MPs laud Princess of Wales's 'crucial' early years campaigning

The Princess of Wales's work highlighting the early years of childhood has been praised as MPs prepare to launch an inquiry into the state of childcare.

The education select committee will this week announce an inquiry into early years education, which will examine the quality and affordability of childcare.

It comes after the Princess recently wrote for The Telegraph saying "not enough is being done" to nurture the next generation.

She vowed to "shine a light on this issue and to do everything I can to secure much greater focus on those first crucial few years for the youngest members of our society".

The Princess has undertaken a series of campaigns to raise awareness of the importance of early childhood, with a regular programme of engagements designed to boost the sector.

'Crucially important'

Robin Walker, the chair of the education committee, told The Telegraph that her involvement was "extremely welcome".

"The work that the Princess has been doing to raise the esteem and the recognition of the sector is actually crucially important," he said.

"[The sector] has an intrinsic value - it does an enormous amount of good for society, and making sure that we can celebrate that and recognise it is important."

He added: "One of the valuable things that the Royal family are able to do in the UK is draw attention to cross-cutting issues like this in a non-political way, but also to recognise the incredible work that goes on across the sector... it is extremely welcome that she has taken that interest."

Mr Walker, who took over as chairman of the education committee last month, said the need for an inquiry had gained extra urgency because of the "post-Covid environment" and the "concern around the school readiness and the social challenges that children have had in terms of living in isolated homes".

The inquiry will look at the "coherence" of the current childcare system, including the fact that parents are currently missing out on billions of unclaimed tax-free childcare.

It will explore how the lack of affordable childcare prevents many mothers from returning to work even though they would like to.

"With the right support and the right investment from Government, there is a hope for helping many more of those people to work effectively," Mr Walker said.

Recruitment and retention of early years professionals will be another focus.

"Even though the Government doesn't run the sector in the same way as it does for primary and secondary education, I think there’s a very strong case for more to be done around workforce planning, retention, and raising the esteem of the early years professionals who work in the childcare, early years and nursery sector," Mr Walker said.

"I speak to nurseries, they will complain about losing staff to supermarkets and to other areas."

'Save a fortune'

The Princess has previously spoken about how problems such as homelessness, addiction and mental poor health are often grounded in a difficult childhood, and Mr Walker agreed that strengthening early years provision could deliver substantial long term savings.

"Making sure that we have support for the right therapies that can help for instance children with speech and language difficulties... if you can find those right supports and bring them in early enough, you actually save a fortune for the education system in the long run," he said.

"As a country, if we look at ourselves in comparison to many others, we have an earlier school starting age than many countries, and yet the overall outcomes don’t seem to be significantly better or different from doing that."

He added: "I don’t think we can necessarily look to the school system for the whole solution to that. I think we need to look beyond it, and again that’s why I think a focus on the early years, a focus on affordable and effective childcare, is really important."