UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE
To be published as HC 364 vi

House of COMMONS

Oral EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE the

Education Committee

Foundation years: Sure Start Children’s Centres

Tuesday 15 October 2013

Elizabeth Truss MP

Evidence heard in Public Questions 782 – 903

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Education Committee

on Tuesday 15 October 2013

Members present:

Mr Graham Stuart (Chair)

Neil Carmichael

Alex Cunningham

Bill Esterson

Pat Glass

Chris Skidmore

Mr David Ward

Craig Whittaker

________________

Examination of Witness

Witness: Elizabeth Truss MP, Parliamentary UnderSecretary of State for Education and Childcare, gave evidence.

Q782 Chair: Good morning, Minister, and welcome to this session of the Education Committee. We are looking at Sure Start children’s centres. We have been conducting this Inquiry for quite a long time, and it is a pleasure to meet the Minister to discuss the various issues that have come up.

To start with, what do you think children’s centres are for?

Elizabeth Truss: First, thank you for inviting me to the Committee. I really welcome the opportunity to discuss Sure Start centres and the foundation years, both are which are extremely important and a big focus for this Government. I am very interested to see the results of your findings. The Government will certainly listen to what the Committee has had to say. Reading through the evidence you have collected so far, there certainly have been a lot of issues discussed.

Children’s centres are for making sure the outcomes for young children and their families are as good as possible; that is their core purpose. It is for local authorities to determine the best way for those children’s centres to be organised and operated, but we see them as a gateway for families-so that families can receive support, whether that is in parenting or for health services, for example. It is a onestop shop that gives them access to a wide range of services available locally.

Q783 Chair: The special adviser at the Department for Education, Dominic Cummings, described Sure Start as a waste of money. Do you agree with him?

Elizabeth Truss: No, I do not. There is a lot of evidence that early education has a very beneficial effect on young children where it is of high quality. In particular, I would highlight the EPPE study, which studies children from two and a half and shows that, where good quality teaching takes place, it has a benefit for later life. However, the evidence is less strong on services for the undertwos, which is one of the reasons we are funding the Early Intervention Foundation to look into getting better evidence. There is strong evidence around some interventions and not other interventions.

Where it is hard to see whether or not children’s centres are value for money is that it is hard to isolate the effect the children’s centre has specifically, because it is part of a range of services provided by local councils to families. For example, the children’s centre could run a postnatal class, engage parents in the facilities at the children’s centre and recommend that the child took up an early learning place at a local nursery or school. The child could benefit from a variety of those services; by age five, that child might be in a very good position to start school and do well.

How to attribute this to the various links on that chain is quite difficult, which is one of the reasons I am keen to see local authorities held to account for their overall performance in the provision of services and early intervention for young children, rather than just the children’s centres, because it is hard to isolate the specific impact of the children’s centre as opposed to the overall range of services the child and parent have.

One of the things we are doing with children’s centres is encouraging more services to be based at children’s centres. From 2015, health visitors will be under the auspices of the local council; we also want those kinds of services to be available at children’s centres.

It is hard to isolate the specific effects, but it is certainly true that, where there are things like parenting programmes or Family Nurse Partnerships taking place at a children’s centre, we want those to be very clearly evidencebased, which is why we commissioned the Early Intervention Foundation to look at the evidence, and make sure local councils and children’s centres are aware of the evidence.

Q784 Chair: You have talked about the importance of quality, and we would certainly agree; where do you think the highest quality is to be found?

Elizabeth Truss: Ofsted monitor the quality across early education. It is important to recognise that only 4% of early education and childcare is actually provided by children’s centres. The vast majority is provided by private and voluntarysector providers, childminders and schools. One of the things we should be very clear about is that schools have quite a major role in the early years.

For example, in London, almost half of childcare places are provided in schools. It is one of the things I hope the Committee will be looking at in this report: the role of schools in the foundation years and the links between schools, children’s centres and nurseries and the provision of those services.

What Ofsted finds is that those nurseries with highquality personnel, i.e. graduate teacher staff, tend to perform better.

Chair: That is the answer I was looking for.

Elizabeth Truss: That was the finding of the EPPE study.

Q785 Chair: Nursery schools are the highest quality. Do you agree with that?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes.

Chair: Yet over the last 10 years we have seen perhaps 30% of them shut. Interestingly, we have seen quite a number of closures not just in this country but in Wales. Somehow we have had this huge investment and focus by successive Governments on early years and yet, when quality is the absolute key, the highest quality centres appear to be closing. How is that possible?

Elizabeth Truss: New highquality centres are opening as well. For example, last week I was at Folkestone Academy, which has just opened a school that starts from age three with a nursery section in the school, which runs a nursery that is open from eight to six, which is good, because it is actually using the assets of schools.

Chair: Sorry to interrupt you, but that is not my question. The evidence is that the older, more established centres are better generally. You have accepted that nursery schools are the highest quality providers. They are closing-this is the evidence that we have had-and have been closing under successive Governments. It just seems like a strange situation. I wonder if you recognise that as being unfortunate and whether you are planning to do anything about it.

Elizabeth Truss: The evidence is that, actually, the newest providers are of higher quality. If you look at the recent Ofsted findings, they actually find that those nurseries that have opened recently are of higher quality, on average, than existing nurseries. That is quite a good sign of what is going on in the nursery market. Schoolbased nurseries are often of high quality. Sometimes it is difficult to identify that, because there can be an overall report for the school rather than just the early years.

However, the critical point, Mr Chairman, underlying what you have highlighted about quality, is the fact that there is graduateteacherled provision. We want to see more of that-whether it is in maintained nurseries, in nurseries in schools or in private and voluntarysector nurseries.

It is not the building and the structure so much as the way children are being taught and whom they are being taught by; that is what is most relevant for quality. My concern is that, at the moment, only roughly a third of three and fouryearolds are being taught in that way. This is an issue, which is why we have introduced early years teachers and why we have introduced Teach First in the early years: to secure highquality graduates.

Chair: Minister, what I wanted to ask you about is the closure of highquality and longestablished nursery schools. Is it an issue or not?

Elizabeth Truss: I read the evidence from the previous session. It seems to be that some people are saying they have been merged to be part of a broader structure in some cases. I do not necessarily recognise that.

Chair: You do not recognise that.

Elizabeth Truss: I do not recognise that, but what I would say is that it is up to local authorities or the organisations that run them to make sure that these are run in the most efficient way.

Q786 Chair: We are clear on that. I just wondered whether you saw it as a problem, but you do not. Can I ask you about the core purpose? Are you happy with it?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes.

Chair: You do not think it looks like it was composed by some interdepartmental committee?

Elizabeth Truss: No.

Chair: You do not think there is any sense of confusion or being conflicted? It is not all things to all people? You really are genuinely happy with the core purpose?

Elizabeth Truss: It would be fair to say that we are on a journey towards what things will look like in the future. For example, the integrated check at two and a half is being introduced in 2015. We are currently consulting, as the Department for Education, on a baseline check at age five, which would make the EYFSP optional. We are also seeing the transfer, in 2015, of health visitors to local authorities.

The vision for a fully integrated service at a local level, which is accountable to local councils, is not fully formed, but our core purpose indicates clearly that this is the direction of travel we see: we see children’s centres as being there to offer services to parents, to improve outcomes for children and to provide a gateway into other services that are provided locally.

Q787 Chair: Do you see any tensions within the core purpose?

Elizabeth Truss: Do you have one, Mr Chairman, which you would like to highlight?

Chair: The ECCE Strand 3 report spoke of some of the tensions in the core purpose of the current policy: children of parents on employment or family support and targeted or universal provision for disadvantaged neighbourhoods. A criticism I would personally make of it is it appears to be all things to all people-as well as being inelegantly phrased.

Elizabeth Truss: Apologies for the phrasing. On this targeted or universal issue, services have to be open to all to attract parents to use them; that is helpful. However, it is the responsibility of local authorities to make sure those services reach the hardesttoreach families. With programmes like the Troubled Families programme, local authorities should be using their resources wisely to make sure that those elements are well represented in children’s centres.

You do need a network of children’s centres that are accessible to families. A lot of the evidence suggests that parents want a service that is very local to them and that they are able to access. You want to involve as wide a group as possible of the community in the centre; however, the ultimate aim is to make sure that those children from the most deprived backgrounds get the early education and the services they need. There is no contradiction in those aims; the way of achieving an effective targeted service is to have a universal offer.

Q788 Chair: I keep returning to the core purpose. Perhaps it should be called the conflicting and confused purpose; that would be a better, more accurate description.

The Government’s focus is to "improve outcomes for young children and their families, with a particular focus on the most disadvantaged families, in order to reduce inequalities in child development and school readiness, supported by improved parenting aspirations, selfesteem and parenting skills and child and family health and life chances". That is the core purpose.

Imagine you are a manager in charge of delivering services; go back to that. What exactly do you take out of that? It does not tell you what your primary responsibility is. Is it primarily to improve outcomes for children or is it more about helping families into work? Is it about reducing child abuse? "Supported by improved parenting aspirations"-

Elizabeth Truss: Mr Chairman, the point is that improving outcomes for children involves all those things. Good schools and nurseries involve parents in the child’s early education, because that helps improve the homelearning environment. They make sure families have access to services like, for example, debt management-to ensure that they focus on outcomes for children. The ultimate aim is improving outcomes for children, but we recognise that you need a wide range of services to help do that.

We are giving maximum flexibility to local councils to organise services in the way they see fit to meet the needs of the community. The needs of a children’s centre in, let us say, rural Norfolk-e.g. the Emneth Children’s Centre, which trains up local childminders-may be different from the needs of a children’s centre in the centre of Leeds. The whole point about our core purpose is that it gives councils the freedom to organise their services with the aim of achieving the best outcomes for children.

You have asked me, Mr Chairman, to talk about whether we are there yet. We are not there yet, because we do not have some of the outcome measures we need to be in place. We have just commissioned a new study to look at the longitudinal results for twoyearolds. We are working on a baseline assessment at age five to see where children are there. We have a twoandahalf year check that is coming in in 2015, so we can monitor progress and we can get better at holding local authorities to account-and that local electorates can hold local authorities to account on these outcomes.

Chair: Minister, they will find it very hard to hold them to account on the basis of this core purpose, given that it covers everything from selfesteem to parenting aspirations, skills, health, life chances-you name it.

Elizabeth Truss: It is deliberately broad.

Q789 Chair: If it is a core purpose, it is not very focused. I have one final question, before I move on to the rest of the Committee. Would you review the core purpose and examine whether it is providing the kind of focus and clarity that people in the sector need?

Elizabeth Truss: I will absolutely look at the Committee’s recommendations in terms of what the core purpose says. As I say, it is deliberately broadly drafted to give local authorities maximum flexibility to deal with the situation and make it easier.

One of the issues we have is that it is very difficult for local authorities to merge services or create onestop shops, because of the different instructions they get from different Government Departments. We are being deliberately broad and we are also working with the Department of Health so that there is a clearer joint message.

Chair: If it appears confused, it is deliberate; is that right?

Elizabeth Truss: It is deliberately broad.

Q790 Pat Glass: Can I ask a couple of questions about the core purpose? I absolutely understand that, if it is to improve outcomes for children, with a range of ways of doing that, it will be different in different areas-all sitting underneath the core purpose. Managers must understand-and I do not think they always do-that it is about improving outcomes for children. Are those academic or social outcomes? If they are social, as we heard earlier, there are longitudinal studies in America that look at how many children go to specialist schools and then prisons or into homelessness or worklessness. Do we have something in place that is going to measure the social impact?

