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Nevertheless, we have some reservations. The benefit of putting children's centres on a statutory footing could arguably be negated, or at least there could be some serious disadvantages. One of the great advantages of these centres is that they are so flexible. Sure Start centres can adapt their services to the varying needs of each local community. They grow in size and scope depending on the needs of the area in which they operate. We very much applaud this approach and hope that that will not be damaged by the inflexibility that will come from being enshrined in legislation.
Amendment 202 would place a duty on the local authority not to provide any early childhood services unless it was satisfied that no other person could provide these services or when it would be more appropriate for the local authority itself to do so. Amendment 204 follows a similar line of reasoning because it argues that in the Childcare Act 2006, under the provision of specific duties of the local authority in relation to childhood services, there should be a restriction that an English local authority must have regard to the desirability of maintaining a different range of services and protecting the PVI sector. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to offer us some reassurance on this count. We wish most earnestly to guard against the duplication of services where it is not necessary. We believe that it is important to make the best use of the private, voluntary and independent sector wherever possible.
9.15 p.m.
Responding in another place, the Government claimed that they were sure that the PVI sector was not overlooked. I hope that here the Minister might have some more substantive reassurance to offer. Those in the midst of this industry know that it is often the case that the PVI sector is indeed overlooked. We are not asking for
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Our Amendment 203 raises a further consideration. This alters new Section 5E, which is being added to the Childcare Act 2006. This amendment was tabled in another place and since then, changes have indeed been made to this section, including that "local need of services" means the needs of parents, prospective parents and young children in the authority's area, rather than the inflexible notion of just what a local authority considers should be provided. For this we are grateful. We have tabled this amendment here once again in order to raise concerns about the emphasis being placed on extending these services to disadvantaged families.
Sure Start children's centres are described as "service hubs" where families can gather and receive seamless, integrated services and information. We welcome these for all families. Nevertheless, we believe that efforts should be made to ensure that no families are left out. Can the Minister assure us of any outreach efforts that will be made in order to secure services for those disadvantaged families? I am sure that we will receive assurance on this matter. It would be interesting to hear why there is no specific provision for that in the Bill, but perhaps I have missed it.
Finally, our amendment also serves to underline the fundamental importance of health visitor services within the local area. This is a specific mention of only one of the services which we expect to be provided in children's centres. It demonstrates, however, our longstanding commitment to the provision of health services through Sure Start. Does the Minister expect health services to play a pivotal role here? Do the Government now agree with our longstanding plea for health visitors to be provided as part of Sure Start? I look forward to the Minister's response. I beg to move.
Baroness Garden of Frognal: My Lords, we on these Benches pay tribute to the very high standards seen in local authority children's centres. They are invariably rated as good or outstanding and many of them cater for some of the most disadvantaged children in the community. It was a concern to read yesterday that nursery schools are coming under quite such pressure through funding being spread between government and private nursery providers. There are some excellent private providers too, but it seems they are all running the risk of being underfunded and indeed, many face closure.
We do not agree with the emphasis in Amendment 202. Mainstream provision by local authorities should, we feel, be a matter for each local authority to determine. They are already required to take account of other provision in their area, but this amendment seems unnecessarily to restrict their capacity to respond to local needs. On Amendment 203, the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, stated the need for health visitors and their position in children's services, but we note the Government's statutory guidance, which says that the intention is,
- "to ensure that the best use is made of Sure Start Children's Centres as accessible local outlets for services for families while not requiring that these services be delivered exclusively through children's centres".
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New Section 5E seems to encapsulate that and we agree with that drift. We favour diversity of provision enabling parents to make the best choices for children. Amendment 204 adds more detail to the sorts of diverse provision that might be available. We have sympathy with the inclusion of the private and voluntary sector providers, but we would hope that local authorities would already be looking to those different types of provision and so do not necessarily want to see the amendment in the Bill.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I, too, have considerable sympathy with these amendments. There are some difficulties, perhaps particularly in some of the poorer areas where voluntary centres and voluntary nursery provision have been set up and have been going for some time. I declare an interest in one of those centres, the Peckham Settlement. Schools in other parts of the country have supported the settlement and the nursery provision over many years.
A huge amount of government funding has rightly gone into such areas to ensure that there is adequate provision throughout the country and to even out uneven provision. In those circumstances, some of the providers of the past have been disadvantaged. I support the ideas behind these amendments, but I realise that the governance of these bodies and the involvement of parents in what is provided are crucial. Sure Start has been, from the beginning, the exemplar. There were equal numbers of local people, volunteers and professionals. In some areas, it got a little distorted with perhaps too many professionals. We need to keep an eye on the importance of having local people aware of and involved in providing for local needs, which will differ from area to area. I have a great deal of sympathy with these amendments.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, I thank noble Lords for this debate and for giving me the opportunity to offer the reassurances that the noble Baronesses, Lady Verma, Lady Parks and Lady Howe are looking for. Perhaps now would be a good point to note that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is president of the National Governors' Association and to thank it for its tireless work. Did I say Parks? I meant Garden. I am really sorry. It is getting very late. I am so glad this is a participatory House.
