BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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though making gains in the most recent years. Other out-of-work benefits (Job Seeker’s Allowance and Income Support) were adjusted through
the decade for price inflation excluding housing costs, meaning a steady
deterioration in relation to average earnings. A single person on Income
Support in 1997/8 received weekly benefit equivalent to about 40% of
median income after housing costs – well below the poverty line. By
2005/6 this share had fallen to just 31%. This contrasts sharply to the sit32 See Giacomo Georgi, ‘The New Deal for Young People Five Years On’, Fiscal Studies 26(3),
2005: 371–83; Bruce Stafford with others, New Deal for Disabled People: Third Synthesis
Report – Key Findings from the Evaluation, DWP Research Report 430 (London: DWP,
2007).
33 See Donald Hirsch, ‘Welfare in Work: The Missing Link in Welfare Reform’, in Kate Bell
(ed.), Staying On, Stepping Up: How Can Employment Retention and Advancement Policies
be Made to Work for Lone Parents? (London: One Parent Families, 2006).
34 See Gabrielle Preston (ed.), A Route out of Poverty? Disabled People, Work and Welfare
Reform (London: Child Poverty Action Group, 2006).
Table 19.3. Poverty among households of working age without children
1996/7 to 2005/6 (%)
Before housing costs
After housing costs
1996/97
2005/06
1996/97
2005/06
All working-age adults
12
13
17
17
without children
Single/couple one or more FT
13
12
15
18
self-employed
Single/couple all in FT work
2
2
3
4
Couple, one FT, one PT work
1
3
2
5
Couple, one FT work, one
7
10
10
14
not working
Single/couple no FT, one or
18
19
24
25
more PT work
Workless, head or spouse
50
54
67
64
unemployed
Workless, other inactive
29
35
43
45
Source: DWP, Households Below Average Income 1994/5–2005/6, table F4.
uation in Sweden, for example, where out-of-work benefits for all family
types sit safely above the poverty line.35
The result was that, despite rising employment, poverty among
working-age households without children failed to fall during Labour’s
time in office, as shown in table 19.3. Tax credits and other measures
intended to make work pay appear to have had an impact on encouraging
employment (which is why we see a stable overall figure despite increased
risk in each category), but they have not managed to prevent rates of
poverty from rising even for those in work. Among those without work,
nearly two-thirds of households in which the head is unemployed lived
below the poverty line after housing costs in 2005/6, alongside nearly
one-half of those in other inactive households (including those claiming
incapacity and disability-related benefits).
How worried should we be about such high levels of poverty among
non-working households without children? Should non-disabled adults
35 See Christina Behrendt, At The Margins of the Welfare State: Social Assistance and the
Alleviation of Poverty in Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2002).
not be expected to support themselves without reliance on state
benefits? There is a pragmatic reason for concern about current levels of
out-of-work benefits: it cannot be easy to look for work under financial
constraints that make basic requirements such as suitable clothes and
transport costs problematic. There is also an ideological concern about
the nature of an inclusive society. Many of those with caring responsibilities for dependants other than children, those in poor health but not
severely disabled, and those who simply find participating in working life
difficult on standard terms experienced Blair’s decade as one of gradually
deepening poverty. Unease at the situation of people in these categories is
compounded by the fact that poverty has risen even among working
households without children, casting doubt over the idea that nonworking households could move out of poverty if they only chose to do
so: individuals currently on Incapacity Benefit or Income Support are
likely to have fewer skills and face greater barriers to work than those
already in employment.
Life chances
As already noted, evidence of the impact of poverty in childhood on an
individual’s future opportunities appears to have been central to the
commitment to end child poverty. At the same time, the Blair government also recognised the importance for life chances of non-income
factors, in particular education. Alongside income transfers and workpromotion initiatives it invested heavily in education, including policies
aimed at furthering children’s development from the very earliest years;
and to a lesser extent in children’s health. It was a long-term strategy,
aimed at creating a new generation of adults more skilled than the
current one, in stronger health and better placed to bring up their own
children free from poverty. The long-term nature of this goal means a full
assessment of the strategy’s success or failure will not be possible for
many years, but this section examines the policies that were introduced
and looks at early evidence of the difference they are making.