Elizabeth Truss: It is both academic and social outcomes, and I would very much support better measurement of both of those. One of the things we know-this is why it is important to have graduate leadership in nurseries and childminders from an early age-is that early vocabulary development is very important to later reading abilities. We know that communication skills are important. Some of those things are hard to categorise as academic or social, because being able to talk to somebody is both an academic and a social skill that is going to serve the child well in later life. However, both those things are important.

We always struggle-as all Governments do-to measure things. The Chairman of the Committee and I have discussed on frequent occasions how difficult it is to hold organisations to account for the things you measure, because then you tend to get gaming in the system. We must avoid the potential for that, but I completely agree with your general point: we need to make sure local authorities are clear about what the outcomes are of the programmes they run and what they achieve.

I am saying that it is hard to isolate the impact of a children’s centre as opposed to a school nursery as opposed to a childminder as opposed to a health service, which is why I favour a broader measurement of the overall local authority.

Q791 Pat Glass: If we are looking at broader measures, an awful lot of money has gone into this over quite a number of years. Are we going to put those broader measures in place? This would not necessarily be to measure the impact of one children’s centre, but whether this is value for money-are there fewer workless and homeless families as a result of early intervention?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes. That is what the Early Intervention Foundation is looking at. There is more scope to link the various Government programmes I have mentioned-such as the Troubled Families programme-together with what we do in early intervention. It is one of the things that the Social Justice Committee of Ministers considers: how do we better link up the various programmes to make sure we are properly measuring outcomes?

Q792 Mr Ward: Minister, what you detect, no doubt, is a sense of frustration that we have a responsibility to hold the Government to account, but we are actually not sure what we are holding them to account for.

You are going to rename the core purpose; it is actually a general purpose we are looking at. The more general it becomes, the more difficult it is for us to know what we are holding the Government and indeed, ultimately, the centres responsible for. That is the frustration we have; to do our job, we need to know what the end purpose is. When it is very broad with a little bit of good in lots of different areas, it is very difficult for us to evaluate.

Elizabeth Truss: What we have had is a history of lots of different programmes being administered at a local level with different funding streams. They have not been put together; they have been administered separately with their own targets-for example, the paymentbyresults scheme. That has meant local services have not been able to be configured to suit the local population and councils have not had the full overview or ability to spend money in a more targeted, strategic way.

At the moment, I have been talking to Brandon Lewis, a Local Government Minister. They have a transformation fund, which is available to organisations and councils to bid for, for configuring services so that they are done in a rational way. At the moment, we have a lot of different Government buildings-for example, Sure Start centres and other buildings. Can we base more health visitors in Sure Start centres? Can we make sure it is better for both families and local government in terms of their way of operating?

This means the purpose is not just educational and the overall budget for children’s centres is funded by DCLG. It is actually a local government responsibility, and local government should be held to account on how they are performing in terms of the outcomes for those young children in their local areas. That fits with schools and nurseries and their overall responsibilities for children’s services.

However, you are absolutely right: it is not simple. You cannot pick out one thing. The education outcomes and the health outcomes are all linked. We know that poor health and poor education are generally linked factors, but we have to give responsibility to local authorities to achieve the best outcomes, otherwise we end up with all these funding streams.

Chair: Thank you. We have a lot to cover and limited time to do it.

Q793 Neil Carmichael: I was listening carefully to what you were saying, because one of the big issues this Committee constantly bumps up against is the siloing of policies. Do you think there is sufficient joinedup thinking behind this, particularly with your reference to the fact that a large number of young children go to school for nursery education? That is obviously not linked to health, for example, whereas the Sure Start structure would more readily be so. Is there sufficient evidence of joinedup thinking?

Elizabeth Truss: Joinedup thinking is increasing. The new flexibility led to more joinedup thinking. I have some good examples of birth registration now taking place at children’s centres and health visitors being based at children’s centres. I would slightly disagree with you on the point about schools. I mentioned a school in Folkestone I visited last week; they work with the local Jobcentre Plus to help parents get employment and they work with the local health service.

There is no reason why schools also should not be doing these things as part of an integrated offer and making more services available at schools. Fifty per cent. of Sure Start centres are on school sites, so it makes absolute sense for a much more integrated service to take place. It is happening: there are various barriers in terms of information sharing. We are shortly going to be responding to Jean Gross’s report on this, so I am working on that with the Department of Health.

In all of these things, there is a lot of devil in the detail. That is why we are putting together the integrated health check, which is going to be available in 2015; that is why we are working much more closely with the Department of Health and the Department of Communities and Local Government to make sure there is a clear joint steer for local authorities.

Q794 Mr Ward: If a centre was not doing that as you just described, would it fail?

Elizabeth Truss: It depends on the other services available in the area. The way I would see it is, if a local authority was not improving outcomes for its poorest children by not configuring services in a way that works for parents and families, it would not be doing well.

We need to see children’s centres as part of an overall offering in the local area. It may be that some local authorities decide to configure it more closely with health services while other local authorities decide to configure their children’s centres more closely with schools.

There are vast opportunities to get better value for money from the use of buildings locally, and that is what DCLG has set up its transformation fund for, where councils can bid for £75 million worth of money to transform their services.

I cannot sit here, as an education Minister in Whitehall, and say, "This is exactly how local authorities should run their services," because they all start from different points. The Chairman has pointed out the issue of maintained nurseries: some areas have a high number of maintained nurseries; others have virtually none. It depends on the landscape and the local area.

Q795 Neil Carmichael: Do you think that local authorities are the ideal delivery vehicle, as you implied in the answer to that question?

Elizabeth Truss: I would not use the term "delivery vehicle"; I see them as the commissioner of services, yes. Ultimately, it is hard to judge. You can judge a children’s centre for the activities it does, and that is what Ofsted does: they go in and look at children’s centres and say, "Are the parenting groups they are running effective? Is the early education they are providing effective?" However, what they cannot do is say, "Are the outcomes for these children good?"

This is because one of the roles of a children’s centre is referring parents to other services, so we do not know which had the outcome-the children’s centre or the other service. Local authorities should ultimately be accountable for the outcomes of those young children.

Q796 Neil Carmichael: Are local authorities equipped with the mechanisms to ensure that social care, health and education are talking to each other, not just during the commissioning process, but beyond and throughout the lifetime of the projects and the children?

Elizabeth Truss: They are moving in that direction. There are further things we are doing that will make that possible. The devolution of health visitors to local authorities in 2015 will also help that. It sometimes depends on the area: it is a bit of a cliché, but it is all about the relationships at a local level.

There are some myths about information sharing, which we want to bust to make it clear that it is possible to share information in an effective way at a local level, but there are very good examples of this taking place in very good pilot schemes across the country involving reconfiguring services.

For example, some children’s centres are now the hub for the Troubled Families programme. That is true for a local authority in Havering. These things are happening, but it is a gradual process. We are basically giving local authorities the space to do that with the broad drafting of the interpretation of what a children’s centre is.

Q797 Chair: The Government does not seem to have much confidence in local authorities leading education more broadly-specifically, coming up with the academies programme in a great hurry to get their dead hands off education more broadly. Yet in early education you see them as being the absolutely crucial coordinators and commissioners. Is there a contradiction there?

Elizabeth Truss: I would not say there is, because local authorities have a strategic role in education right up to 18. One of the things I am very keen to do is break down the silo between early education and education.

At the moment, we have the biggest gap in salaries between those who work in nurseries and those who work in schools of any country in Western Europe. That is wrong, because we know that early education is at least as important as lateron education. What Charlie Taylor is doing at the National College for Teaching and Leadership is working to create a 0 to 18 teaching workforce. That is the ultimate aim.

Chair: Thank you. We will come back to this later, but thank you very much.

Q798 Neil Carmichael: I have one last question, because I think it is important. What kind of vision do you have for this sector in, let us say, 10 years’ time? What would you like to see as a broad delivery?

Elizabeth Truss: In terms of childcare and early education, we have discussed that 4% is provided by children’s centres. I do not see that changing a massive amount; I see children’s centres as a gateway specifically focusing on the very early years. I want to see a diversity of different providers. I want to see more childminders. We have seen the number of childminders halve over the past 15 years; they are a very important part of the mix.

We are making it much easier for childminders to get early education funding. From this September, good and outstanding childminders will automatically get early education funding, which is a major change. We are also creating childminder agencies to make it simpler to become a childminder. I want to see nurseries moving towards a more highly qualified workforce.

What the Chairman has suggested about teacherled early education is good; I want to see more of that. At the moment, we are at 33%. I would like that to be much higher. I also want to see different models evolve. We now have the development of quite a lot of 37 schools. That is very good to bridge over the distinction between the early years and the first few years of primary school. That is very helpful for children, and we want to see more of those models develop.

I want to see a much greater status for early years teachers. That is the whole point of the Teach First for the early years programme. We have 16 teachers now doing that in a pilot this year in London; I want to see that programme expand. I want to see a much greater consistency across the teaching workforce and much less of a silo between the early years and primary school, because early years have a lot to learn from primary schools and primary schools have a lot to learn from early years. At the moment, we lose a lot in the transition.

Q799 Alex Cunningham: The Chair has reflected very much the evidence we have heard over many weeks or months, in fact, around the core purpose and the confusion there about it being all things to all people, so can we look at some specifics? What should the balance of services in children’s centres between universal and targeted services be? Should children’s centres be community resources and managed by local parents or should they be venues for the delivery of targeted, evidencebased interventions for the most disadvantaged families with the local authorities being held to account?

Elizabeth Truss: It depends on the specific circumstances of each local area. In order to get parents through the door, there is inevitably going to be an element of universal programmes. That is helpful, but we want to see more focus on evidencebased targeted programmes.

Alex Cunningham: What should the balance be? Should it be 60:40 with more targeted services?

Elizabeth Truss: This is the whole point: I am saying that this cannot be decided by a Minister in central Government. It will depend on what is available in schools locally, what is available at the heath service locally and what progress there has been on the Troubled Families programme-all those kinds of things.

We are giving councils the broad remit to improve outcomes for children. We want to see a network of children’s centres to make sure that all parents have access to a children’s centre, but we are saying to them, "You need to look at the best possible evidence as to how to deliver for local children." They also have a duty to ensure the sufficiency of childcare and we also want to see highquality childcare available locally.

Setting specific targets on detailed areas of policy has been an absolute disaster for the past however many years.

Q800 Alex Cunningham: Does the evidence you have just given suggest that there are good grounds for confusion? It depends what is here, what is there and who can provide it. There is a mixed bag of provision across the piece, instead of some form of universal provision.

Elizabeth Truss: We know there is universal provision of children’s centres. We know that there is a universal offer for childcare: 15 hours of childcare per week for three and fouryearolds and 15 hours for twoyearolds in low-income families. There is a universal offer, which parents know about, but there are children’s centres, which are also available and which local authorities are accountable for, to their local electors, as to what services are provided exactly.

It is a disaster to say we are going to impose what each children’s centre should do when they are all very different. Local authorities need to be held to account for how they are improving outcomes for children.

Q801 Chair: Why do you not make that your core purpose? It would be a lot simpler.

Elizabeth Truss: At the moment, we do not have the full tools in place to do that. This is why we are doing things like consulting on a baseline at five. That is why we are working on the integrated health check. We have just commissioned a longitudinal study on twoyearolds; the results from that will be available in 2020. None of these things are short term. The problem with past policy was that, when these programmes were started, we did not start the evidence collection. It would have been good to start the evidence collection 13 years ago and then we would have some idea now.

Q802 Pat Glass: Have you started it now?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes. I have commissioned a longitudinal project, which will report in 2020, on outcomes for twoyearolds in our twoyearold programme. We have funded the Early Intervention Foundation to look at the evidence base around some of the parenting programmes and other intervention programmes. We are working with PISA to get better international comparisons for our early years education, which we do not have at the moment. We are also working with the Durham PIPS project to get better information about early years outcomes as well.

