Clause 41 - The learning and development requirements
Childcare Bill
10:15 pm
Annette Brooke (Shadow Minister, Education & Skills; Mid Dorset and North Poole, Liberal Democrat)
We need to distinguish between practitioners at different levels. I am talking about the well meaning and talented person who helps out at the local playgroup. Some of the press comments following the launch of the Bill were misguided, describing the early years foundation stage as madness. However, some people making those statements are self-proclaimed experts and their views carry a lot of weight in our press. The Minister must have been disappointed that what some people said about the early years foundation stage became a front-page story. I am committed to that stage, so I want it to work in the best possible way.
Owing to the way in which the amendments were selected, amendment No. 221 has come before amendment No. 220. I shall never understand that process, but it probably makes sense. I might push amendment No. 221, which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham supported, to a vote. I hope that the Minister reconsiders the amendment. I realise that it is not perfect. I do not have the skills to produce it in the right language, but its sentiments are better than the provision in the Bill.
It was a shot in the dark when I asked the Minister whether “taught” was in “Birth to Three Matters”. I was impressed by the document, and I thought that “taught” would not be in it, so I am pleased that I was right. Page 10 says:
“As babies explore the world through touch, sight, sound, taste, smell and movement, their sensory and physical explorations affect the patterns that are laid down in the brain.”
Is that being “taught”? I do not think it is, not in my interpretation of the word, nor in the dictionary definition to “cause to adopt”, which sounds unidirectional to me.
I am sure that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland will endorse another part of the document, which states:
“As they engage in pretend play with gestures and actions, feelings and relationships, ideas and words, they become increasingly imaginative. Children become creative”.
They are not being taught to be creative. One cannot be taught to become creative. The document says that children
“become creative through exploration and discovery as they experiment with sound, media and movement.”
The Government have provided so much excellent material that it argues my case for me.
When we use the word “teaching”, and when we get the sort of newspaper stories that followed the launch of the Bill, I am put in mind of a row of little baby chairs with perhaps six babies—[Interruption.] I am not suggesting that that is what the Minister means, but it is a connotation of what is in the clause.
The Minister should reconsider amendment No. 221, as the clause is critical for setting the scene for what we all want to achieve. We must get the wording right.