REPORT: Early Years- A Fresh Start?: Issue and Solutions.
House of Commons, 8th November, 2022.
The FABIAN EDUCATION POLICY GROUP returned to the House of Commons in some style for a meeting on Early Years (EY) chaired by Chris Harris Vice Chair of the group.
The committee room was packed with 50 attendees there to hear ideas about how to revitalise the sector.
Our speakers in order of appearance:
ELI SUNBY, former deputy Director General, Norwegian Ministry of Education and Science, who was responsible for implementing major Early Care and Education reforms in Norway in 2003
BRIDGET PHILLIPSON MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Education
DR KATE HOSKINS (Brunel University) researcher and trustee for the Froebel Trust and
PROFESSOR IRAM SIRAJ (University of Oxford) who has extensively researched the Early Years sector, and who has advised policy makers in Australia, Scotland and Wales.
ELI SUNBY spoke about current EY provision in her country, where she described high quality EY provision as being a top policy priority. Policy is informed by an understanding that investing in EY to provide better outcomes saves money in the longer term.
In Norway, all parents have 12 months paid maternity and paternity leave. Since 2009, they have a legal right to a childcare place in a Kindergarten. These Kindergartens are open to children aged between 1 and 6. There is also separate legislation governing Kindergartens as a separate entity. The focus is holistic, covering care, play and learning, but the learning aspect is not regimented or ordered like in a school. Neither is there any formal instruction in reading or writing. Instead, there is a more all-encompassing learning framework for each child, covering areas such as language and communication, health, food and exercise and so on.
In terms of pricing, each family is expected to pay a maximum of (in UK prices) around £260 per month towards the cost of a Kindergarten place. The price is discounted for additional children from the same family. No parent pays more than 6% of their annual income towards Kindergarten fees, and lower income families are entitled to 20 hours free.
The whole system is largely administered by Norwegian municipalities- the equivalent of our local authorities- and funded by central government by means of a block grant to these municipalities. In practical terms, EY providers are a mix of state and private bodies. Among the latter, some are for profit companies, and some are non-profit groups. All providers receive the same level of public subsidy.
Norwegian reforms have also focused on improving the quality of EY provision in Kindergartens, and perhaps this is reflected in the uptake among families. 97% or Norwegian children in the 3-6 age range attend a Kindergarten. Among the 1-3 age range this is 91%.
In terms of staffing, there are minimum qualification requirements for staff. 44% of the workforce are qualified pre-school teachers, and the aim is to get this to 50%. Another goal is to generally ‘upskill’ support staff.
Another current policy focus is to ensure that money going into the EY sector is focused on investing in, and improving, the overall quality of provision, rather than going towards enriching the private providers in the sector.
BRIDGET PHILLIPSON MP spoke about what a potential future Labour government might do- both in terms of the EY challenges it will face, and its ambitions for the sector.
The three main challenges are the closure of many EY providers, a growth in class/group sizes, and attainment gaps growing.
Improving and extending EY provision will be an explicit priority for a Labour government because in practical terms existing gaps in provision are forcing many parents- above all women- to give up work.
A key problem is that, once the parental leave period ends, there is often little EY provision available until the age of 3.
Another problem is costs. In some cases, families find they are paying more in childcare costs than they are in rent for the family home.
Some of Labour’s aims for EY will include bringing stakeholders together in order to ensure more focus on EY, overhaul provision and improve outcomes. There is also an ambition to bring the school day generally (including EY) more in line with the adult working day- an example of this is the pledge for universal primary school breakfast club provision. Another pledge is to change the law, so that Local Authorities are able to once again to provide their own nursery places, especially in areas of greatest need.
The main considerations to set alongside these ambitions are as follows:
-funding these improvements, especially in the current economic climate
– recruiting and retaining suitably skilled and qualified staff
– getting the funding and fees structure right, given that the current system is currently underfunded, leaving private providers to pass costs on to parents.
Overall, Ms Phillipson recognised the scale of the challenge but said she felt that there was ample scope to connect with voters over the EY issue, because improving the system speaks to real concerns and will have a genuine and positive impact on families.
DR KATE HOSKINS began her presentation by talking about the Froebel Trust, and its roots in the work of Frederich Froebel, nineteenth century German pedagogue. At the heart of Froebel’s vision is an appreciation that play in the principal means of learning, as based on a child’s own experience, and this play is largely self-directed. Another important aspect of this vision is that children should be immersed in the natural world, as opposed to perhaps just learning about it.
This, Dr Hoskins argues, makes the Froebel approaches more holistic in its approach to educating the child, as opposed to the ‘school readiness’ aims of the current Government’s aims for EY.