At the moment, the only thing we have is the EPPE study, which is twoandahalf years old. That is the only piece of longitudinal research we have, and the main finding of that is that teacherled early years education delivers the best outcomes for children. We do not have good evidence below the age of two and a half, which is why we are commissioning these other programmes.

The problem for me as a Minister, however, is that those longitudinal studies, by their nature, do not report next year. You do not know about the outcome for quite some years hence. Maybe we will be here in 2020 discussing it.

Q803 Alex Cunningham: You seem very keen to pass the buck to local authorities, Minister. They are under tremendous strain. I am beginning to hear that local authorities are saying that core services are going to start to suffer under the Government’s cutbacks. You are also providing them with an extremely wide range of services or criteria within which to work. Is it fair on local authorities when it is not clear what you are actually requiring of them?

Elizabeth Truss: Local authorities welcome the additional flexibility. They also welcome the fact that, under the health and wellbeing boards, they are going to be taking on more responsibility for health visitors.

Q804 Alex Cunningham: What about the resources to go with that, Minister?

Elizabeth Truss: They do have resources.

Alex Cunningham: You have cut resources; they have gone down.

Elizabeth Truss: Brandon Lewis, the Local Government Minister, is very clear that we need to get better value for money for things like local government assets. At the moment, we have a lot of different programmes running out of a lot of different buildings. We want to be able to spend more money on frontline services; that is why we are seeing more joinedup management of children’s centres, which is a wholly good thing, because it means more money can be spent on frontline staff and less money on overheads.

Q805 Alex Cunningham: Could they still live with a 20% cut?

Elizabeth Truss: We are delivering better value for money. If you look at the recent BBC study, what they found was that the public agree that we can deliver more for less.

What we have seen is a lot of different programmes, which had not been joined up, all being delivered at local level. It is right that local government take responsibility for that. It is very difficult for somebody to sit in Whitehall and say, "This is how Calderdale should organise their services," or, "This is how Leeds should organise their services." We believe in localism; we believe in empowering local government.

Chair: That is excellent. I would not wish to stop this being a political pulpit as well as an evidence session, but we have so much to get through; I must ask you to give shorter replies.

Q806 Alex Cunningham: I will keep to asking yes or no questions. That might help. Will you champion local authorities, when it comes to fighting with the Treasury, to make sure they have the resources they need to deliver the early years programme?

Elizabeth Truss: They do have the resources they need to deliver the early years programme.

Q807 Alex Cunningham: We will disagree on that. The Children’s Society’s excellent report Breaking Barriers examines how children’s centres can best reach disadvantaged families, which is very much in line with what the Department wants. It worries me that the report shows 42% of those surveyed had not used a children’s centre or knew nothing about them, while 73% were not aware of the services on offer.

With groups particularly vulnerable to isolation also less likely to know about the provision, what steps is the Department taking to reach out productively and inform communities of the services available?

Elizabeth Truss: I just want to come back on your previous question.

Alex Cunningham: Can you not answer this one, Minister?

Elizabeth Truss: I want to answer your last question. This country spends more on foundation years than quite a lot of other countries. For example, we spend more than France and about the same amount as Germany. Those countries often succeed in getting better value for money for the spending they put in. Our aim is to make sure the funding is available, but to ask local authorities to pool resources so that they are providing a much more coherent, valueformoney service at a local level. The same thing applies to our early education funding, which is now through the Direct Schools Grant. We need to get better value for money for what we are spending.

I want to come on to the second question. It is the responsibility of local authorities to reach out to their local communities and target those hardtoreach families. We give them plenty of information. For example, on the twoyearold programme, we have given them the Department of Work and Pensions data about where lowincome families are-their addresses and so forth-so that local authorities can go out and reach them.

However, all the evidence suggests that the best way of getting across to the public is through local mechanisms like local radio and other ways, rather than the national pulpit. We have looked at the research evidence about how we reach those target audiences and it seems, to us, that it is better to target it locally.

Q808 Alex Cunningham: I would not contradict you that there is more money available for early years. What I would say is that local authority services-you are expecting them to support that and do this strategic overview-are under considerable pressure. I want to know what the Government is going to do to make sure they can do this role of strategically planning, informing and all of these other things as well, at a time when they are actually being cut further and further.

Elizabeth Truss: This is why the DCLG have set up the transformation fund: to give local authorities the oneoff funding they need to reconfigure their services to get value for money.

Q809 Alex Cunningham: Is this oneoff funding?

Elizabeth Truss: It is a grant so that they can reconfigure their services to be more efficient. At the moment, we can do more. Everyone on this Committee has acknowledged we can do more to get all the different elements working together to better share information so that it is not duplicated.

Chair: That is clear. Thank you.

Q810 Bill Esterson: You have been very clear that, in your view, there have been very few closures of centres and that, in fact, the claims of hundreds and hundreds of closures are, in reality, mergers and the move to a satellite model. Yet the evidence we have had suggests that, when you move to that kind of approach, you often end up with the situation where you have a parttime member of staff producing leaflets, which does not deliver any kind of service at all. Do you recognise that as a concern?

Elizabeth Truss: We need to make sure that the services being delivered locally are good services that parents value. I have seen that other people have commented on the value of a hubandspoke network, where some services are available in some centres and other services are available in other centres. All the evidence suggests, though, that parents want something that is located near their house. There is a value in having a local presence, but it is very much for local authorities to make sure that what each of those centres is doing is good quality and is helping outcomes for children. Of course, Ofsted also inspect centres to make sure what they are doing fits the bill.

Q811 Bill Esterson: The concern is that, if you have this patchy approach that we have seen evidence of, there is an inability to meet all the needs of the families and the children in those areas where that is the setup.

Elizabeth Truss: It may be, for example, that the Sure Start centre might hold a postnatal class for parents but refer the same parents to a local academy that offers twoyearold places in its nursery. It does not necessarily have to be on site. Remember that 50% of Sure Start centres are at school sites and there may be services available in the school. It is not necessarily that everything has to be available on that site; it is that the local authority’s role is identifying those families and children that need help and making sure they get those services.

Those services may involve things like home visits; it may involve a placement in a highquality local nursery; it may involve healthservice referrals; it may involve all kinds of things. The key thing is making sure that the family is supported and those children who potentially do not have good life chances get those good life chances. It is very hard to dictate from here exactly how local authorities do that. You heard David Simmonds’ evidence; he was pretty clear that he understands that this is the role of local authorities. Certainly, the discussions I have had with DCSs of local authorities suggest to me that they understand that role as well.

Q812 Bill Esterson: The concern I was putting to you about the hubandspoke model you describe is that you do not have the staff there to make those sorts of referrals, carry out those visits or to have the time-or the expertise, for that matter, given the comments you made about workforce qualifications and so on-to do what you are suggesting.

Elizabeth Truss: Workforce qualification is obviously an issue in children’s centres, but it is mainly an issue for the 96% of childcare that is not provided in children’s centres. The workforce issue we have is primarily in the private and voluntarysector provision of childcare. There are two different things: there is one question of who the right person to manage a children’s centre is, which will depend on the exact nature of the children’s centre and how it is focused; and there is another question about the overall early years workforce, which is a big issue that we are addressing with our programme to upgrade the standard of qualifications.

Chair: With luck, we might get to that topic.

Elizabeth Truss: There are two slightly different points.

Bill Esterson: Yes, of course, but I was making the distinction between what goes on in a centre that is fully staffed and a satellite centre where you have only a parttime member of staff.

Elizabeth Truss: Obviously, the authorities need to make sure that staff in a children’s centre are of the highest quality, but Ofsted report on that in their inspections.

Chair: We will come back to this.

Q813 Bill Esterson: I have another question. Naomi Eisenstadt told us that, given the financial constraints that Alex was trying to get to the bottom of with you, fewer but better resourced centres would make sense. Do you agree?

Elizabeth Truss: I do not agree in the sense that there need to be children’s centres available near where parents live; it is important that parents are able to access a service.

Bill Esterson: She was talking about just having them in the poorest communities.

Elizabeth Truss: If you look at the demographics, there are a lot of vulnerable children who do not necessarily live in the poorest communities.

Bill Esterson: You think it is important to have them in all communities?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes. It is important there is a network of children’s centres. Local government is getting, and can further get, better value for money for the buildings they use; there can be further improvements to reducing overheads-for the 50% of centres that are on school sites, for example, or ones that are colocated with health services.

I am not saying that further efficiencies in management could not be achieved, but it is important that the footprint is a broad service, because we are very clear in our corepurpose document that, although some children’s centres provide childcare, it is not their core purpose. They do not have to provide childcare.

The agenda about getting really highquality childcare in deprived areas-which we are doing through the twoyearold programme and the three and fouryearold programme-is a different agenda from how we make sure there is a good coverage of children’s centres. Those are two different purposes. Naomi may have been talking about the second purpose when she made those comments.

Q814 Craig Whittaker: I just want to ask you about childcare and education on site. In particular, we know that only a third of children’s centres currently offer that provision anyway, but I wanted to ask you a question in light of the funding complexities around the twoyearold provision and the three and fouryearold provision.

We know for a fact that local authorities get anywhere from £220 to £550, depending on where you are. In Calder, for example, a lot of my independent providers will not offer twoyearold provision, because they cannot afford to do it, and that is a lot of providers, not just one or two. In light of that fact, would it not be a better outcome for those young people to have that early years and daycare provision within the children’s centres?

Elizabeth Truss: The twoyearold money can go to children’s centres. It is a decision for the children’s centres and the local authority as to whether that is offered at a children’s centre and the best way of putting together that provision. They are not stopped from doing that; in fact, many children’s centres do support the twoyearold offer.

What I would say about the funding is that we do recognise there is unfairness in the funding, as there is in the schools funding. We have committed to move towards a nationalfunding formula for the early years. We have a similar issue to the one we have in schools, which is that some local authorities are being paid a very high amount per child and some are being paid a very low amount per child. It has to be a gradual process, moving towards a nationalfunding formula. I absolutely agree with you that it is unfair at the moment and it is vastly disparate from local authority to local authority. That is certainly what nurseries have told me.

On twoyearolds, there are much tighter ratios for twoyearolds than threeyearolds. You will be aware that, with a graduate lead, there is a 1:13 ratio for threeyearolds and a 1:4 ratio for twoyearolds. There is a vast difference in the number of staff you need for twoyearolds. At the moment, we have some trial projects in schools for schools to take twoyearolds; however, the high ratio does make that trickier. As you can imagine, the teaching resource you need to cover 1:4, when you have a 1:13 for age three, is difficult.

I would also point out that childminders can also provide the twoyearold offer. One of the things we announced this September-for which we are legislating next September and on which we have already given guidance to local authorities-is that childminders can automatically access early education funding. Previously, local authorities decided which childminders got funding; that is no longer the case.

Roughly speaking, there are now 100,000 additional early education places available through childminders, which, for the twoyearold age group, is particularly suitable, as many parents want that homebased care.

Q815 Craig Whittaker: How are we going to hold local authorities to account in one of the core purposes, which is about making children schoolready, when there are such disparate models all around the country about how that early years provision is provided?

Elizabeth Truss: This is why we are consulting at the moment, through the primary accountability mechanism, on baseline testing. One of the things you can see in the future is, when we have the twoandahalf year check in place in 2015 and a check in place at five, we will be able to see how children are progressing in particular localauthority areas.

Q816 Craig Whittaker: But how do you hold the local authority to account specifically? That is what you said all along this morning: you said you want to hold local authorities to account. If the provision is not in the place they can be held accountable to, how on earth can we hold them to account?

