Education Committee,

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Official Report 220KB pdf

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Early Years Inquiry

I open this meeting of the Education Committee. I am sorry for the slightly late start, but we had a pre-meeting briefing. We are now in public session, so I ask people to ensure that they have turned off their mobile phones and pagers.

Item 1 on the agenda is the early years inquiry. We will consider a summary of written evidence, plan the approach to the inquiry and agree witness sessions. We have before us an approach paper and a summary of evidence, which provide helpful background information. We must decide how we approach the inquiry. Are there any comments on the summary of evidence, the themes or the bits and pieces that we want to take forward? Both papers are very helpful and focus the somewhat tricky issues well. I have no questions about the papers, which provide a good basis on which to take the inquiry forward.

As there are no comments on the papers in general, we will look specifically at the approach paper. The paper focuses on meetings and witnesses. If, particularly in the light of our informal session with the adviser, members want to suggest anything that is missed out in the paper, they can have informal input later.

The approach paper at least gives us a framework for where we might want to go. We must strike the usual balance between visits, meetings and participation sessions, which have become a feature of our inquiries and have proved to be very useful. Are there any observations on witnesses or on our general approach?

One of the most challenging issues will be to get the perspectives of parents. As we all know, every parent is different. One of the biggest challenges will be to work out how to get input from parents and how to do so objectively.

The visits will also be important. Although I can understand the groupings of witnesses, it is essential that our work is theme led rather than organisation led. We must organise our questioning of witnesses properly. If our discussions are theme led, the implications for child development are among the strongest themes that I would like to be addressed throughout the inquiry. That will be the most challenging thing to achieve.

That is a valid point. There is always a tendency to have the usual suspects, which means that the flavour can sometimes be taken out. We must get the balance right between the debates and disputes among the people who are affected and the formulaic evidence from unions, professional bodies and so on.

I agree with Fiona Hyslop. The approach paper is excellent in respect of the ground that we will attempt to cover. My only suggestion is that the clerks should perhaps sit with Kathy Sylva and think about how we structure the inquiry to enable us to reach a conclusion. The content is exactly what we want to cover, but the inquiry might benefit from the adoption of a slightly more thematic approach.

I echo that. During our informal session, a comment was made about the way in which the House of Commons group dealt with the issue and conducted the visits that it made. I sometimes think that we could do a little bit more in preparation for visits so as to get more out of them. Most of us are laypeople and do not know the technical background of what goes on in schools, projects and nurseries, so it would probably be helpful to have a bit of guidance on the kind of things that we should be looking for, so that we can get sense and flavour out of our visits.

It is suggested that we should look at international experience, which is something that we have talked about doing on and off in the past. It is suggested that there might be some value in a visit to one of the Scandinavian countries. Do members have any thoughts about that? Sweden and Finland have been suggested. There are different styles of provision there and they might have good things to offer. In advance of such a visit, we might get more detailed information about what is happening in those countries and the basis for that activity. I am told that Finland has much to offer in a number of different ways, getting away from the standard Swedish one-to-18 approach. Would members be happy for that possibility to be developed to see whether we could get value out of such a visit? Is that of interest to members?

I suggest that we seek the advice of our specialist adviser on where it might be most appropriate to visit. It is a question of the themes that we want to address. I know that arrangements need to be made in advance, but it might be easier to reflect on our themes first, because where we go should be led by our evidence and by what we are trying to achieve as opposed to being decided by what appears at face value to be the most interesting place to visit.

We have done some initial soundings through Professor Kathy Sylva, our adviser, and I think that there are different things to be got in Sweden and Finland. We might want to develop that a little bit and see what the ins and outs of a trip would be.

We have a big enough committee to split up and visit both.

That might be a possibility.

Might it be possible to do both?

It might be feasible. Perhaps we should explore that a little bit further. We are not going to make a decision today, but we can make some background inquiries into what the advantages of a visit might be and we can then develop a proposition.

Beyond that, we are asked today to agree the broad approach that is set out in the paper. We have talked about an international visit. There is also an opportunity to establish a focus group. The details of that proposal will be delegated to me to progress along with the clerks and the adviser. Would that be all right?

Members indicated agreement.

If there are no other observations on the two documents before we move on, I shall leave members with an open invitation to come back with suggestions for other witnesses.

In the light of what Kathy Sylva has been saying today about qualifications, I feel that it is important for us to take a look at the review that is demanded by the Unison petition, which has been going round for some time. That is key to where the discussions are now leading us.

Which review?

The Unison petition, which has been going round the Parliament for some time now, calls for a national inquiry into early years education. I think that we will hear something about that later, but we have a meeting planned and I just want to point out that, in the light of what we are hearing, it is important that the issue is examined in great detail.

To some extent, that will emerge from the evidence that we get about what provision exists at the moment and where there are areas that need further investigation. It is perhaps an issue for our conclusion at the end of the inquiry, and we should keep it in mind as we go through. Obviously, the quality and training of the workforce are already emerging as an important issue.

Definitely.

We have been promised the early years review for some time. We can ask the minister about it under the next item, but my understanding is that it will be available in early summer, so it should be out before we have heard all our evidence. We need to keep track of when the early years review is about to report.

That is worth while. We can inquire into that.

If our witness sessions happen post-summer, they will inform where we take this.

The clerks are usually in close touch with Executive officials on such matters. We will be guided by the information as it develops.