Margaret Hodge has been appointed Minister for Children in the recent Government reshuffle. Her new duties give her overall responsibility for early years, as well as a broader remit for children's rights and children's welfare. She is reputed to be very pleased with this enlarged brief.
Whatever people think of her performance as a minister, most acknowledge that Ms Hodge cared about and raised the status of early years in her previous role at the then Department for Education and Employment. She understood the issues and gave them high priority, even if her style was abrasive and her decisions not always welcome. She was missed when she transferred to another Government job. Her replacement, Baroness Ashton, has not made the same impression.
In the last year or so, despite the 'rebranding' of early years, and the reorganisation within the DfES, there has been considerable disillusionment about the Government's intentions.
Early Childhood Studies degree students at the University of East London, some of whom come from Ms Hodge's constituency, had to complete a final year assignment looking at the operation of a particular area of early years policy - special needs, Sure Start and so on - in their local neighbourhoods. All of them concluded there was a credibility gap between Government rhetoric and the reality where they lived. Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships' targets are unmet; parents pay the earth for childcare; nursery schools are threatened with closure or closing; local squabbling prevents Sure Start projects from getting off the ground; Neighbourhood Nurseries, if they exist at all, are private nurseries by any other name; support for training is dismal and employment practices in the sector are often dubious.
The Government spends many thousands of pounds on telling us how well it is doing. It may claim it is delivering for families and children, but few people now believe it.
A reforming minister with a high profile and a combative style, who knows her subject inside out, might be what is needed. Here are some suggestions about how to restore the Government's street cred.
1 Cut the spin
There is a lot of cynicism about Government 'spin'. Politicians have to promote their policies, but in early years we have had a deluge of expensively produced booklets, roadshows and ministerial exaggeration.
The latest glossy offering, Choosing Childcare: Your Sure Start Guide to Childcare and Early Education, has the same relentless self-congratulatory tone. 'You can have the best', it says glibly on the front cover. It is an insult to the intelligence of parents who, in reality, lack affordable childcare. Readers of this booklet might also wonder how it is possible to have early education without any teachers - the word teacher appears to have been banned from the booklet as too controversial. True, there is more childcare, but for most parents it is more expensive than ever, because of Government reliance on the private sector.
Big business - the nursery chains who are floating their shares on the stock market - are the main beneficiaries of the expansion in childcare and the subsidy system. True, there is more nursery education, but it is mostly four-year-olds in schools, and the nursery education offer is still less - at 2.5 hours per day - than it was in the 1960s, when nursery education was traditionally full-time; and it is certainly less than most other European countries provide. Please be honest about the situation.
2 Get to grips with the policies
At the heart of New Labour policy is a massive contradiction. There is one policy that says parents should pay for childcare, and the market will expand to provide it; the Government can help subsidise poorer parents so that they can afford it. There is another policy that says nursery education is a free public service and is an essential preparation for school.
Christine Skinner has pointed out in her recent study the mothers who run themselves ragged trying to fit in the childcare with the school, and the children themselves who have to make sense of being shifted around between several regimes in the course of a day or a week.
There is a new policy that the poorest 20 per cent, usually defined by where they live, will now be entitled/required to use a different, hybrid service from either childcare or nursery education, that is a neighbourhood nursery, or a children's centre, for which the financial - or any other - basis is unclear.
The only reason for this hotchpotch of policies is historical. No minister or civil servant has had the courage to change what went before; they have only tried to blur irreconcilable differences, patch and mend a little, but never to grasp the nettle.
3 Recognise what is good and use it effectively
Yes, we do have a public service that is widely respected and has influenced provision in many other countries - namely, nursery schools. The kind of intellectual and physical freedom that they can offer young children has been part of our history and a model to the world for over a century. Nursery schools offer a high quality, freestanding service uniquely devoted to the interests of young children, yet they are being closed on the grounds that they are too expensive and too old-fashioned.
Almost all the nursery schools are trying desperately to rethink what they have to offer and be more flexible, but they are impossibly restricted by the Government policy that says nursery education is only for two and a half hours a day. Capitalise on this precious resource; don't get rid of it.
4 Invest enough money and invest it wisely
A coherent policy on early years needs to be properly costed. The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development review of early education and care in 12 countries, Starting Strong, was categorical that equality of access to provision - exactly what the Government is aiming for - has only ever been achieved through publicly funded services.1 At present there are two main funding policies: subsidising parents to choose in the private market, and direct funding of education services, plus 30 or 40 little pots of money for which people can apply on a one-off, short-term basis.
Money is often unclaimed or conversely runs out too soon. The EYDCPs and Sure Start programmes have innumerable posts whose sole function is how to access and manage these grants. Instead we could follow the OECD recommendation for a more prudent and coherent financial approach, with long-term planning and direct investment in services - more money would be welcome, but even more, it should be sensibly spent.
5 Re-evaluate Sure Start
Sure Start is the Government's favourite scheme, its soul-saving justification that it is tackling poverty. One minister last week even went so far as to claim that the war in Iraq was justifiable because everyone knew how much the Government cared about poverty and the well-being of children - just look at Sure Start!
The reality is that Sure Start is not making much - or any - inroads on poverty, and is unlikely to, but it does offer a useful smokescreen.
There is evidence available from the Government's own evaluative research that Sure Start projects are variable, are slow to get going, and consume enormous resources for relatively few families. Check out the evidence.
6 Training, employment practices and wages are the key to quality
Caring for and educating children is a profession, requiring skilled people who earn more than a subsistence wage. It is more skilled than emptying dustbins or cleaning empty offices, which offer comparable rates of pay.
The training at NVQ Level 2 is not nearly rigorous enough. It is didactic; that is, it tells you what is the right thing to do and when and how to do it. It may be a useful starting point, but children deserve more - to engage with thinking, lively adults, who have lots of interesting ideas of their own.
7 Children's rights
Many people have campaigned for a Minister for Children, someone who will act as a champion of children's rights. There has been a great deal of new thinking about children's rights to provision, protection and participation under the terms of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Greater London Authority has just issued an excellent document, The Children and Young People's Strategy for London. My colleague Professor Priscilla Alderson, at the London Institute of Education, has written a pamphlet called Rights and Rites which offers a challenging view of how we patronise and infantilise children. Take children seriously.
Welcome back, Margaret. And good luck!
Helen Penn is professor of early childhood at the University of East London
Reference
1 OECD is based in Paris and carries out cross-country comparative reviews in industrialised countries of key economic, education and social issues.