Elizabeth Truss: They are accountable for children being able to access highquality childcare in their area. One of the things we want local authorities to do is encourage highquality providers to come to their area. At the moment, there is a tool on Ofsted that you can use to search for the proportion of "good" and "outstanding" nurseries and there is a vast disparity between local authorities. We are improving planning regulations so that it is easier for new nurseries to set up, so you can automatically convert a shop or commercial premises into a nursery.

We want local authorities to be attracting highquality childcare providers to their area; we think that is part of the role of local authorities, just as we think it is a role of local authorities to make sure there are school places in their area as well. They are also responsible for commissioning school places.

Chair: We have loads to cover, Minister; could I ask you for shorter answers, please?

Elizabeth Truss: I am sorry.

Q817 Craig Whittaker: You have said to us you want to break down the silos between early and later education for young people; you have said you want nurseries to have more highly qualified people within them; you have not gone as far as saying we will have qualified teacher status for those workers. Was it a mistake, then, to remove the requirement that all centres had a link to a qualified teacher?

Elizabeth Truss: No, I do not think so. As we have discussed, the centres have different purposes. Ninety-six per cent. of children access the three and fouryearold places, which shows it does have a deep reach and parents are very well aware of this offer. Most of that early education they are accessing is not at children’s centres. Our focus is making sure that 100% are getting as highly qualified staff as possible.

From this September, reports on the qualifications of staff will be in Ofsted reports on nurseries. This is very important and will signal to parents that the quality of staff is a critical factor. At the moment, only 33% of nurseries are teacher led. We know it is economical to be teacher led, because they can operate at the 1:13 ratio, which is similar to a reception class. We want to see more private and voluntary sector nurseries doing that.

Q818 Craig Whittaker: Why not bring in QTS, then?

Elizabeth Truss: Let me tell you the salary gap at the moment. The average pay for a childcare employee is £13,300 and the average pay for a primaryschool teacher is £33,250. If you compare that with somewhere like the Netherlands, a childcare worker is on £22,000; a teacher is on £34,000. In a country like Sweden, where it is very similar, a childcare worker is on £22,000; a primaryschool teacher is on £23,000.

We have such a massive gap at the moment. The way that we train up early years teachers versus the way we train up teachers is also very different. We have made sure that, from next year, early years teachers will be doing the same qualification tests as teachers in maths and English, when they enter the course.

Craig Whittaker: They do not, however, have the same status.

Elizabeth Truss: They do not, because we have such a big gap at the moment that we need to move towards that.

Q819 Craig Whittaker: Surely, one real quick fix in regards to qualified people and raising the status of early years provision would be to offer a QTS as a minimum?

Elizabeth Truss: The issue we have at the moment is that the salaries and terms and conditions are so disparate that, if that were imposed on the system, it would be quite difficult. What we are doing is moving towards teachers and early years teachers having the same status over a period of years.

Q820 Chair: Can you spell out what you mean by difficulty? Do you mean that, because people would have QTS, they would leave the lowerpaid sector and move to the higherpaid sector? That would denude the early years of the teachers it had; is that the difficulty you are talking about?

Elizabeth Truss: No, the difficulty is that a lot of nurseries are configured around working in a particular way with an 8:1 ratio of, let us say, Level 3 qualified staff. To make a teaching model work, you really need to operate in a receptionclass style with a teacher and an assistant. That would be quite difficult for a lot of nurseries as they are currently configured. There also simply is not the supply of people going in to early years teaching, because it has not been seen as the aspirational profession that it should be seen as. We are starting off Teach First in the early years this year; we are raising the standards of entry for early years teachers; and Charlie Taylor is working on the longterm plan for how we get to a 0 to 18 teaching workforce that is consistent.

What I am saying is it is difficult to get there in a leap of one year when the status and the salaries are so disparate. At the moment, you have an existing workforce that is paid £13,000 operating in a particular way; you then have the teaching workforce, which is paid an average of £33,000. You can see that this is not something where you can just start a course next year and make it work.

As the Committee will be aware, academies and free schools do not have to hire qualified teachers. We are also changing the regime in schools for qualified teachers. There are a lot of changes taking place, and Charlie Taylor is making sure early years education is part of that transformation, but we will be saying more about this shortly. It is a gradual process of change, but I want to be clear with the Committee that this is the direction of travel. This is where we see it going in the long term.

Q821 Craig Whittaker: What has become of the scheme to refer children with low literacy and language skills to children’s centres? Why did you choose children’s centres for this type of scheme?

Elizabeth Truss: I am sorry; I cannot answer that question. I will come back to you on that.

Q822 Chris Skidmore: Looking at the series of National Evaluation of Sure Start Reports, they raised questions more recently about whether Sure Start centres prepare young children’s school readiness; do you think, in light of those reports, that Sure Start centres have been a success?

Elizabeth Truss: As I have said before, it is hard to isolate the particular impact of Sure Start centres as opposed to other factors. When 96% of children are accessing three and fouryearold education for 15 hours a week-and we know good quality early education has a massive impact on outcomes-how can you say whether it was the children’s centre that referred them or the child being in that setting? It is very difficult to isolate.

This is why it is right that Ofsted goes into Sure Start centres to see how they are doing on their own terms, but it is really a matter for the overall configuration of services. How are young children from deprived backgrounds being identified and they and their families helped to make sure they achieve their potential? That is the question, rather than looking at the children’s centres in isolation.

Q823 Chris Skidmore: There is another question that needs to be asked, which is around the evidence base. If it is hard to disaggregate Sure Start centres in isolation from the universal offer, do we need to know more specifically about what makes children’s centres effective? Would you particularly accept the recommendation from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission that we need to develop and test a reform model for children’s centres, including a menu of evidencebased options, for use by local authorities?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes, we do need more evidence. That is why the Early Intervention Foundation is being funded: to provide evidence. However, the interesting evidence is around the programmes that children are on at particular children’s centres, because, as we have discussed, there are vastly different programmes available at different children’s centres around the country. We need a good evidence base around things like the Family Nurse Partnership to see if that programme is better than another programme and what children’s centres should be offering.

The centre itself is part of a service configuration, so it is hard to say. There are children’s centres out there that offer very highquality early years education, have done brilliant parenting programmes, have referred children into highquality education or have been part of the Troubled Families programme and are doing a great job. There are others that are doing a less good job. When the concept is essentially a onestop shop, a front door to attract parents to be part of local services, it is the content we need to be talking about, rather than the structure.

Q824 Chair: We have spent billions on this; how many billions do you think we have spent on children’s centres?

Elizabeth Truss: Goodness me; I would not like to guess, Mr Chairman.

Chair: It must have been over £1 billion a year for the past few years.

Elizabeth Truss: It is more than that.

Q825 Chair: We spent money prior to that. It is going to be at least about £5 billion. You have said it is very hard to isolate the impact, but the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS) programme did precisely that. They looked at comparable areas that did have a Sure Start centre and ones that did not. Again and again-they did phase after phase of studies-they found that "no SSLP effects emerged in the case of ‘school readiness’". Yet we have spent billions of pounds on something which, after very careful study, appears not to have done anything for school readiness. There were some other positives, but, in answer to Chris’ question, is that not disappointing?

Elizabeth Truss: It is disappointing that, when the Sure Start programme was started-and, indeed, in the way that local authorities have been assessed on their early intervention-there were not better longitudinal studies of children in those centres.

Q826 Chair: What was wrong with NESS? They did reports in 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2012. It was not too bad; it could have been shabbier.

Elizabeth Truss: It is difficult to isolate the impact of children’s centres.

Q827 Chair: That is what they did. I do not know if you have read it. I have read some of their stuff and that is exactly what they sought to do. They said there were all sorts of methodological challenges, but, fundamentally, they looked at comparable areas that did have them and those that did not. That is what you do.

One of the problems today is that it is quite hard to find communities that do not have a children’s centre; how on earth do you do a study to find out whether they are any good or not? Back then, you could; they did-and they did not find any improvement in school readiness.

Elizabeth Truss: How can you isolate that from the 96% of children who take up the three and fouryearold offer? That is the difficulty.

Q828 Neil Carmichael: Moving on to accountability issues, do you think you have a sufficient accountability mechanism in place for you to be sure that local government is delivering?

Elizabeth Truss: We are still consulting on our primary accountability measures at the moment. Regarding accountability through specific children’s centres, the Ofsted regime has been improved. The Ofsted regime has been improved in general. Sir Mike Wilshaw is recruiting new HMIs into the early years. There is much more of a focus on outcomes, rather than inputs, in the inspection of nurseries, childminders and children’s centres, so the accountability there is being sharpened.

We have more to do in understanding how specific local areas and specific local authorities are improving the life chances of the most vulnerable children. It really does come back to the point the Chairman raised on the previous study: we do not have good longitudinal research. The measure of the outcome is really important. We need to know, when a child enters school, what they are capable of doing. We need to understand a child’s language and communication skills and health at age two and a half.

That is the objective measurement we have been missing. A lot of these studies do not have that objective measurement of where a child is. It will be put in place, but we do not have that yet. You are right: it is hard to hold local authorities-and, indeed, providers-to account without those measures.

Q829 Neil Carmichael: In the absence of the requirement on centres to report on their reach into disadvantaged groups, do you think that should be reinstated or do you think that your answer to my last question is, in part, sufficient?

Elizabeth Truss: Sorry, I did not understand that.

Neil Carmichael: If centres are not required to say how they are getting on in terms of reaching into disadvantaged groups, which is the situation; do you think that is something we should be revisiting?

Elizabeth Truss: Local authorities are required to do that. Local authorities should be making sure that their children’s centres or the other services they provide are reaching those disadvantaged groups. One of the ways we are doing that is through the twoyearold offer.

We will see what proportion of children from lowincome backgrounds are accessing the twoyearold offer very shortly; it is the responsibility of local authorities to market that offer and make sure parents are aware of it. Of course, children’s centres are one of the key ways local authorities do that.

Q830 Neil Carmichael: Ofsted’s recent report Unseen Children identified coastal areas, rural areas and certain parts of the East of England as areas of significant underachievement. Do you think there is any pattern that report has identified that can be matched up to the areas we are talking about today?

Elizabeth Truss: We lack evidence. I talked before about the outcomes for underfives. We lack consistent evidence that we can compare local authorities on. I know Norfolk, where my constituency is, has had a negative Ofsted report; one of the reasons for that is it has not been doing that.

Sir Michael Wilshaw is cracking down on local authorities where that is not happening. The report was very clear that early years is a key element of that, and local authorities taking that seriously and making sure they are identifying children from an early age.

As I have said, we, as a Department, have tried to help local authorities and give them information about where the children are from lowincome backgrounds so that they can be targeted to take up the twoyearold offer and participate in programmes. They have that information, but they are best placed locally to make sure those children are getting the best quality.

One of the things we have done in the twoyearold offer is strongly encourage councils that that should be available only at "good" and "outstanding" nurseries and childminders, so those youngsters are getting the best possible early education.

Q831 Neil Carmichael: It might be worth matching up the pattern of underachievement that their report has identified to what our understanding is of service delivery in the early years.

Elizabeth Truss: Yes. The best way of doing that at the moment-given that most early education is provided in nurseries, schools and childminders-is through things like the Ofsted tool that shows you the percentage of childcare providers that are "good" and "outstanding". It is vastly different in different areas and, quite often, those areas that have poor provision do badly later on. It is very heavily linked-as far as I can tell, from looking at the data myself.

Q832 Neil Carmichael: Yes, and my question was predicated on that assumption. Last but not least, on the question of a nationaloutcomes framework for early years, do you think we need one and what should it look like if we do?

Elizabeth Truss: Essentially, we are creating one with a combination of the twoandahalf year check and whatever we end up with at age five. There is always a tension-this is something we have discussed with many people from early years and school organisations-between having something that measures the outcomes of the whole child, to which Pat was referring, and something that is measurable and can be tested and organisations can be held to account on. That is the issue we are debating at the moment on the baseline versus the EYFSP.

