Clause 41 - The learning and development requirements
Childcare Bill
9:30 am
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
I am happy to support the hon. Lady’s amendments, and in particular amendment No. 221. Our amendment No. 113 seeks to achieve the same objective. Many of us see flashing lights when “taught” appears. That is the nub of the problem.
As I said, the Opposition think that the nought-to-two age group is crucial, and the way one interacts with babies, as we sought to call them—the Committee was not minded to back us in an earlier amendment—is different from what comes afterwards. That age group should be differentiated. The use of anything remotely educational and “schoolified”, as one of the groups put it, is inappropriate for that age group.
There are several welcome ways in which this clause and others that deal with this aspect of the Bill set out a lot of detail that we have not had before. The objective of creating a single framework for the birth-to-three guidance, the foundations stage, the elements of national standards for under-eights day care and child minding is helpful. We must streamline and simplify the strategy when dealing with those children.
Just the mention of “taught” can be taken wrongly. It creates visions of ticking boxes and achievements that represent a scaled down version of what is expected of children as they go into the formal school system. Part of the problem is not having the regulations.
I welcome the vision that the Minister provided, but I am not sure how it will translate into regulations and guidance for the people providing the service. All of us should subscribe to the vision. I subscribe to section 15 in particular, which says:
“The aim of the Government is that the early years framework should replicate the things which good parents do as a matter of course for their children and which they would therefore expect to see in a good childcare setting.”
That is an important and key part of the vision. We are not trying to take the place of parents, nor impose things on them; we are trying to encourage, not impose, good parenting. In the past, the balance has often been lost.
Many of the children’s charities that have taken an interest are concerned. In their professional experience, they see problems with the use of “taught” and suggest an alternative wording to reflect the reality that children learn through play. Amendment No. 113 uses a phrase which, in terms of parliamentary lingo, is full of holes, I am sure. It states that the matters, skills and processes should be “assimilated” by babies and young children of two and under, rather than “taught” to them.
Assimilation is all about absorbing and taking things on board, and that is what the development of babies and young children is all about. Ours is a probing amendment, to put on record our objections to the use of the word “taught” and to try to come up with a better use of words that would dissuade anybody so minded from thinking that the provision was intended just to produce a miniature version of the assessment frameworks for schools, which apply later in a child’s life.
The explanatory notes use very educational language with regard to clause 41. They mention “six areas of learning” and use the phrase “expected to achieve by” in respect of young children. One would expect to see such things for schools and for later in a child’s life. The notes discuss:
“educational programmes, setting out what should be taught to young children”
and
“arrangements for assessing the learning”
of such children. I do not like such language, and it concerns us greatly. Local authorities, if they were so minded, could devise an assessment based on a slimmed-down, mini-version of the assessments for the development of children that apply once they get into primary schools and beyond. Such schemes would be entirely inappropriate for babies and young children.