The early years strategy
There were four key elements to early years policy. Taken together, they
represent a sea-change in the support, services and opportunities available to pre-school children and their parents, with government taking
major responsibility for this age group for the first time.
First, the increase in the level of statutory maternity pay and the
expansion of paid maternity leave first to six then to nine paid months
(with a view to an eventual extension to a year’s paid leave) followed
research evidence indicating that the best place for a baby is at home with
a mother who wishes to be there. This is certain to have enabled more
children of low-income working parents to spend more time with their
mothers in the first few months of life (although it appears that the same
rate of compensation for two weeks’ paid paternity leave has been too low
to encourage many fathers to take it up).
Second, the Blair government fulfilled an early commitment to
provide a free part-time nursery place to all three-and four-year-olds,
following evidence of the central importance of pre-school education for
school-readiness
and later academic and social outcomes, particularly for
children from disadvantaged backgrounds. By 2002, just 7% of children
from social classes IV and V were not receiving any nursery education,
compared to 17% in 1997. Third, there were some moves to improve
the quality of formal childcare, including much greater regulation under
the Ofsted umbrella and the creation of a new graduate Early Year’s
Professional status with training starting in 2006 – small but positive
steps towards raising the overall status, pay and conditions of childcare
workers.
Finally, there were the set of Sure Start policies – first, Sure Start Local
Programmes (SSLP); later, Sure Start Children’s Centres. SSLP brought a
raft of initiatives to children under four in the 500 most disadvantaged
wards, with local Sure Start boards initially operating independently of
local authority control to determine how best to provide parenting
support, play, learning and childcare experiences, primary health care
and advice, and support for children and parents with special needs.
Preliminary evaluation of the local programmes (and the evaluation
team stress that it is really too early for assessment) found modest evidence of more positive parenting in Sure Start areas, although not among
the most deprived families.36 Sure Start was also widely popular with
parents: in research conducted by the Centre for Analysis of Social
Exclusion with parents in deprived areas it was one of very few government initiatives spontaneously mentioned as having made a positive
difference.37 Ironically, its high profile and positive image led to what
36 National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS), Early Impacts of Sure Start Local Programmes on
Children and Families, NESS Research Report 13 (London: TSO, 2005).
37 See Anne Power and Helen Willmot, ‘Bringing up Families in Poor Neighbourhoods
under New Labour’, in Hills and Stewart, A More Equal Society?
some have seen as a dilution of the original programme, although the
government has sold it as spreading the benefits across the country:
since April 2006 SSLPs have come under local authority control as Sure
Start Children’s Centres, with additional centres developing from other
government initiatives including Neighbourhood Nurseries and Early
Excellence Centres. There were 1,000 Children’s Centres by September
2006, with plans for one in all 3,500 wards in England and Wales by 2010,
and the idea is that they bring together childcare, early education, health,
employment and family support under one roof. Substantial resources
are being directed to them, with total spending of £3.2 billion between
2004 and 2008; this represents somewhat reduced funding per centre
compared to the budget for the original 500 SSLPs, although whether disadvantaged areas suffer will depend on how funding is distributed. Again,
it is early for assessment, but a recent National Audit Office report into
existing centres found quality of services high and improving, although
not all centres were doing all they could to reach the most disadvantaged
groups.38
Education
Tackling educational disadvantage was an early priority for the Blair government. Since the low point of 1999, when the commitment to stick to
Conservative spending plans came to an end, the share of GDP spent
on education has risen steadily, from 4.5% to planned spending of 5.6%
in 2007/8. This shifted the UK up the international spending range: 5.6%
is getting close to the share spent in, for example, France in 2003 (5.8%),
though it still falls well short of the spending share in Denmark (6.7%)
and Sweden (6.5%). At the same time, the formula for allocating
resources to Local Education Authorities was revised, increasing the
share to those with most deprived populations, although only by half the
level recommended in the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills to guide the reform.