Obviously, the EYFSP covers a broader remit, but a baseline check would be more measurable. We need to focus on the outcomes for children. We know the best proxy for getting good outcomes is highquality early years teaching. We know that 96% of children access that; we want to make sure that all lowincome children access that. That is why we are encouraging councils to make sure that is done.

We are putting real pressure on raising quality on early years. Ofsted have developed a much more rigorous framework; they are recruiting new HMIs into early years. We have given them additional budget to recruit new HMIs into early years. We want to see more commonality between early years inspections and school inspections so that they can be done as a piece and we see the same level of judgment exercised by inspectors in both of those things. That is a good proxy, but, ultimately, what we need to know is where the child is at a particular age.

At the moment, my main criticism of the past is that nothing like that had been put in place. We can assess specific programmes, but do we know, in a particular localauthority area, what progress children are making between two and a half and five? No, we do not; we will do in the future, but we do not know yet.

Q833 Bill Esterson: Can I check something? You said earlier that it is impossible to measure the success of children’s centres; is that what you were broadly saying?

Elizabeth Truss: I did not say it was impossible.

Q834 Bill Esterson: There has not been an evaluation that has shown success. Is that a fair assessment or summary of what you were saying?

Elizabeth Truss: I am saying the evidence is weaker outside provision of early education. You can show that early education provided in a highquality setting-which may be a children’s centre or may be a nursery-has a definite impact.

Q835 Bill Esterson: I think you have accepted the premise of what I have said. If there is no benchmark for children who are not either using those services or taking up the three and fouryearold offer, it is going to be very difficult to set a benchmark now. You also said that, did you not?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes.

Q836 Bill Esterson: How, then, can you use a system of payment by results if you cannot compare the situation now, as it is impossible to evaluate?

Elizabeth Truss: Payment by results is a good system, provided it is based on broad outcomes. We have finished the paymentbyresults trial. In fact, some of the elements of the trial are reflected in the way we are doing the twoyearold offer. Councils are being funded for the twoyearold offer on the basis on participation: the more twoyearolds that participate, the more funding councils get.

Q837 Bill Esterson: If it is very difficult to measure improvement, how can payment by results work? That is the question I am asking.

Elizabeth Truss: I do not think it does work for children’s centres.

Q838 Alex Cunningham: You are now ditching the idea of payment by results for children’s centres?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes, for the time being.

Q839 Bill Esterson: The evidence that has come back shows it does not work; the results of the trial mean you are not going to do it?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes.

Q840 Mr Ward: I want to look at the issue of the performance of the centres, and the roles of local authorities and Ofsted inspections. If each centre’s provision is, and you are arguing should be, based on local circumstances, we have over 3,000 children’s centres; in theory every single one could be different, and not necessarily in a bad way-just different, meeting local circumstances. That must make Ofsted incredibly difficult in terms of inspecting the provision in a centre.

Elizabeth Truss: Ofsted does have the power to assess networks of centres, which they do quite frequently now, and because more centres are networked and merged, they are assessing groups of centres, which I think works well. There possibly is more scope for them to inspect children’s centres at the same time as they inspect children’s services, to see how it is all linked up and how it works together, which is something that we might explore.

We are asking Ofsted to be more flexible. One of the reasons we want more HMIs recruited into the early years is that there are a lot of different models in early years, so some providers are providing dropin nurseries for a few hours; others are providing childminder agencies, for which we are looking at the inspection framework at the moment. We are asking Ofsted to be flexible, because what we want is a number of different models to emerge. If I have got a criticism of the past, it has been a bit one size fits all, and I think different things work in different areas. For example, one of the advantages of childminder agencies collaborating with children’s centres-one of our childminder agency trials is in a children’s centre, working with children’s centres-is that will work very well in rural areas where there is a network of childminders that can be trained and get support from the local children’s centre. That may not work in a very urban area.

Ofsted do have to be flexible, which is why we need highquality inspectors, who can exercise their judgment about what the outcomes are for children. That is why the whole inspection regime has moved from ticking boxes about: "What is here? What is there? Have they done this? Have they done that?" to, "Is the child developing well? Are they being brought on? Are they being well taught? Are their outcomes improving?" That is the focus of the inspection, and a goodquality inspector should be able to look at any organisation, whether it is a children’s centre, a childminder agency or a nursery, and be able to make that judgment.

Q841 Mr Ward: Unlike a school, where an Ofsted inspector will go in and look at provision-obviously teaching, leadership, management, and all sorts of issues within the school-what they would need to do, if every single centre could be different, and maybe for good reasons, is map and understand all the other provision that is made available within the local authority area to assess whether what was being done in that particular children’s centre was suitable. Is that right?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes. It is a fair point that, in due course, when we see better integration with health services, there is a question of Ofsted inspectors’ expertise in assessing those services, and we will have to look at that. It is certainly an issue that I will raise with Ofsted.

Q842 Mr Ward: Is it not in effect an inspection of the local authority?

Elizabeth Truss: That is what I was saying; I think there is scope to better link it with the inspection of the local authority.

Q843 Mr Ward: There has been a change in the Ofsted inspection since April, and there has been a fall of 15% in those adjudged "good" or better. Is there any particular reason for that?

Elizabeth Truss: Ofsted is putting more focus on things like the qualifications of staff in nurseries. We know that having highly qualified staff has a big impact on children’s outcomes, so those are now being reported on for the first time in September, and that will have an effect on inspection outcomes.

Q844 Mr Ward: Are you confident that Ofsted have the right level of skills and expertise, particularly in younger children? It has been said before that they do not really understand the younger children. Are you confident about that?

Elizabeth Truss: They are recruiting new HMIs to make sure there is enough senior inspection resource in the early years. I think that is very important. There is a general issue around the silos that have emerged, or maybe have always existed, in the education system at age five. Do primary schools know enough about the early years? Do early years know enough about what goes on in primary? I would like to see wider expertise in all of those areas.

Ofsted is a very well respected organisation. There will always be issues with an inspection regime, and appeals and so on, but I am confident that they are taking the right steps in terms of the framework they have laid out: much more focused on outcomes; much more focused on high quality engagement with children; less focused on ticking boxes. I think that is all good.

Q845 Craig Whittaker: Can I just ask you about evidencebased programmes in children’s centres? Is it more important to encourage a culture of evidencebased practice or to concentrate on improving the fidelity of the few well established programmes already going?

Elizabeth Truss: It is very important to encourage evidencebased practice. What I want to see more of in nurseries, schools and children’s centres is evidencebased practice: practitioners who know what they are doing, who know about the latest research evidence, who are in touch with others, and who can lead improvements. As I have said, I do not think the evidence base is fully there yet. It will never be fully there; we will always be finding out new things.

We have commissioned the Early Intervention Foundation to do more research on the evidence, but I want to see expert practitioners who understand a research base, and who can lead research. Like the concept of research schools, I want to see research nurseries and research children’s centres, where we are at the leading edge of what are the latest effective programmes.

Q846 Craig Whittaker: That is great, which leads me on to my next question, which is how do you disseminate that good practice-that evidence base? What can you, the Government and local authorities do to ensure that good practice is given out to others?

Elizabeth Truss: I see that as a role for the Early Intervention Foundation as absolutely the body that is looking at best practice evidence, disseminating that evidence, and working with practitioners in local authority areas and in children’s centres on what the evidence looks like, but also working with nursery groups and schools as well. One of my big concerns is the divide between schools and early years, and how we need to change that, because schools offer a lot of early years provision, and there is a lot schools could learn from nurseries and nurseries could learn from schools, and that does not necessarily happen. We need more collaborative networks in local areas. We have got Teach First in the early years, which helps bring some of those things together, but there is a lot more we can do to develop expertise.

I recently visited France to look at some of their early years provision, and what is very striking is the research that the practitioners in France do at the centres. I would very much recommend that the Committee go and visit and see what goes on there, because it is very noticeable that there is a lot of research taking place.

Q847 Chair: Are we likely to have a highly researchbased practice when we have average salaries of £13,000?

Elizabeth Truss: That is why we need to improve the salaries.

Q848 Bill Esterson: Where are you going to get the money to increase salaries?

Elizabeth Truss: I have already made the comment that other countries manage to pay higher salaries while spending the same amount of Government money and, in fact, less money from parents. The issue is how we spend the money. At the moment, what we have, if we look a three and fouryearolds, is a lot of nurseries hat are operating with level 3 qualified staff on an 8:1 ratio. They could operate with graduate teacher staff on a 13:1 ratio, which means that they can pay the staff more. That is what I want to see developing.

Chair: Ratios is it?

Elizabeth Truss: No. It is not the only issue at all, by any means. There is a culture issue about the perception of early years, which reinforces the salary issue. I think raising the profile through things like Teach First in the early years will help address that and help show how important early years is. I think that is one of the issues.

Q849 Chair: You are a mathematician, and culture does not explain the fact that parents and the state are paying more in this country, yet the people who work there, which is the main cost, are paid less; I do not understand the maths. Ratios I can understand. When you change the ratios, it should give you a bit more money, although the analysis I have read of the experts is that they say it never seems to lead to that big a transformation-it is not going to make that much of a change. I do not understand how it is possible that we are in this invidious position, and perhaps you could explain it to us mathematically?

Elizabeth Truss: If you look at a lot of school nursery provision, which is quite often providing eighttosix care, they often operate on the basis of a teacher and a teaching assistant for a class, whereas quite often PVI providers will operate on the basis of eight to one with lower qualified staff. In my view, you are getting access to higher quality staff at the same per head cost, so that is the ratio argument. There are a lot of other issues; it is very difficult for nursery providers to enter the market, so we do not necessarily have a very competitive market.

Q850 Chair: Are they making huge margins then? I am trying to work out where the money goes, and I do not quite understand how we are spending so much, and yet the key cost and the key people are paid so little.

Elizabeth Truss: As I said, the new providers in the market have got higher Ofsted ratings than existing providers. There is evidence, when new providers come in, that quality is rising, but at the moment there are a lot of barriers to entry in the market, stopping those good providers entering the market.

Chair: I am just trying to get at the cost issue separate from quality.

Elizabeth Truss: We have also got a lot of unutilised resources. For example, a lot of school nurseries will operate from nine to three, which does not suit a lot of working parents, rather than operating from eight to six, so you have got unutilised capacity there. I think you had the NDNA appear before your Committee; a lot of nurseries have got spare spaces. There is a lot of capacity that is not being properly used, and we have had the massive fall in the number of childminders.

One of the issues is that childminders are a more affordable and flexible form of childcare, and we have seen the numbers fall by half. If you compare it with a country like France, they have got twice as many childminders per head, so that is another reason why it is expensive. There is a whole variety of reasons-I describe it as general furred up plumbing.

Q851 Chair: If I reread your testimony, I may hope to be wiser, but more than 2,000 of the 3,000odd centres do not even have childcare, as we have already discussed. Ratios in childcare is missing the point, you could say, in terms of children’s centre staff. If you want higher qualified staff in children’s centres, and that is what we are inquiring into, it is not going to be explained by ratios.

Elizabeth Truss: No, it is not, and the best evidence we have around early intervention is the efficacy of early education. The two, three and fouryearold programme is particularly important as a way of raising the life chances of the lowest income children; from the evidence we have at the moment, we know that is the best way. That is a separate budget, which goes through the DfE. The £2 billion we spend on early education is different from the money we spend on early intervention, which goes through local government. You are right, they are two totally separate issues, but even on the basis of the early education money, we are not getting the value for money we should, which is why we are reforming the system in the way we are.

