PRE-SCHOOL EDUCATION

HC Deb 04 December 1974 vol 882 cc1904-12

10.10 a.m.

Mr. Clement Freud (Isle of Ely)

I am singularly fortunate to have been selected for the Adjournment debate, which I had thought would probably take place 12 hours earlier.

The subject I have chosen is the state of nursery education. I am sorry to see that although nursery education is the responsibility of both the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Health and Social Security there is on the Government Front Bench only half of that authority.

The job of any Opposition party is to keep the Government up to their promises. Anyone who is concerned about education will have felt that the Labour Party in government has always had a high regard for education. In 1967 the Labour Government brought out an excellent pamphlet called "Children and their Primary Schools", which says: the nursery school is not a substitute for a good home: its prime function … is to supplement the normal services which the home renders to its children and to make a link between the natural and indispensable fostering of the child in the home and social life of the world at large. A few pages later it says, very sensibly: Nursery education should throughout be an affair of co-operation between the nursery and home and it will only succeed to the full if it carries the parents into partnership. Support does not mean mild consent; it means the kind of active concern which can only come out of joint activity. In its manifesto for the October General Election, under the heading "The Right to Education", the Labour Party, in the first sentence, said that: The next Labour Government will: End the 11-plus and other forms of selection for secondary education. Continue to give priority to nursery school and day care provision, full-time and part-time. It is the job of an Opposition party to see that the Government keep to that.

The proportion of children between the ages of two and four in full-time and part-time nursery schools, in both the public and the private sector, is under 2 per cent. I realise that in the past few months, let alone the past few weeks or days, the Government have been cutting their commitments. They are saving thousands of million of pounds on defence and are saving a great deal on other things.

Politics is about priorities. What are the priorities in regard to nursery education? The Government are committed to providing by 1982 nursery education, in accordance with the Plowden Report, to all those children whose parents are desirous of it.

In 1972 the Conservatives pinpointed the Government's concern for nursery education, and the Labour Party supported them entirely. Their aim then, as stated in the White Paper, "Education: A Framework for Expansion" was that within the next ten years nursery education should become available without charge, within the limits of demand estimated by Plowden, to those children of three and four whose parents wish them to benefit from it. Circular 8/60 will be withdrawn". I do not have to tell the Minister of the enormous importance of nursery education. It is important to the schoolchildren, many of whom, if they receive some sort of education at the ages of two, three and four, can have deficiencies pointed out. The children who receive nursery education at an early age will not be in need of remedial education later on. The sooner the form of word blindness, deafness, or other disability that pre-Vents a child from being normal is discovered the greater the hope of a complete cure.

During the debate in May, 1974 the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) brought up the question of nursery education. The ministerial response by the Under-Secretary of State for Social Services was: The background to the involvement of social services departments as against local education authorities, in all these activities is that the day-care services are at present—I stress at present—essential services provided for those families who are most in need and most heavily beset by all the many problems suffered by those who are the victims of poverty. I am talking about single-parent families, about mothers over-burdened by the struggle to bring up too many children on too few resources."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th May 1974; Vol. 874, c. 1764.] I am very pleased to see that in this Parliament we have a new champion of the one-parent family, the hon. Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman).

I should like to hear from the Minister of the extent to which one-parent families will be encouraged by providing facilities for their children to be sent to nursery schools, day schools and day care centres. The Liberals would regard as a priority, first, the guarantee of significant expansion in the number of nursery places in a phased operation to reach a target of full provision for 1982. Secondly, they would like a rapid increase in the number of training places for nursery school teachers. We would like to see—I have no doubt that the Government share this desire— an improvement in the wages and conditions of nursery assistants and nurses who hold National Nursery Examination Board certificates. It is significant that these students are now so ill-paid that many of them, dedicated as they are, are leaving their vocation for jobs which will afford them a reasonably decent life. Some of them are still receiving £14 and £15 a week. They see a cleaner in the same hospital receiving £9 or £10 a week more.

Thirdly, we should like to see the transfer of full responsibility for nursery education to the Department of Education and Science, since the under-fives have generally not been well served by the Department of Health and Social Security, especially when the responsibility for the under-fives has been shared. I recognise that the Department of Health and Social Security must always be responsible for matters relating to health, but the educational requirements of this group merit the vesting of responsibility in one overall authority. Perhaps the Minister would care to comment on that.

Finally, I should like to see greater encouragement of the local educational authorities to support the nursery groups in their locality. Opportunities exist in this field. I am thinking of child-minding training and the imaginative use of public libraries and of health centres.