In part the decision not to implement the full recommendation was
driven by the fact that the LEAs themselves each have their own internal
allocation formulae, meaning there is no way of ensuring that the extra
resources reach the most needy schools.
There were also a number of targeted initiatives, including Excellence
in Cities (EiC), which provides funding for learning mentors and for
38 NAO, Sure Start Children’s Centres (London: TSO, 2006).
provision for gifted and talented pupils in the most deprived third of
LEAs, and the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG), supporting
a range of programmes benefiting schools with high concentrations of
minority ethnic pupils. EiC has been found in early evaluations to have
had a positive effect on school attendance and mathematics attainment,
with the greatest impact in the most disadvantaged schools.39
Classroom-based reform focused on standards, continuing with
Conservative-designed policies such as literacy and numeracy hours,
regular formal testing and league table publication; the latter now include
measures of ‘value-added’, making them better reflections of a school’s
performance rather than simply its social and academic intake. In addition, Labour pursued its 1997 election pledge to ensure that no child aged
five to seven was taught in a class with more than thirty pupils. Between
1997 and 2007 the share of all primary school children in such classes
came down sharply, from 33% to 14%, although 1.4% of the five to seven
age group are still taught in larger classes.40
What was the combined impact of these policies on inequality in educational attainment? There is some evidence of catch-up to 2001 in the
performance in Key Stage tests of ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ schools (those in which
respectively less than 5% and over 40% of pupils qualify for free school
meals).41 The government discontinued the publication of these data
from 2001, but since 2002 we have been able to look at pupil performance
directly. Figure 19.3 shows the share of pupils from different ethnic
groups achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A*–C (the triangles and
circles in the figure), along with the performance of pupils eligible for free
school meals relative to that of other pupils (the bars); this last has been
called the ‘poverty penalty’. The figure shows both that the average performance of black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils is catching up with
that of white pupils, and that the relative performance of those receiving
free school meals has improved substantially within each ethnic group.
These changes are impressive for a four-year period, although the poverty
penalty remains serious, particularly for the white population: in 2006
39 Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Costas Meghir, ‘Excellence in Cities: Evaluation of
an Education Policy in Disadvantaged Areas’, NFER Working Paper January 2006
(Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research, 2006).
40 DfES Time Series Data (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/TIM/m002007/ts-primcs.pdf).
41 Abigail McKnight, Ho
ward Glennerster and Ruth Lupton ‘Education, Education,
Education . . .: An Assessment of Labour’s Success in Tackling Educational Inequalities’,
in Hills and Stewart, A More Equal Society?
100
90
80
70
60
50
%
40
30
20
10
0
Black
Black
White
Indian
Chinese
African
Pakistani
All pupils
Caribbean
Bangladeshi
FSM achievement as share non-FSM 2002
FSM achievement as share non-FSM 2006
Share of all pupils achieving 5 A*–C grades 2002
Share of all pupils achieving 5 A*–C grades 2006
Figure 19.3. Disparities in educational achievement by ethnicity and free school meal
status: share of pupils achieving at least five GCSEs at grade A*–C 2002 and 2006 and
‘poverty penalty’ for each ethnic group.
Source: Department for Education and Skills (DfES) Statistical First Releases:
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000448/table49-52.xls (for 2002) and
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000693/Addition1V1.xls (for 2006).
white pupils eligible for free school meals were still less than half as likely
to achieve five A*–C grades as their non-eligible classmates.
Interestingly, when we look further down the education system, the
story is more complicated. At earlier key stages smaller disparities are
observed across both ethnic group and free school meals status, but there is
less unambiguous evidence of improvement between 2002 and 2006, with
the poverty penalty widening slightly overall in writing at age seven and in
mathematics and science achievement at eleven. This raises doubts about
whether the rate of change illustrated in figure 19.3 will be sustained.
Health
Health inequalities were subject to considerable attention during the first
two Labour terms, with a series of assessments and reviews following the
report of the independent Acheson inquiry.42 Four months before the 2001
election the government announced two health inequalities targets: the
first to reduce the difference in life expectancy between areas with the lowest