Q852 Craig Whittaker: I want to go back to your furred-up plumbing. I think that is what you said. I accept that there are a multitude of things that make childcare provision expensive, but is not the reality that losing the debate on ratios-in fact, it was imposed by the Deputy Prime Minister-is the single biggest thing that has prevented a real step change in paying higher amounts to that workforce, and getting higher quality within that workforce too?

Elizabeth Truss: There is a lot more that can be done for three and fouryearolds in terms of utilising the existing ratios, changing the culture, getting more qualified teachers in. As I have said before in this evidence, we have a programme of schools trialling twoyearolds in schools; the 1:4 ratio for twoyearolds does make it difficult.

Craig Whittaker: So, yes or no?

Elizabeth Truss: It is less of an issue for three and fouryearolds. The issue for a lot of privatesector nurseries is they crosssubsidise the cost of providing care for twoyearolds, which is crosssubsidised with three and fouryearolds, which makes the whole thing more expensive.

Craig Whittaker: You have been thwarted then?

Elizabeth Truss: We failed to secure crossGovernment agreement.

Q853 Pat Glass: I want to ask you about funding. Can I take you through the funding trail since 2010? There was a ringfenced Sure Start grant in 2010, which was walled into the Early Intervention Grant (EIG), along with every other early intervention programme, like special needs, behaviour, attendance, etc. My understanding was at that time that the total EIG was less than the Sure Start ringfenced grant. It was then rolled into the business rates retention (BRR) system, and although the Department said that there would be transparency, there appears to have been some deliberate blurring between the EIG in the BRR system, and early intervention funding generally, so it is obscured to say the least. Policy Exchange has given evidence to this Committee that says there has been a 28% cut in children’s centre funding. Is that something that you recognise, and how will children’s centres continue to deliver the same or better with almost a 30% cut in funding?

Elizabeth Truss: The overall funding on early intervention has gone up from 2011, when it was £2.2 billion, to £2.5 billion in 2014. That includes both the twoyearold funding and the EIG, which is through local authorities. The twoyearold funding goes through the Direct Schools Grant (DSG) and the other funding goes through the EIG. It depends on what services children’s centres are offering. If they have the twoyearold offer, clearly they would get that funding through the DSG. However, the core funding for children’s centres, aside from the twoyearold offer, has gone from £2.2 billion in 2011 to £1.6 billion in 2014.

Q854 Pat Glass: Unless things have changed since I was leading education in local authorities, any funding through the DSG goes directly to schools, so presumably that is money that is going directly to schools or nurseries within schools, not to children’s centres.

Elizabeth Truss: Or to children’s centres if they are offering twoyearold places. They can access the funding for twoyearold places if they are offering twoyearold places, but it is paid per child.

Pat Glass: That is the element that is going through the DSG?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes.

Q855 Pat Glass: Right. We have heard a lot today about local authorities being held to account for this. My own local authority has seen something like a 30% increase in the number of children in local authority care, and has got a £210 million cut in their budget. How do local authorities prioritise or balance the funding that goes to preventative services and the funding that goes to responsive services? If I were head of a local authority, I know where I would put my money, given pressures through things like child protection. Are there local authorities that are making that balance and, if they are, which are they?

Elizabeth Truss: There are some very effective local authorities that are doing some of the integration that we have been discussing. Examples of local authorities that are doing the intervention we have been discussing: Havering is restructuring their family services to put family intervention practice at the heart of it; you have got North Tyneside, who have integrated their services with the Troubled Families programme. You have got the examples I gave earlier of Manchester, where children’s centres are offering birth registration, which has been very successful in identifying more children to take up early education offers.

There are examples of local authorities that are leading the way in terms of the way they are integrating services. The DCLG’s overall approach is to ensure that local authorities are getting the best value for money, and the reality is there are a lot of services that are being run out of separate buildings with separate management, which have not been efficient. The chairman rightly said earlier in this session that a lot of money was poured in; that money was not necessarily poured in in the most sensible configuration. We are asking local authorities to find savings in management.

We do not want to see reduction in the frontline network of children’s centres, but we do want to see management efficiencies, networks created, closer working with schools and better use of health services facilities. The answer is that local government is getting much better value for money. It is not about the money you spend; it is about how you use it.

Q856 Pat Glass: I appreciate that, but you can only go so far doing the same or more with less. As a Minister you would understand, presumably, those local authorities that say, "Look, we cannot offer this service anymore, because we have had a massive increase in the number of children we have had to take into local authority care."

Elizabeth Truss: That is a slightly different question about the overall children’s services budget. There are lots of different budgets that local authorities get that they can put forward to children’s centres. The Early Intervention Grant is an unringfenced part of the DCLG budget. Local authorities are given the resources they need to ensure that children get the best start in life; some local authorities are doing a very good job of that, and others need to improve. It is about using resource better. Are they fully integrated with the offering of the local health service? Are they making best use of children’s centres on school sites? Local authorities should be asked all those questions before they say they do not have enough money, essentially.

Q857 Alex Cunningham: We are seeing, whether it is through health formulae or local formulae, a huge shift of cash from north to south, and County Durham is one of those that suffers more than most. We are seeing that shift of resources North to South despite the high levels of deprivation and the greater need in some of the communities that those of us in the North represent. Is that fair? Are you content that there are sufficient resources in these areas when there is that shift in resources south?

Elizabeth Truss: I do not recognise that being the case.

Alex Cunningham: You recognise the £210 million cuts for County Durham though.

Elizabeth Truss: Sure, and you will have to ask the DCLG about their local government budget settlement; I am afraid I have not brought that information with me. Certainly, in the DfE we are moving towards fairer funding, and we are doing that in both the schools sector, where we are moving to a national funding formula, and in early years funding.

Q858 Chair: When are we going to hear about that? When are we going to get an announcement? We have been told for such a long time that we are going to get fairer funding for schools, and you are now saying early years as well, so when will there be an announcement, so that we can go, "Here it is at last"?

Elizabeth Truss: I cannot say at the moment, Mr Chairman. On the twoyearold funding, we gave funding to the local authority on a flat rate, plus an areacost adjustment, so it was funding in an extremely fair way across the country. That was different from the way that we allocate the three and fouryearold money. That is the direction of travel: that we are funding in a fair way. We want to move towards a national funding formula; there was a recent announcement about it, and I am sure my colleague, Mr Laws, will be laying out more details in due course.

Q859 Pat Glass: Does the areacost adjustment have a proxy for deprivation and need?

Elizabeth Truss: Not for the twoyearold funding, because it is only going to the most deprived children.

Q860 Pat Glass: Action for Children are recommending the Government move to a funding formula that is underpinned by longterm planning and consistency, and I think we would all agree with that, but what can be done to encourage longterm commissioning for children’s centres, and does that include the Government making a commitment to longterm funding?

Elizabeth Truss: The DCLG fund children’s centres through the Early Intervention Grant, and we are committed to children’s centres. What we want to see is them offering a greater range of services in a more integrated way. I would like to see local authorities held to account more when we get the appropriate data on how children are doing at age two and a half and age five, but it remains one of the key roles of local authorities.

Q861 Chair: Do you see an issue there with longer term commissioning? They are talking about the fact that voluntary groups cannot set up and come in when they have got no certainty about budget for more than a year or so ahead. One of them said you would never expect a privatesector company to enter a market on that basis, and yet you are expecting the voluntary sector to do so at a time of highly constrained budgets.

Elizabeth Truss: I made it clear that we at the Department for Education are committed to children’s centres. There is a further issue about how local authority budgets are set, which is really a matter for the Department for Communities and Local Government, and no doubt you have got local government Ministers coming before you in this inquiry, as they are the funders of children’s centres, so I think that will be helpful.

Chair: As this is the last session and we have not, no, we are not.

Q862 Mr Ward: How closely were the children’s centres involved in discussions leading up to the twoyearold offer?

Elizabeth Truss: Children’s centres are part of the way that the twoyearold offer is delivered and, again, it is a matter for local authorities, but we have been very clear with local authorities that we want to see any provider who is "good" or "outstanding" able to offer that twoyearold offer. If a children’s centre is "good" or "outstanding", it will automatically be able to offer the twoyearold offer, as would any "good" or "outstanding" childminder, or any "good" or "outstanding" nursery. The quality of the care provided is the key determinant in whether any organisation is able to offer it.

Q863 Mr Ward: The point has been clearly made to us that, unless the quality of provision, particularly at the younger age, is of very high quality, it is, in effect, almost wasted money. The twoyearold offer is targeted; this is targeted funding, and we are talking about the most deprived. Have we got the highquality provision for twoyearolds within those deprived communities?

Elizabeth Truss: It depends on which part of the country we are talking about. There is highquality provision available. I have already commented on the specific issues: the twoyearold ratios and how they do make it quite expensive.

Q864 Mr Ward: To spend this money, we are going to go up to 40%, so are we confident that in the 40% most deprived communities there is sufficient high quality to spend all this money on the twoyearold offer?

Elizabeth Truss: There are highquality providers in those areas. I do want to see more highquality providers, and that is one of the reasons students in our new Early Years Educator scheme, which we launched this year, have to have a minimum of a C in English and Maths to take part in a level 3 programme. We have launched an apprenticeship bursary scheme, which can only be used where the provider is offering twoyearold places, so that is incentivising providers to hire highquality apprentices where twoyearold provision is.

We are very clear with local authorities that twoyearold provision needs to be in "good" and "outstanding" settings, and that they need to make sure there are sufficient "good" and "outstanding" settings in their area. Some areas have a fantastic level of "good" and "outstanding" settings; others are not as good, but we have been very clear it is about the quality, which is very important. Ofsted are raising the bar on quality all the time. There is a new focus on qualified staff starting this September. There is more of a focus on outcomes, hence some nurseries may not be meeting the grade, but everything we are doing is focusing on improving quality and getting better value for money for resources. That is why we are encouraging schools to offer longer hours, to offer support for twoyearolds as well. Particularly in London, schools are an incredibly large provider of underfive nursery care, so that is why we are doing the demonstration projects in schools, which is one of the highest quality groups of providers.

Q865 Mr Ward: If it meets the condition of being within the 40% most deprived communities and it is not delivering highquality education in that area, would it get the funding on the deprivation criteria or would it require the quality criteria as well?

Elizabeth Truss: Local authorities have a duty to fund any twoyearold in that group for early education. What we have said is we want those to be in "good" or "outstanding" settings, and when the returns come back, which we are expecting fairly soon, we are going to see what proportion of those twoyearolds were in "good" and "outstanding" settings this year. We will know very shortly whether or not local authorities have been able to deliver on what we have asked them to deliver, which is ensuring that that 20% of twoyearolds are in "good" or "outstanding" settings.

Mr Ward: We may not actually reach all those-

Elizabeth Truss: I want to. I absolutely want to. It is hard to know at the moment exactly where we will be.

Q866 Chair: What would you consider success? We have got 96% of children taking up the three and fouryearold offer, so year one, 20% for twoyearolds. What percentage are you hoping for?

Elizabeth Truss: We want to see it ultimately about 80%.

Chair: Ultimately?

Elizabeth Truss: If we see results significantly below that, we are going to be holding local authorities to account.

Q867 Chair: Does ultimately mean in year three?

Elizabeth Truss: It takes a while for these programmes to get going, so the three and fouryearold programme took a while to build up to 96%.

Q868 Mr Ward: We know the 40% most deprived are there. Regarding the ones that meet that criteria but are below quality, it would be the responsibility of the local authorities, on reduced school improvement budgets, to lift them up to a level where all of those within the 40% most deprived communities would get the twoyearold offer?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes, but they can do that in a variety of ways. For example, some local authorities are trialling our childminder agencies. That might be one way of making sure that those twoyearold places are available: through childminder agencies. They could provide buildings to new providers to set up in their locality; they could expand provision at the local school.

