Clause 45 - Power to enable exemptions to be conferred
Childcare Bill
2:15 pm
Annette Brooke (Shadow Minister, Education & Skills; Mid Dorset and North Poole, Liberal Democrat)
These two amendments were put forward by a group of child care experts. They are probing amendments on matters about which people would like clarification from the Minister. They propose that certain lines should be left out of the Bill, and I am sure that by justifying why they should be left in, the Minister will be able to tell us exactly what their significance is.
The National Children’s Bureau and the Early Childhood Forum are concerned that groups of providers could be exempt from the need to meet the learning and development requirements. They say:
“Our experience indicates that as this is a national framework, all providers should be expected to work towards it and that settings will not improve in quality if there are whole classes of exemptions allowed. This also has implications for the training of early years providers.”
The second amendment in this group is significant because those same groups are concerned that the Bill might mean that severely disabled children, for example, could be taken out of the equation. Their question is: should not this framework be a challenge for all?
I can understand why the exemption was used for the previous foundation stage. Blind children were exempted from handwriting tests. That seems perfectly reasonable, but I seek clarification from the Government about the circumstances in which they envisage this provision being used. I would not want a general bracketing with a child with specific disabilities. It would be a lot easier to exempt them but I do not think that the Government are trying to take the easy option as far as children with disabilities are concerned, and that is not what the Minister is committed to doing. A clarification would be helpful for all of us.