In some parts of England there are peripatetic story tellers. There is no reason why, when a planning authority gives permission for a huge new supermarket site, it should not ask that included in it there should be a creche for children. Enough money is made by supermarket operators to allow them to put something back, and their business would probably get much better. If a mother can leave her two-, three-, four- or five-year old child in the care of a creche—a well-organised room with trained child minders or even nursery teachers—a great deal of good will result.

One hears of the appalling lack of facilities and the fact that there is nowhere that is already built where there can be nursery school classes. I should like the Minister to look at the possibility of health centres, which are already handsomely equipped and which are used only for a few hours every day. Another possibility is the public library. There are times of day when public libraries are hardly used, and these are the very times when one room might easily and profitably be used for the education of nursery school children.

Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport)

Is there not also an opportunity and a need for creches to be provided at places of work to enable women to carry on their work knowing that their children are receiving the benefit of nursery education at the same time?

Mr. Freud

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I was about to come to that. We have discussed it before. There is a great need for it, from the point of view of industry attracting women who might not otherwise be able to work. But in this debate I wanted, in the first instance, to pinpoint something of benefit to the children, although, if it helps mothers, in the long run it will also help the children.

I am greatly concerned about the aspect of child minding. There are an estimated 100,000 illegal child minders. When I say "illegal", I mean unqualified and unregistered women who take in children for money in order that their mothers may work or be rid of their responsibilities. I know that the Government are well aware of this. They are so well aware that they have made a grant of £11,000 in order that a report might be prepared.

It is very easy for a Government who are concerned about any specific matter to award a sum like £11,000 so that one man can spend two years preparing a report. I wish that the Government had spent that money on advertising and on showing the great dangers of allowing unregistered women to take children so that mothers can go to work. These are invariably the children of single-parent families, of unmarried mothers, and of immigrants who cannot afford to live unless their children are farmed out.

The immense damage which is done by these unregistered child minders should be looked at carefully. The result is known as "the silent child". Such children suffer from language retardation caused, I suppose, by restricted opportunities of communication. In many cases, economic necessity has driven mothers to work. But when children are farmed out to unregistered child minders, it is the lack of love which causes very many problems which become a heavy burden on the remedial services afterwards. Children in the hands of ill-equipped, untrained and disinterested child minders do no more than obey instructions. They are told to sit down, to be quiet, to go there and "Don't do that." When these children arrive at primary school they are the problem children. They do not have the ability to grasp ideas or to be taught in a class. These children deserve the highest priority. The job of the nursery school is to support the parents' efforts in a good home; it is not a substitute for parental responsibility. What a nursery school should and can do is to forge a link between the natural life of the child at home and the community and social life of the world at large outside the home.

I realise that we are in a grave economic crisis. Indeed, had this debate taken place at 10 o'clock last night I would not have known how much more serious our position has become overnight. Nevertheless, I still ask the Minister to say how much money will be allocated not this year—we already have the figures for this year—but as ongoing money to nursery education. Can we utilise the services of our libraries, museums, health centres, churches and supermarkets? There are many similar places where mothers and toddlers congregate. There are many people in the community, in colleges, libraries and higher education for example. I can see no reason for creches not being provided in colleges of further education or schools as well as in factories. If there were creches in schools I am sure that many talented teachers would be wooed back into the profession.

10.27 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) for raising such an important educational matter as well as an important social issue. He has made his case clearly and effectively.

The attitude of the Government and that of all parties towards this issue is not merely concerned with economic matters. We believe that this is an educational advance that is long overdue. There is no doubt from the evidence that some children, because of the lack of nursery-school facilities and pre-school education, have lost out by the time that they have reached the age of five. As Sir Alec Clegg said, they are born to fail because of the environment and background from which they come.

One of the ways in which we can provide equality of opportunity for these children is through pre-school education. That is why, despite the economic difficulties and the crisis through which we are passing, we not only gave priority in our manifesto and in the Gracious Speech to nursery education, but my right hon. Friend's statement, backed by resources, are indications of the great importance we give to this sector of education. It is the Government's view that all children can gain from nursery education. The House will recall that shortly after taking office my right hon. Friend outlined the Government's policy. He said: The Government's aim is to make provision as soon as possible for nursery education for children of three and four years of age, mainly on a part-time basis."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd April 1974; Vol. 871, c. 1077.] That remains our aim. In pursuing it we attach a special urgency to meet the needs of children in areas of special social need—namely, those who are particularly disadvantaged.

I take the hon. Gentleman's point about the great advantage of identifying very early in life any handicaps which would prevent the child becoming what we would call a normal child. That is why even during our economic difficulties the nursery building programme for 1974–75 has been protected from cuts. That is why nursery education was assured of continuing priority.

