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Childcare Bill

I wish to speak to my Amendments Nos. 67 and 68. I have more sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, on Amendment No. 65ZA. I took on board a lot of what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, and I should like to hear what the Minister will say, but I think that I am more in sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I agree absolutely with the whole ethos of play. I, too, do not really mind so long as the word ““taught”” goes. I had thought today about whether I should sign up to ““play”” but in the end went with ““assimilate””, the term we used in the other place. We were told that ““assimilate”” was a very male word, but there we go—here is a woman using a male word. I have never thought it was a male word. The Explanatory Notes tell us that this clause sets out what may and may not be covered by a learning and development order made by the Secretary of State under Clause 39(1)(a). They go on to say that the learning and development requirements must cover six areas and that, in relation to these areas, they may specify early learning goals, education programmes and arrangements for assessing the learning and development. The amendments in my name and in those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Massey, are all trying to address the same issue in a different way. I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, as I think that the wording of her amendments is very good. My probing Amendment No. 66 would remove the words,"““are required to be taught to””," and replace them with,"““should be assimilated by””." This links in with the debates that we had on Clause 19 in Part 1 and raises the whole issue of what some have called ““schoolification””, which is not what the Bill should be about. Amendment No. 68 would insert the word ““appropriately”” so that subsection (2)(c) would ensure that children were assessed appropriately with regard to the learning and development requirements set out by the Secretary of State. Both amendments aim to draw out the detail and thinking behind these requirements. As I am sure noble Lords are aware, this clause generated a lively debate in the other place, as it has done here today. It remains a bone of contention and I think that that will continue to be the case throughout the passage of the Bill. The crux of the matter is the word ““taught””. Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I did not get out my dictionary on this occasion, but I remind the Committee that a child’s formal education does not start until he or she is around the age of five. After our Second Reading debate, I discussed this issue with my noble friend Lady Seccombe. It is true that we often say things such as ““My parents taught me”” or ““Did your parents not teach you?””, but I believe that there is a world of difference between being taught informally by family and formal teaching—I thought that I would pre-empt what the Minister might say. The formalising word ““taught”” in this setting fills me with unease. During debates in the other place, the Minister said that we would not take the word ““taught”” in its literal sense, but that is exactly what local authorities or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, said, parents may do when they interpret its context in the Bill. That is exactly what lawyers and judges argue over in courtrooms—the letter of the law—and that is why the language in the Bill, supported by the tone of the Explanatory Notes, greatly concerns us. Not only does it concern us but it is an issue that many children’s organisations have raised, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has already mentioned. There is so much to be learnt through play, even with the simplest of games. I am sure that the Minister will try to assure us that the Government’s vision is far from the formal education conjured up by the word ““taught””. In this respect, I draw the Committee’s attention to an article in the Daily Mail of 8 April, which describes some of the Government’s aspirations for our country’s young children, how failure to achieve these standards would cast doubts on a child’s future and how the specific targets were to be assessed and published annually in league tables. League tables for five year-olds are a concept that I do not take to. Again, national head teachers are exasperated at yet more targets and consider it crazy to extend target-setting to children of such a young age. Yet this whole ““schoolification”” leads to that concern. There is a serious risk that children are not being allowed to have a childhood—so much so that the BBC reported that the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has said that children’s rights, such as the right to education, should include the right to a childhood. These proposals appear to me to be exactly the sort of formalised teaching that we fear. Young children should be allowed to develop in an unhurried and unthreatened fashion. As the Minister said in response to my amendments on a child and a very young child, individuals should be allowed to develop at their own pace, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, they should be allowed to develop their interests and skills. We should provide support for parents—not undermine and replace them—in terms of what their child should and should not know or recognise by the age of five. I have more to say but I think that I have already covered the main points. I feel that this is one of the crunch issues in the Bill and I await the Minister’s reply with interest.