Baroness Garden of Frognal: My Lords, I am indeed Garden, but there is also the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, which adds to the confusion in your Lordships' House.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, I find that Hansard is really wonderful at tidying things up, but I am not quite sure how it is going to manage to tidy that up.
It has been a long afternoon and evening, but I was in the middle of thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for the work that her organisation, the National Governors' Association, does in promoting good governance and for the help it has given us in developing plans and establishing good governance in children's centres. I also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden and Lady Verma, for joining us in this debate and giving me the opportunity to give them the reassurance that they quite rightly require.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, was particularly concerned about provision for outreach work. I remind the House that we know that parents value the support that children's centres give through outreach work and outreach workers who do home visiting from children's centres. Effective outreach services can make a real difference, as the noble Baroness suggested, to families who cannot access services, providing important information and access to services such as childcare and family support. All Sure Start children's centres are expected to provide outreach services. It is important that there are effective supervision and escalation routes in the context of multi-agency working.
The important point is that the Children's Plan is committed to establishing core principles and standards for an effective and comprehensive outreach service supported by appropriate materials and courses to enable some 5,000 practitioners to take up new training opportunities. The DCSF is looking at the development of this work with the Children's Workforce Development Council, and is working with Sure Start children's centres as an important hub for that work.
The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, asked why Sure Start centres are being put on a statutory footing. I believe that that was the thrust of her speech. She asked whether that would limit local flexibility. We want children's centres to be an integral part of the local infrastructure to support children. The provision in the Bill would ensure that that happens, while ensuring that the local flexibility that we all agree is so important is maintained, particularly with regard to health services. We know that children's centres offer significant opportunities for improving children's health. They are a key vehicle for delivering the Healthy Child programme. National evaluation of Sure Start has found that many successful Sure Start programmes were led by the health sector with health visitors reaching and engaging with families who then willingly accessed children's centre services. There are many examples of good practice. One that would be great to name would be the John Smith Children's Centre in Tower Hamlets, which has been working successfully with breast-feeding co-ordinators from the PCT. It has initiation rates of 81 per cent, which is a great example of the success of that intervention.
We share noble Lords' desire to maintain a good mix of quality provision. I can confirm that our existing planning guidance for children's centres is clear that local authorities should not duplicate existing provision when they establish children's centres. Therefore, they need to consult private, voluntary and independent sector organisations in developing their local service offer. I hope that I can offer the reassurance that noble Lords are looking for. It is already a condition of the Sure Start early years and childcare grants that local authorities should consult private, voluntary and independent sector organisations when planning children's centres.
We expect them to keep evidence that they have met that condition. We do not expect local authorities to favour one type of provider over another. I understand the desire behind Amendment 203 to ensure that proper consideration is given to ensuring that best possible use is made of children's centres by all statutory partners, but I would not want to constrain local
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We are committed to increasing the health visitor workforce and to clarifying key aspects of their role. The first phase of the Action on Health Visiting programme launched on 14 October spells out the health visitor's role in leading the delivery of the Healthy Child programme and in relation to children's centres. It also sets out the next steps to be taken on increasing workforce capacity and capability, which is something that the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, has been concerned about. It is right that local decisions should determine where and how these services would best be delivered and I would expect partners to consider carefully and review regularly how services are delivered according to local circumstances and local need. Despite that rather faulty start to my contribution, but with the reassurances that followed, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.
9.30 pm
Baroness Verma: My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden and Lady Howe, for their contributions and for their support for some of my amendments. It is crucial that there is a choice for parents and children, and that local needs are at the heart of provision. I thank the Minister for her assurances; I hope that she would agree with these Benches that, while outreach services are laudable, the role of health visitors is crucial. I am happy to hear her response that they must be part of the services provided by Sure Start centres.
We all want Sure Start centres to be part of the integrated services, but I hope that the Minister will take on board that there must be flexibility to allow them to respond to local needs. I feel that she understands my reasoning about PVIs: they have suffered with the iniquities of funding. Having heard all of the Minister's reassurances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Clause 196 : Arrangements in respect of early childhood services
Clause 197 : Free of charge early years provision: budgetary framework: England
205: Clause 197, page 120, line 4, at end insert "including the protection of centres of excellence"
Baroness Walmsley: Amendment 205 seeks to protect centres of excellence in early years education when the new budgetary framework comes into force. During
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I apologise to the House as I will need to go into some detail. Unfortunately, there are a lot of very important issues at the end of this Bill, and it is tempting late at night, when we are all tired, not to give them the consideration they deserve. In this case, however, I really feel that considerable detail is required.
I have obtained evidence from Early Education, the leading UK voluntary organisation that supports practitioners, parents and others who are not just involved in the development of young children, but are committed to ensuring that they receive the best possible care and education. It carried out a survey of 138 heads and teachers in maintained nursery school provision between 26 June and 24 July this year. It found that only one in five of maintained nursery schools and children's centres had yet been advised of their single funding formula base rate. It found that almost all of those maintained nursery schools that responded to the survey did not believe that the single funding formula would create a level playing field in the early education and care market through raising qualifications and training staff.
