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Childcare Bill

I rise to leap a group and move on to Amendments Nos. 65A and 67A in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I am pleased to see her here—I thought she was at some high-powered conference, but she has her priorities right, and I welcome her. I thank the Minister for the copious documents he has sent out on the Bill. They have been very helpful and I have read them with interest. My amendments are similar to the ones tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, but the wording is slightly different. I really do not care what amalgam of these amendments we get as long as we get rid of the word ““taught””. I am trying to be helpful and to use the language I have seen used in the various documents on the early years foundation stage. It fits in with what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has said. I recognise, as the noble Baroness does, that in the foundation stage of the Education Act, the years 0 to 5 are covered and the word ““taught”” is used. It is the only place I can find it in the documents. Using ““taught”” in that context refers to older children in the 0 to 5 age range and not to younger children. The Early Childhood Forum and pre-school practitioners believe that a different form of wording should be found. I believe that there should be rigour in early years education, but that rigour should be in the quality of provision, with the emphasis on skills and language development and the positive interaction between adults and young children in the course of their activities. I believe that ““taught”” may give an inaccurate message to practitioners and parents, who may thereby associate early learning with sitting down to didactic activities, such as teaching young children to read, rather than with active learning and exploration of the learning environment. I think I said at our previous sitting that I used to run a playgroup. I remember offering young children various activities that they could move between, such as story telling, using sticky work, and so on. An example of painting best shows what I am trying to describe. Painting would be an activity, but we would not try to teach a child how to draw a house—it would be their own interpretation. We would not try to teach a young child, to use my noble friend’s example, how to move like an animal. Perhaps he could do that, but I couldn’t.