Q869 Chair: Have all these things been happening? I know you have not got the official returns yet, but have local authorities been telling you that they have facilitated the setting up of lots of new providers?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes. We gave them an additional capital budget last year for the express purpose of being able to expand provision, and they are doing those things. Things like our changes to planning law are going to make it easier for new providers to set up, but we want local authorities to provide a positive environment. The changes that we have made-that all "good" and "outstanding" providers automatically get government funding, without having to jump through additional hoops-will also make it easier for highquality organisations to expand. A combination of those factors will expand supply.

Q870 Chair: Craig has done a survey on his local area and found providers who are just not going to do it, because they are not being paid enough.

Elizabeth Truss: I have not received any evidence that there is a shortage of places for twoyearolds.

Q871 Alex Cunningham: The Families in the Foundation Years document led the Government into an ongoing partnership approach in coproduction with the early years sector, and that was designed to allow practitioners, leaders and commissioners to contribute at an early stage to the policy development and implementation process. Does the disbanding and standing down of all the coproduction groups signal a change in policy or is the Government fine to go it alone in isolation?

Elizabeth Truss: We do a lot of work with the early years sector and the school sector, and local authorities, on putting together our policies.

Alex Cunningham: These groups have been disbanded, though.

Elizabeth Truss: Different Governments decide to organise things in different ways, but we are in constant discussion with the relevant parties. I am very keen, though, and I had a roundtable last week with schools and early years providers, because-and I said this at our first meeting-we have had far too much of a silo mentality. We need to recognise that schools are heavily involved in this as well-that schools and early years providers can learn from each other. I am keen to see a much more integrated approach, so when we are looking at teaching, Charlie Taylor is looking at the full teaching range from 0 to 18; when we are looking at funding, we are looking at funding through the DSG in a more consistent way; when we are looking at practice and involving people, we look at it in a more consistent way.

We still have an issue that, when we do a response on something like issues in primary school, it is the schools that reply; for early years, it is the early years providers that reply. I do not think we are getting enough of a sense of a continuum, because a child does not suddenly change in its nature when it is four or five; it is a continuum of learning and education, and I think that is the way we should look at it.

Q872 Alex Cunningham: Can you offer some advice to the groups that are feeling a bit shut out as far as policy development is concerned?

Elizabeth Truss: I am very happy to talk to them if they are feeling shut out.

Q873 Alex Cunningham: I am sure that answer will result in many phone calls. We have talked about colocation of services and how important that is. How satisfied are you with the commitment of health and other agencies to provide personnel and services in children’s centres?

Elizabeth Truss: It depends on the local area. The Department of Health is very committed to better integration at a local level. What they are doing in 2015 with health visitors will be very important, and we are shortly going to be responding to Jean Gross’s report on information sharing, and how we can encourage more information sharing at a local level. I see that as a massive area where there is scope for further improvement in terms of getting efficiencies, ensuring that data is not being constantly rerecorded, and the local authority really has the information about the child from birth, or even before, so that they can fully support the child in achieving the best possible outcomes.

Q874 Alex Cunningham: I know localism is very big thing, but how do we ensure that we get consistency across the country? I know we need different solutions in different places, but how can we get consistencies with health and other agencies involved in providing the overall service?

Elizabeth Truss: At the moment, this is a changing landscape, where we are going to see new things developing. I have talked about how the health service is changing; we are seeing the twoandahalf year check introduced; we are now getting more information from the Department for Work and Pensions, which we are supplying to local authorities. All of that information is improving all the time. There is a question, and it is something I am discussing with Brandon Lewis, about how the DCLG is ensuring that local government is transparent in what it does and being held to account for the outcomes. You are right: they are not just in education; there are other outcomes as well.

Q875 Alex Cunningham: Are you content with the resource that you now have in the Department? We have seen this huge reduction in the staff. Have you got sufficient staff to ensure you can do all this monitoring, planning and encouragement, when you have seen such a drastic fall in the number of people in your Department?

Elizabeth Truss: From what I have seen, the Department for Education has opportunities to integrate some of our work more, and just as I have been talking about local authorities and how they have got an opportunity to integrate, for example, on teaching, the fact that Charlie Taylor is responsible for the 0 to 18 scale is good, because that enables us to work better and more efficiently. We are working jointly with the Department of Health on these issues; it is not just the Department for Education’s responsibility, and ultimately the Department for Communities and Local Government are responsible for the transparency framework of local government, and how local government is held to account. In a way, the silos between Government are also reducing on this issue, which is very important.

Q876 Pat Glass: Can I just bring you back to an earlier answer? You said that additional funding was being made available for "good" and "outstanding" early years provisions to expand. Is that capital or does it also include revenue funding?

Elizabeth Truss: There are two separate answers I gave. One was the capital funding that was given out with the twoyearold funding last year, which off the top of my head I think was £100 billion. The other point I have made is that, where a provider is "good" or "outstanding", they are automatically funded to provide two, there and fouryearold places, and that is a change from this September.

Q877 Pat Glass: You did say that "good" and "outstanding" provisions would be given additional funding to help them expand. Did I get that right?

Elizabeth Truss: No. I said they would be automatically funded if they were "good" or "outstanding", and I said that the relaxation of the planning regime is going to help them expand. What specifically will help "good" and "outstanding" providers expand is if you are already a "good" or "outstanding" provider and you open a new operation in a new local authority area, with an Ofsted check you will then be able to receive the early education funding. At the moment, we have a situation where different local authorities set different quality regimes, which may or may not reflect what Ofsted say.

For "good" and "outstanding" providers, we are saying that your Ofsted report counts as your badge of quality and you will be funded. For weaker providers, we want local authorities to look at what Ofsted has identified as the weaknesses in that provision, and go in and help those providers improve. That is what we see as the role of the local authority: attracting the highquality providers into their area; ensuring there is enough provision in schools, nurseries, childminder agencies and independent childminders; but also helping those providers improve who are not up to the mark.

Q878 Pat Glass: Can I ask you about information sharing, which is a problem, and has been a problem as long as I have worked in education, which is an awfully long time? I am pleased that Jean Gross is leading on this; she is an excellent practitioner. If anybody can crack it, it will be Jean. Why is it taking so long? When will we get something from this?

Elizabeth Truss: Very imminently.

Pat Glass: Right.

Elizabeth Truss: I am sorry I could not have it ready in time for this meeting; I apologise.

Q879 Pat Glass: It would be a massive step forward if we could crack that. You have seen the recommendations from the APPG about placing registration of births in children’s centres. What is your thinking on that?

Elizabeth Truss: The evidence from where it has taken place is very positive about the level of engagement of children and families. For example, since 2001 the Benchill Children’s Centre in Manchester has had 7,500 families register their baby’s birth, and the centre has a reengagement figure of 87.5%, which is very positive and helps families to identify it. I did note in the response from local government there were fears that it would be difficult to organise, or bureaucratic, or costly.

I am going to seek a meeting with David Simmonds to discuss in more detail precisely what the issue is, because conceptually it is a very attractive idea in terms of being able to engage parents and children, and certainly I massively struggled to register the birth of my child; it was very difficult to get into a registry office. It is a great idea for parents, but I would be interested to understand, from a local government perspective, exactly what the problem is and what we can do to address that. I do not want to impose extra burdens on local government if they say it does not work for them, but I need to understand exactly why that is.

Q880 Pat Glass: What is your latest thinking on children’s centres being involved with childminding agencies?

Elizabeth Truss: We are currently trialling childminder agencies, and one of the triallists is a children’s centre-I might find the name of the children’s centre. I will try to find that. Certainly, the Emneth Children’s Centre in my local area already works with childminders and helps train childminders; it also offers early education provision. It makes a lot of sense, and we are developing the model for childminder agencies, particularly the regulatory model, because the whole concept of the model is that Ofsted regulates the childminder agency, and the childminder agency is responsible for the quality assurance of the childminders that operate in its network.

We are developing the regulatory model for childminder agencies. I am very pleased that we have got a children’s centre taking part; we have got schools, local authorities and privatesector providers taking part. It is early days at the moment, but we want to see how that will work with children’s centres. It is an obvious way of children’s centres providing a useful service, and if you think about it, if children are being registered at birth, the children’s centre can then provide advice on a local childminder. I think it would be very useful.

Q881 Chris Skidmore: Coming back to the role of local authorities, the statutory guidance set down that local authorities are obliged to ensure that children’s centres have an advisory group comprising members of the relevant community. We have heard evidence in this Committee that there is a problem when it comes to whether local authorities are providing the information-detailed data about community representation-and whether these advisory groups are being set up properly. Is the Department looking at monitoring the adherence of local authorities to the statutory guidance on setting up and maintaining advisory boards? Secondly, if there is a genuine problem here, as it has been outlined to us, what consideration would you give to requiring children’s centres to have a legally constituted governing body with parental representation?

Elizabeth Truss: That is a very interesting idea, which I will think about.

Q882 Chris Skidmore: Secondly, one other idea that we have heard in the Committee, and is possibly being proposed by the Department, is a trial being set up-a pilot project, commissioned by the DfE, to encourage parents to run children’s centres. We heard that from Adrienne Burgess of the Fatherhood Institute. I wondered if you could confirm or deny whether the Department is looking at or has plans to establish free children’s centres along the same lines as free schools.

Elizabeth Truss: I cannot confirm or deny that. I think we are looking at different models of organising various parts of the early years sector.

Chris Skidmore: Is there a pilot project ongoing somewhere?

Elizabeth Truss: Not as far as I am aware.

Q883 Chair: What about Chris’ first question about the monitoring of the adherence of local authorities to the statutory guidance on advisory boards?

Elizabeth Truss: I will look into that one. I think it is a fair point.

Q884 Chair: Billions have been spent, and continue to be spent. The governance of these organisations is not some peripheral sideline issue. It is pretty fundamental, isn’t it?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes, absolutely.

Chair: Could you reassure the Committee that you have done some thinking about it before today?

Elizabeth Truss: I will look into it, Mr Stuart.

Q885 Chair: You have got nothing to tell us about your thoughts on the governance of these very expensive institutions to date?

Elizabeth Truss: Rather in the same way that we monitor nurseries and other early years providers, we rely on the Ofsted regime to make sure that centres are constituted in the way they ought to be, but I will look further into this governance point.

Chair: Excellent. You will write to us on that will you?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes.

Chair: Please do so in a timely way. That would be marvellous. Thank you very much.

Q886 Bill Esterson: Looking at the workforce, which we have discussed quite a lot already, in the review that was carried out Cathy Nutbrown, she mentioned the fact that early years professionals were dissatisfied with the lack of parity with qualified teacher status, and yet your proposals are not to give early years teachers that parity. Why?

Elizabeth Truss: At the moment, they will have Early Years Teacher status, which means that they could teach in a free school or an academy but they could not teach in a maintained school. As I have said, the issue we have is that the gap is huge at the moment, between the pay and terms and conditions in the early years world, as opposed to the schools world. Our longterm plan is to see a 0to18 workforce where people specialise in particular areas; we are not there yet. At the moment the stepping stones we are putting in place are raising the level of qualification of early years teachers to the same level as primary school teachers; we are looking at the different way the programmes are funded, so teacher training is funded through student loan schemes.

Q887 Chair: That is not the question. The question I asked is about the QTS, and it has been asked about four times now, and I am none the wiser. You keep mentioning the disparity in pay, and then I asked you whether the worry would be that they would leave early years and go somewhere else, and you said, "No," at which point I do not see what the issue is. If you want to raise the status and that was a problem, that would be a reason for not doing it, but otherwise I cannot see a reason for not doing it. You are telling us these facts, but you are not providing any narrative explanation.