The survey found that less than a third believed that they would also be in receipt of a quality supplement, and many said that they would not be able to maintain the level of quality and effective practice that their schools and centres deliver now. Few respondents-17.6 per cent-know how or if the local authority will manage any adjustment of the single funding formula once it has been implemented. The majority of local authorities-74 per cent-have yet to say whether there will be any transitional arrangements to manage the significant cuts in funding that the implementation of the single funding formula will bring. My noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal mentioned the press coverage yesterday: there is considerable concern out there and, although the single funding formula has not yet been implemented, things are going wrong already. I hope there is still time to put things right before too much damage is done.
While I accept that the Government's aim is to improve the fairness and transparency of the way the funding is allocated to providers who deliver the free entitlement, and thereby support its extension to 15 hours, I have serious concerns that it is being implemented in such a way as to throw out the most important baby with the unfairness bathwater.
Many of those working in the maintained sector report that they are increasingly being threatened with closure or significant budget cuts with immediate effect. Others working in the private, voluntary and independent sectors report that many of the rates currently being proposed by local authorities under the early years single funding formula amount to little more than pennies, and are not enough to support them to deliver
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As the implementation of the funding formula enters its final phase of consultation, there is increasing evidence that many local authority proposals will have significant adverse consequences for services to the most disadvantaged children and families. It will especially affect the most vulnerable and at-risk children, and those with special educational needs-in other words, those who need the highest quality provision.
So local authorities must be both supported and rigorously monitored to ensure that the aims of the single funding formula are genuinely achieved across all sectors. Can the Minister say how this is being done? I am particularly concerned about the maintained sector, as there is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates its good outcomes for children. Results from the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education project showed that combined centres, described as similar to nursery schools, which have developed their provision of extended care to include full daycare and parental involvement, ranked in the good to excellent range in regard to quality of provision. EPPE concluded that well resourced pre-school centres with a history of integrating education are more successful at providing care in education than centres from the care tradition.
The effectiveness of maintained nursery schools is also confirmed by Ofsted reports. The 2007-08 annual report of the Chief Inspector of Schools noted that nursery schools are particularly effective, with 96 per cent of those inspected being good or outstanding and, of those, 47 per cent fell into the outstanding category. By comparison, Ofsted's 2005-08 review of all childcare and early education settings, excluding maintained nursery schools, revealed that only 3 per cent were judged outstanding and 57 per cent were good. Ofsted was also concerned as to the ineffectiveness of early education settings outside the maintained nursery sector in disadvantaged areas.
Any discussion of maintained nursery provision should include their value as a quality provider, as demonstrated by Ofsted and the EPPE research. Maintained nursery schools are often copied by the private, voluntary and independent settings as models of effective practice and as a resource to improve the leadership, pedagogy and practice across all sectors. They play a significant role in the provision of training qualified teachers for other early learning and childcare providers. Maintained nursery school head teachers and their management teams also facilitate a significant leadership within their local areas, and in some cases regionally and even nationally.
Over the past 10 years, there has been significant investment in early education and care, and we must give the Government credit for that. But if the single funding formula is implemented in its current state, a decade of investment benefiting the most disadvantaged children and their families is at risk and the highest quality and most effective early education provision will be lost. Your Lordships know the long-term costs of not investing in early years: lower education achievement; poor physical and mental health; crime
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As it is presently proposed, the implementation of the single funding formula risks undoing all those benefits of the significant investment that the present Government have made. Any levelling of the playing field must take into consideration differences in the quality of the early learning experiences on offer as well as the impact on poverty, ill health and other adversities. These disadvantages are beyond the control of the individual child and their family, and social justice therefore demands that adequate provision should be made.
That is why I feel it is so important to put in the Bill that one of the things each local authority must take into account when devising its formula is the need to protect centres of excellence. Without them, all settings will suffer since they are in the vanguard and have pulled up the whole sector to a higher standard than ever before over recent years. Please do not let us destroy that. I beg to move.
Baroness Verma: My Lords, following on from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, we also wish to raise some points on the single funding formula. In February 2006, the Government introduced the code of practice which meant that there would be provision of free nursery education places for three- and four-year-olds. At the moment, maintained sector early years education providers are funded by the local authority through the individual school's budget. Most local authorities base funding for maintained early years education provision on the number of places offered, not on the take-up of places. In contrast, funding for PVI authorities is nearly always based on participation rates. In 2009, this was true for participation in all but one local authority. This leads to unreasonable disparities.
In June 2007, the Government announced that local authorities would finally have to use a single funding formula for funding early years provision in the maintained and PVI sectors from 2010-11. This would mean that funding across maintained and PVI providers would be transparent and based on the same factors. We believe this is an important transition to make. What progress has been made with these changes?
As will be obvious, ours is a probing amendment at this time. We look forward to the Minister's response.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I understand the concern expressed, although I gave reassurance at the Committee stage. Given the recent article in the press, et cetera, I understand the concern.
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