I want to deal with some of the points raised by the hon. Gentleman. The first phase of the special building programme has now begun. Resources for this year's starts and next year's starts were allocated to local education authorities, weighted in favour of those with relatively large numbers of disadvantaged children. That allocation was made in 1973.

I am aware that local authorities are under heavy pressure and have had to look closely and critically at all their expenditure, not only for this year but for future years. In some areas the expected cost of expanding nursery provision has given rise to very great concern. Considerable publicity was given earlier this year to the possibility that some authorities might not want to carry out their full plans for nursery building. Indeed, we had applications from some authorities which asked if they could spend the allocation on another sector of the education service. My right hon. Friend was quite firm about this. If an authority was not willing to spend the allocation on nursery education we would allocate it to another authority that was willing to expand its nursery sector.

My Department wrote to all the new local education authorities in July to seek an assurance from them that they would be taking up their full nursery building allocation for 1974–75. At the same time, authorities were invited to bid for a share of any extra resources for projects to benefit children living in areas of social need. Despite economic difficulties, the overwhelming majority of authorities, I am pleased to say, have indicated that they intend to take up their allocation in full, but a few have still to settle their final plans. Additionally, 57 authorities asked for extra resources for projects to benefit children in deprived areas. We have now distributed for this purpose not only the resources released by the few authorities which found themselves unable to take up their full allocations, but also a further £4.3 million worth of resources to bring the total value of the allocations into line with 1974 prices.

The Government welcome this evidence of the importance which local education authorities attach to nursery education and of the priority which they give to making provision for disadvantaged children.

Although the present year marks the beginning of the special building programme for the expansion of nursery education, there are substantial numbers of children of pre-school age already attending nursery schools or primary schools. I do not want to bandy or quarrel about figures, but I want to give the figures as we have them in the Department.

In January 1974 there were some 140,000 children attending maintained nursery schools or nursery classes, and additionally about 280,000 children under five attending other classes in maintained primary schools. These figures amount to about 28 per cent. of children aged 3 and 4. They include both full-time and part-time pupils, but not pupils at independent or direct grant nursery schools— nearly 50,000—nor the very large number of children attending voluntary playgroups.

Voluntary playgroups and day nurseries make a substantial contribution to meeting the needs of young children before they reach school age. These services, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, are the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, and I assure the House that my Department works closely with the Department of Health and Social Security, and we have an inter-departmental consultative group dealing with provision for the under-fives.

I pay tribute to the Nursery School Association, the Pre-School Playgroups Association and others concerned with children under five. Effective consultation and co-operation is important at local authority level. The hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that the Nursery School Association, for instance, came to see us and suggested that we ought to have local co-ordinating committees which would examine all the valuable suggestions, such as those made by the hon. Gentleman, concerning supermarkets, libraries, museums, and all the available space or accommodation in each authority's area. That will enable playgroups and all those concerned with the under-fives to work together and make the best use of available resources. We are looking at that sympathetically and working with DHSS to consider what should be the next step.

In a number of areas local committees have been set up to bring together all those who have responsibilities for young children, including the relevant voluntary bodies which have an important part to play. Those committees have a valuable contribution to make. My Department and the DHSS are also co-operating in the experimental development of combined centres for nursery education and day care. Eight experimental centres for that purpose have been established under the urban programme and the two Departments are at present engaged in their evaluation.

I will say a word about staffing, which is important. The expansion of nursery education clearly requires increased numbers of nursery teachers and nursery assistants. The output from the colleges of education is expected to be fully sufficient to meet the need for nursery teachers, particularly when account is taken of the increased number of in-service courses available to enable teachers who wish to do so to change to teaching younger children. These courses for conversion to nursery teaching are run in colleges of education. One-year courses are biased towards the administrative aspects of nursery education and one-term courses are concerned purely with teaching. There are nine one-year courses and 54 one-term courses already established, and they are widely spread geographically so as to provide accessibility to all who might wish to enrol and to train.

In addition, local education authorities have increased the provisions of courses leading to the National Nursery Examination Board Certificate, so that training should be available in most cases for the many women and girls interested in work as nursery nurses and nursery assistants helping qualified teachers in nursery schools and classes.

The hon. Gentleman is pushing at an open door. We have made the commitment and we shall honour it. We regard it as an essential educational advance. If we are to provide equality of opportunity and to give the opportunity for full growth to maturity to the children who in the past have lived in areas where equality of opportunity has been an impossibility, we must concentrate more on nursery education. I assure the House that that is our commitment and we are determined, despite the economic difficulty, that more and more of our children, particularly those in greatest need, will have the advantage of pre-school education.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes to Eleven o'clock a.m.