective they are for the most vulnerable.

18. The Sure Start children's centres initiative has not yet produced a coherent body of evidence about the effectiveness of children's centres for families from the most vulnerable social groups. As children's centres continue to be set up outside the most disadvantaged areas, and in all communities, it must be asked whether they are still intended to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in those areas, or are a more general gateway to universal services. This question of definition will have implications for the amount of outreach that is needed, the cost of that outreach, and the ways in which effectiveness will be measured: it will be easier to hit targets by working with families who access the centre than by continuing to reach out to the most disadvantaged.

19. We note the Ofsted (2009) report on the effectiveness of children's centres which states that children with learning difficulties and disabilities gained much from close working of professionals from each service, and that children's centres were becoming more effective in reaching out to potentially vulnerable families. However, that same survey points out that half of the children's centres surveyed reported high levels of social problems that they believe will require more investment and new strategies to effect change.

20. We note that clear evidence of the specific impacts of children's centres on Black and minority ethnic (BME) families and communities is difficult to find, partly because 'BME' cannot be viewed as one group. We recognise that attitudes towards formal childcare and early education, together with maternal employment rates differ between communities, which in turn affect the take-up of children's centre services. For this reason, it is not enough for children's centres or local partnerships to simply monitor the ethnic background of members of the community served by the centre; effective outreach to a range of different groups will need differential funding, specialist training and the provision of a range of community languages.

21. We note also calls from groups such as the Daycare Trust for better representation of BME adults in the staffing, and particularly management, of children's centres. This is not about providing 'role models' for children and families. But nobody wants to feel 'done to' by professionals with no empathy with and understanding of different cultures and backgrounds. More must be done to encourage adults from BME communities into childcare and early education careers, and in particular to encourage aspiration to higher levels of strategic planning and management. This calls for sensitivity around access to training, including basic issues such as the days, times and venues in which training takes place.

Conclusion

22. ATL welcomes this inquiry into the effectiveness of children's centres. Much research has already been carried out, and other inquiries held, much of which has been inconclusive. We believe that the select committee must be clear what it is that children's centres are intended to do; we suggest their purpose should continue to be to reach the most disadvantaged families and children. While it is vital that money is spent wisely, and accounted for properly, in this work, evaluation of effectiveness is a complex task and we would not expect the select committee to make simple recommendations.

October 2009