David Willetts

In a speech to the Daycare Trust, David Willetts explained some of the issues, trade-offs and problems in current British childcare provision.“Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak at this Annual Conference of the Daycare Trust on childhood and childcare. How we look after our children is one of society’s most important responsibilities.

Polarised Childhood

One of the key issues we face is the growing polarisation in experiences of childhood. We saw more evidence of this earlier this week.Professor Heather Joshi of the Institute of Education revealed this week that the 3 year old children of graduates are a year ahead - in cognitive development - of the 3 year old children of people without qualifications. This is not because of inherited abilities but because of what economists would call the ‘investment’ they make in their children.In January of this year, Professor John Ermisch at the University of Essex used the same data - the Millennium Cohort Study - and showed that the average child with university-educated parents with degrees was in the top quartile of cognitive skills by the age of 5, whilst the average child born to parents without qualifications had moved to the bottom quartile.

In my speech last month, which one or two of you may have caught eye of in the media, I presented evidence from Dr Leon Feinstein of the Institute of Education, which showed that even where children from poorer families were ahead at two or three years old, they had been overtaken by the age of 7 by children who had lower cognitive abilities at the age of 22 months but came from more advantaged backgrounds. Of course parents want to do the best for their children, that is a deep natural and worthwhile human aspiration. No one can be against doing the best for their children.

We should hope for an education system that helps to provide the best possible education for every child. However, education is cumulative, and if you have a less good start in life, despite the best efforts of teachers, you are liable to fall behind yet further. As they go through school the attainment gap between poor children and the rest widens and widens.

When pupils begin at primary school the children on free school meals are 19 percentage points behind the rest in their performance in Key Stage 1 tests. At the end of primary school this has widened to 21 percentage points. Then the transition to secondary school, perhaps the crucial moment, causes them to fall yet further behind and by the time they have reached the age of 14 the gap is 26 percentage points. Children on free school meals are 28 percentage points behind the rest when it comes to GCSE results. These gaps have very serious long term consequences. The Youth Cohort Study reveals that if neither parent has an A level qualification, a pupil has less than a 50-50 chance of getting a GCSE and is two-thirds as likely to stay in education until 18 as the children of parents with degrees.As changes in the economy mean that the return to skills have risen and risen, this means that poor children are less likely to escape poverty. Economists like Paul Gregg and Jo Blanden have worked out the chances of your being trapped in poverty. If you were born in the bottom twenty per cent you have less than a two-thirds chance of rising out of that group in adulthood. The growing gap in children’s development means that there are bigger gaps for poorer children to overcome than before. The early years are the best time to do this. However, if we are serious about social mobility; if we are to be committed to the idea that children born in the UK should be able to be all that they can be, society needs to address these problems.

The early years should be seen as a key issue. The Nobel laureate James Heckman has been pushing for this approach in the United States. His studies found that for every pound of effective early intervention, you got a rate of return of 16%. For every dollar spent on these programmes, the taxpayer saved seven.One of trials which Heckman studied - the Perry Pre-School programme - was a scheme targeted on the very poorest children had very significant effects. Heckman found that the children who were enrolled improved their cognitive abilities by 16 IQ points within a year. At the age of 4, they were 12 points ahead of their peers outside the programme. Comparing the programme members with similar children who were not in the programme, they found the Perry children were half as likely to end up in special educational classes, three times as likely to be academic high achievers and almost one third more likely to finish high School without repeating a year. In the outside world, they were three times more likely to own their own homes, twice as likely never to claim welfare and four times as likely to earn $2,000 more than the local average.

These are remarkable results, but they have been replicated elsewhere, and there is a growing consensus that getting it right on the early years is absolutely essential. We all want to see Sure Start produce these kind of results across England, but so far Sure Start has not quite lived up to the hype.Part of the reason for this is to do with the Government’s approach to childcare.The Government is not clear in its own mind what childcare programmes in the UK are for.Are they for helping to get mothers into the workforce? In that case, you need a high quantity of care for long hours, if your agenda is a work agenda.Are they for helping cognitive development? In that case, you need a high quality of care but not necessarily for so many hours.

We must be very clear that there is a trade-off between these objectives and we must be sensitive to it.

In Quebec, a childcare programme explicitly aimed at helping mothers back into work had strong negative effects on the children within them. By contrast, Argentina - a benchmark for childcare - instituted a childcare system which was strong on cognitive development with a system run by primary school teachers, but had little impact on labour force participation.

This is not clear-cut. Growing up in workless households is damaging for children but so is not seeing much of your parents and not getting good quality child care either. We need the right trade-off.Unfortunately, I don’t think that Gordon Brown has got it right.According to the Millennium Cohort Study, 64 per cent of mothers in skilled work use formal childcare compared to only 7 per cent of mothers in semi-skilled or unskilled work. As Tony Blair said “Sure Start has been brilliant for those people who have in their own minds decided they want to participate. But the hard to reach families, the ones who are shut out of the system … they are not going to come to places like Sure Start.” In short, the children who would most benefit from early years investment do not get it.This whole area needs some more serious work which is what we are doing. Working out the right balance is vital and - with the help of institutions like the Daycare Trust - Paul Goodman and the Education team are reviewing all this.