Elizabeth Truss: In a lot of schools, the teachers employed in the school nursery are qualified teachers, because qualified teachers can work with three and fouryearolds. At the moment, they cannot work with twoyearolds, but they can work with three and fouryearolds-they can work with twoyearolds actually; that is not the specifics of what the teacher standards say. What we have had is early years professionals who were specifically being trained up to work in the early years sector, the PVI sector, which has generally not the same terms and conditions as teachers, so not the same holidays, not the same pay. You would not have a long school holiday if you work in a commercial nursery.

In the long term, we want to achieve a continuum whereby all teachers are teachers, but to move that early years professional to being of teacher status would create a cadre of people whose terms and conditions and salary expectations would not fit with what we have got at the moment. It is a gradual process of upgrading and changing. I have talked about the way that early years nurseries operate. Sometime they just do not have the space to operate in the style of having a teacher and assistant, for example. Does that make sense?

Chair: It makes more sense.

Elizabeth Truss: We are trying to raise the standards at the same time as lessening the differences between the PVI and the maintained sector, so in the long term we can get to a single teacher status. If we suddenly created QTS teachers who had the same terms and conditions as teachers, they simply would not be able to be employed in the PVI sector, so we defeat the object.

Bill Esterson: Which comes back to the whole funding cycle, and what we were talking about earlier.

Elizabeth Truss: It does not.

Bill Esterson: We did that quite a lot, didn’t we, Chair?

Chair: Yes.

Elizabeth Truss: Can I respond on this point about funding?

Q888 Bill Esterson: While you are on that, you mentioned that in France there are an awful lot more childminders. I do not think, from what you are saying, you would want to go down that route.

Elizabeth Truss: No; that is not what I am saying. The point I would make about funding is, if you look at the funding of reception classes versus the refunding of the 15 hours a week, I think on average we fund reception classes at a slightly lower rate than we fund the 15 hours a week. That is why schools can offer the three and fouryearold places, because it works with their operating model. My question is: can we get more of that learning into some of the PVI settings? What I am saying is schools manage on that funding, so you can have a model with quite a highly paid teacher and assistant working in the early years.

I have forgotten your second question now, because you said it first.

Bill Esterson: Sorry.

Elizabeth Truss: Have you forgotten about it-what was the second one?

Q889 Bill Esterson: While you have moved on to that subject, is the issue here about two different types of teacher? There is a teacher for older children, and what do you mean by teachers for younger children? Are we talking about child development, and in particular the issues around language development, where there are very real gaps? Is that the point of what is needed? In many countries, formal education, as we know it, starts at six or seven. I am not clear from what you have said today whether you think that formal education should be starting at three, or whether that is an oversimplification.

Elizabeth Truss: Okay. In a lot of countries where formal education starts later, they have highly structured early years, with highly paid early years teachers. If you look at cases like Finland or Sweden, they have highly paid early years teachers. It is down to the professional judgment of teachers exactly what stage the child is at, and how that child should be taught. Quite often in reception class it is a fairly playbased environment, where children are getting used to learning and things like taking turns. Gradually more formal education is introduced, and clearly in early years it is even more playbased and less formal.

The key thing is that you have a teacher there who is bringing the child on, communicating with the child, and exposing the child to a wide range of vocabulary. The most important thing for later reading is the child’s vocabulary at an early age. That is the critical thing for me: do we have those highquality individuals? How they teach is a matter of professional pedagogy, which I think we need to develop more. We have already got a lot of experts in early years teaching. We need to develop more, which is why we have got our programmes running; that is a matter for those experts. What we have done in designing the Early Years Teacher qualification, and the Early Years Teacher standard, is ensure that it is as wide as possible. The Montessori technique, for example, would be accredited under the Early Years Teacher standard, as would other techniques that have been shown to work.

I think you asked me another question.

Q890 Bill Esterson: No, we are going to move on to another one. This difference in pay that you have acknowledged must have an effect on morale. How do you deal with the issue of morale in the workforce?

Elizabeth Truss: We need to improve the pay and qualifications of early years teachers. I know what you asked me; you asked me about childminders, and whether we were expanding childminders. I think childminders can offer a really highquality, homebased environment, and a lot of parents do not necessarily want their child to be in a groupbased environment from an early age; they would rather have a homebased environment. It is also very helpful for people who work shifts or do flexible work, and there are very good childminders out there.

The whole point of childminder agencies is to provide a support network and training for childminders, so that parents can be assured of quality and so that there is an easier route of entry into childminding. At the moment, if you want to become a childminder, you have to register with Ofsted and go through the local authority; you face a lot of upfront costs. Some childminders have told me that they have faced as much as £800 of upfront costs to become a childminder. We are creating another entry route, where childminders can receive training, be part of a network of childminders and receive support, and have somebody who will do the business management side, so getting payments from parents, marketing their services-all those kinds of things.

That is the idea of childminder agencies, which they have in France as well and which provide a similar kind of service. We need a rich mix of highquality provision, so parents have a good choice of what type of provision they want, whether it is a Montessori nursery, a childminder or a children’s centre. All those different things should be available, and what we are trying to do is stimulate that availability.

Q891 Bill Esterson: Moving on to the local authority role in training and qualifications, how can you ensure the quality? How can you ensure that qualifications and training are there in the private and voluntary sector if the local authority does not have that role?

Elizabeth Truss: The National College sets standards for the Early Years Educator and the Early Years Teacher qualifications, so we know the standards for those qualifications are being set at a national level.

Q892 Bill Esterson: However, if the local authority is not there monitoring it, who is making sure it happens?

Elizabeth Truss: Ofsted. Ofsted inspect all these organisations and will be monitoring the quality of training that is being received.

Bill Esterson: You have taken the responsibility away from local authorities and handed it to Ofsted, effectively?

Elizabeth Truss: Ofsted has always had a responsibility to make sure that people are properly trained, but we are putting more emphasis on that. Ofsted are now reporting on qualifications and looking at how well trained somebody is, because that is a vital component of how good they are at doing their job, just as they would look at the training of teachers. You would not get local authorities going into schools and looking at the training of teachers.

Q893 Pat Glass: Can I just clarify that? Ofsted do not inspect childminders. They register them but they do not inspect them. That was what they told us in an earlier hearing that we had around Ofsted.

Elizabeth Truss: They do inspect childminders.

Q894 Pat Glass: That has changed, then. They told us very clearly that, in the past, they register but they do not inspect, and that was something that they were really worried about.

Elizabeth Truss: There are two different registers for childcare, which, by the way, we are merging into a single register. Actually, there are three registers: there is the compulsory register, the voluntary register, and the early years register. If you are on the voluntary register for looking after overfives, you are registered with Ofsted but not monitored by them, and Ofsted have their own views about that. What I am talking about here is the early years register. If you are a childminder on the early years register, you are inspected by Ofsted. What we are also proposing in our new review of registration is having a single register with an early years section. If you are looking after the underfives, you are regulated by Ofsted, but for the overfives, it is a single register, so we do not have this distinction between the compulsory and voluntary register, both of which had different rules. There were different rules on safeguarding and welfare on one register from the other register. Some childcare providers were on three registers at the same time, with different rules for each register, which was not very helpful.

Q895 Chair: Why is it that early years educators cover the 0 to 7 age range, whilst early years teachers cover only 0 to 5?

Elizabeth Truss: I think this is back to the issues we were talking about with QTS, and whether or not they would be able to operate in the classroom. We wanted early years educators specifically to be able to work in afterschool clubs and to understand about slightly older children as well, whereas the early years teacher role is more designed for nurseries and childminders for the underfives.

Q896 Chair: Does it not seem a little inconsistent that the two are not coordinated and cover the same period of a child’s life?

Elizabeth Truss: I think it was specifically this issue of afterschool clubs-that we saw early years educators as being able to work in these afterschool clubs.

Q897 Craig Whittaker: I wondered if you could tell us when you are going to provide a policy steer on the review of the NPQICL, and whether that will be very much driven by those working in the field or by academic institutions.

Elizabeth Truss: Last year, we reviewed the Early Years Teacher qualification, as you know, and we had experts in the field and academics on the panel looking at that with Charlie Taylor and his team. We are conducting a similar exercise for the leadership roles. Again, what I want to see is greater integration across the education system, so that we have specialists leading in the early years who will be part of what we do in schools as well. Does that make sense?

Q898 Craig Whittaker: Will that help towards a career strategy, I suppose?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes.

Q899 Craig Whittaker: How will the training and qualifications in the review reflect the changes to the management and structure-I will not say "purpose"-so that you get the gist of children’s centres?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes. There is a question also about leadership of nurseries, childminder agencies and children’s centres, all of which have a slightly different role, so we will be looking at all of those in conjunction.

Q900 Mr Ward: You have mentioned once or twice already the National College. I just wondered if you had any thoughts on what positive role the National College could play in this whole area.

Elizabeth Truss: I think Charlie Taylor gave a speech a few weeks ago at the NDNA conference. I think he was the first head of the Teaching Agency to speak to that organisation. I think he has been playing a very proactive role in reaching out to the early years sector and making it clear that he sees early years as a key part of the teaching profession. In all his speaking engagements, he talks about early years and the important role of early years, so he is very much making it clear that we see teaching as a continuum, that we see the early years as being extremely important, and that we want to raise the pay and status of early years. I think he has a really important role to play, because he is a respected figure within teaching, and I want him to help bring together the early years and the school parts of the jigsaw.

Q901 Mr Ward: Are there any specific initiatives or leadership that could be provided in any areas?

Elizabeth Truss: First, there is developing the Early Years Teacher standards and working on the leadership programme. He has been involved in Teach First for the early years, which started this year, but there is further development to do. I have said that we see it as a continuum and we want to work towards that. We recognise that the Early Years Teacher and matching up the entry requirements is a start but is not the endpoint. This is very much partway along the process of how we do that. As I say, Charlie is actively engaging with early years practitioners to make sure that they are part of this discussion. We are very clear that this not about a school takeover of early years; this is about early years learning from schools, and schools learning from early years, so we get the best of both worlds and we get a much better continuum.

Q902 Mr Ward: We have seen some good examples in the primary and secondary phase of collaborative work and of schools coming together across the piece. Is there anything that the National College could do in leading initiatives of that kind?

Elizabeth Truss: Yes, absolutely. We talked earlier about the idea of research centres in children’s centres and nurseries. We are looking at that with respect to teaching: how we could look at the teachingschool model in early years, and how we could look at the development of teacher training in early years in the same way we are looking at the schools area. He is absolutely looking at all those different aspects of early years, and it is a priority because we all recognise it is incredibly important. We need to raise quality and we need to raise esteem. This is the pilot year of Teach First for the early years. It proved a very popular programme that people wanted to join. In fact, in our Early Years Teacher recruitment was ahead of trajectory this year, because it was very popular. Early years is getting increased attention and people are excited about it. We want them to keep being excited about it, so we are going to be raising the profile of early years even more.

Q903 Mr Ward: As part of that status and esteem, how would a new royal college fit in for early years practitioners?

Elizabeth Truss: I discussed this idea of a royal college with Charlie Taylor. I would like to see it as part of any development of a teacher. As I say, I see it as a continuum. I do not think it does any favours saying we need a separate royal college for the underfives. What I want is the whole teaching profession to be more focused on the underfives, so that even secondaryschool teachers understand about early child development. I think it is beneficial to those further down the scale.

Pat Glass: I think that would be a really useful way forward. I have gone into a number of secondary schools and, when you say to them, "Where are your summerborns?" they have no idea. That makes a huge impact on children’s learning.

Chair: What a marvellous, positive note on which to end. Minister, thank you very much for giving evidence to us this morning.

Elizabeth Truss: Not at all. Thank you.