Another strand of Dr Hoskins’ work is her research into local authority nursery schools, one third of which have closed since 1980. Nursery schools are therefore in decline, occupying an uncertain place in an equally uncertain EY landscape, and yet according to ratings of EY settings by OFSTED nursery schools are the highest rated part of the sector.
Thus, Government policy towards nursery schools can be seen as counter-productive.
Staff in nursery schools are among some of the most effective in the EY sector, their dedication linked to their status as EY specialists, which empowers them in their practice. Nursery schools and school staff also play a large role in tackling social inequality and attainment gaps- for example they provide 4% of the free provision for 3/4 year olds in England, but they support a higher than average number of children with additional needs. Nearly two thirds of nursery schools are located in the 30% most deprived areas. They are mainly located in urban areas of disadvantage and disproportionately cater for children from economically deprived backgrounds.
PROFESSOR IRAM SIRAJ made the observation early on that in the UK there is strong research evidence about what works in EY.
In the Professor’s view, the main challenge facing the country is to re-imagine what we can and should be doing with EY in the UK. Countries like Norway and Estonia point out what can be done.
As part of this whole re-imagining process, there is a real need to consider all stakeholders in order to generate the right solutions and the right system that will benefit all. There is also a need to consider the wider benefits of high quality EY provision, seeing it not simply as a means of providing childcare for working parents, but also as a legitimate form of education in its own right. Losing sight of this disadvantages us all.
Alongside this re-imagining of the system, a full economic forecast is needed which would include the full participation of the Treasury. There is clear scope for undertaking a proper cost-benefit analysis, which would allow for a full systems approach to the process of re-imagining EY provision.
Something similar has already been done is Australia, where one study by accountants PWC established that for every $1 spent by the government on EY, it received $2 back.
China is another country that has heavily invested in EY provision, because EY is where high quality provision can have the biggest impact.
In terms of the current public discourse around EY Prof Siraj felt that the usual focus on the childcare aspect leads to an “uninformed parental perspective”. The EY system is already complicated enough to navigate, but focusing more on the educational aspects of EY would benefit parents and society, allowing us all to develop a broader perspective on how quality EY provision benefits the whole child.
Prof. Siraj identified some further issues in the current EY system. Deregulation represents a “slippery slope”, as it leads to lower standards or provision. Higher staff-pupil ratios would see to this. Another issue is that the higher qualified staff are sparsely distributed among EY settings. The qualifications framework is also rather confusing.
Research shows that the best staffing ratio in an EY setting is to have 50% fully qualified early years practitioners, and 50% level 3 qualified support staff.
Another issue is that giving money for EY provision directly to parents does not always lead to the best overall outcomes. In England- where the state sector as a EY provider has shrunk- quality is patchy and the system is essentially fragmented. The successes of state nursery schools spoken about earlier by Dr Hoskins (and similar initiatives like “Flying Start” in Wales, where provision is provided through schools) emphasises that direct public-funded systems can produce better outcomes.
Prof. Siraj closed her remarks by emphasising her opening message- the need to re-imagine the system completely.
All four presentations were warmly received by the audience. Attendees then broke into small groups for discussion and to come up with questions for the guest speakers.
The questions covered a range of topics, including the following:
– The implications (often complicated or otherwise negative) for school nursery provision when they join/ get taken over by a MAT
– The desirability of going back to previous initiatives like Every Child Matters and Sure Start
– A potential future role for local commissioners in shaping EY provision in specific localities
Responses to these questions included the observation that, in the world generally, provision for the over 3’s tends to be better than provision for the under 3’s, because it is easier to get specialist staff.
As well as the need to devise a new system for 2-6 year olds discussed above, a new EY system for the under twos would be more like the environment the child encounters at home.
– The role of AI in EY
– How possible it would be to keep EY charges low or provide it free
– Whether private schools could be stripped of charitable status and the funds directed into EY
On AI, its role in EY teaching and provision would be limited given the natural emphasis on human interaction, but there might be scope for it behind the scenes- e.g. bringing together and interpreting data generated from numerous studies into EY.
It was generally felt that provision should be free or priced as low as possible wherever possible.
Ms Phillipson confirmed that current Labour Policy was to end charitable status for private schools.
Our thanks to all of our guest speakers and attendees for making the event so informative and successful.
Look out for more House of Commons events this year hosted by the Fabian Education Policy Group. For more information see our website www.fabianeducation.com and follow us on Twitter: @EduFabians.
Mark Williams: Vice-chair of FEPG.