Problems in childhood

Paul’s work is just one part of a very significant policy review process. In my field, Baroness Perry - a former Chief Inspector of Schools - is leading a review of education whilst Iain Duncan Smith is leading a review into poverty and social justice.At the same time, there has been a growing realisation - as a result of the work of people like Sue Palmer - author of Toxic Childhood - that something is amiss with British children today. This was brought home by the UNICEF report earlier this year which revealed some startling statistics. 21 economically developed countries were assessed on a variety of indicators measuring material and emotional well-being. Britain came last.· British children were found to be the loneliest and least ambitious. 35.3% of pupils aged 15 in Britain aspire to low skilled work compared with 14.4% in the US.· Britain was the only country studied with less than 50% of children finding their peers kind and helpful.

Looking beyond the UNICEF report, there are other striking problems.

• Over the past 25 years, the number of obese children has risen from around 1% to 15% of all children.
• The number of teenagers who don’t have a best friend has risen from one in eight 20 years ago to one in five today
• Figures revealed in 2004 showed a 70% increase in prescriptions for antidepressants over the previous decade.
• Teenage boys and young men are one a half times more likely to commit suicide than they were thirty years ago.

This is why David Cameron has asked me to lead a review of British childhood.Our Childhood Review is looking into the vast array of influences that are affecting our children. We already have a distinguished range of experts advising us and have had useful meetings with groups as diverse as Play England, The Children’s Society- who have been undertaking their own Inquiry into the quality of childhood- Fathers Direct, NSPCC, the National Childminding Association, Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, Families Need Fathers, beatbullying and, of course, the Daycare Trust.

Tim Gill, until recently of Play England and now an independent, invites adults to think of some of their happiest memories of their childhood. They are often memories of places we visited or games we played. They were what he calls ‘the every day adventures’ of childhood. But one of the most shocking statistics about what has happened to childhood is the area in which children can range freely and safely, the so-called “radius of activity”, has fallen to a ninth of what it was only a generation ago. They are more likely to be because they are on the computer or playing video games in their room. Richard Louv, in his book “Last Child in the Woods”, describes the growing “nature-deficit disorder” among children. Too little of nature, too much TV; there is evidence showing that this leads to attention difficulties. For each hour of TV watched per day by preschoolers, there is a 10% increase in the likelihood they will develop concentration problems and symptoms of ADHD by age seven.

One of the classic books on globalisation has the title ‘The World is Flat.’ For those of us who care about childhood this has a very special and unwelcome meaning. I have been persuaded by the great tradition of thinking about child development going right back to Piaget that children develop their conceptual framework through experiencing the world in three dimensions. It is very hard to make sense of geometry if you haven’t thrown a ball around or make sense of volume if you haven’t messed about with water and sand or do arithmetic if you haven’t collected things and arranged them. One of the most worrying pieces of research on children’s intellectual development was Professor Shayer’s report tracking the grasp of basic mathematical concepts. For example, you pour water from a tall thin glass into a broad low glass and ask the children if it is the same volume of water as before. The evidence is that in the past 10 or 15 years or so the proportion of children who understand at the age of 7 that it is the same volume of water has gone down very significantly. The explanation could well lie in the increasingly flat world that they inhabit.Children need outdoor space, room for every day adventures, both as fundamental to the quality of their childhood- for making friends, keeping them healthy, inspiring their imagination- but also as fundamental to their ability to learn when they are at school. One of the key issues we are looking at, therefore, is simply how we can try to ensure that children still have a world of play and space where they can be themselves. Parents need to feel confident that the surrounding area will be safe. This is incredibly important for our children’s personal and mental development.We have divided our Childhood Review into seven distinct groups, each of which is being led by a parliamentary colleague.

First, Alistair Burt is investigating play and space. Here we are examining how parents can give their children the opportunity to engage in challenging and stimulating play at the same time as protecting them from risks such as abduction, abuse and serious injury.

Julian Brazier is looking at what is putting off schools and clubs from coordinating trips that would excite children and give them the sort of opportunities that keep them engaged in outdoor adventure rather than video games. If organisations face legal claims and they settle out of court without losing a case even this can push up insurance costs and affect everyone else.

Maria Miller is working on the issue of ‘stranger danger’ - how we keep our children safe from harm.

Fourthly, Nick Gibb is assessing how we can combat bullying, a school and community phenomena that 55.5% of which young adults have been a victim.

Fifth, Tim Loughton is concentrating on how corporations can become more positive forces in improving the physical, mental and emotional well-being of young people.

Anne McIntosh will be focusing on the role of the broader family in children’s upbringing: should we give grandparents greater rights over their grandchildren? Do we need to further encourage parents to share responsibility when bringing up a child?

Finally, Trish Morris is looking at the attachment theory and the importance of the early years for long-term development.

These reviews are well underway and we will present our findings in the Autumn.Overall, the Conservative Party is looking afresh at lots of issues in childcare and education and to work out what works. David Cameron is right to focus across the board on social responsibility; to stress the importance not only of what Government can do, but also families, charities, communities, businesses and civic institutions.Nowhere is this more important for our children’s childhood.”