Debate contribution: Childcare Strategy

Debate contribution by Mr Jon Burrows on 3 November 2025.

MLA

Mr Jon Burrows

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

3 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Childcare Strategy

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5213737

Read the official Assembly record

Text

An early learning and childcare strategy is certainly needed, and we hope that it comes as soon as possible. I want to make a couple of points that transcend many of the arguments that we could have today. The first is to value childminders and those who provide support to young people at the start of their lives. I hear consistently that the number-one barrier is cost. In preparation for today's debate, I was speaking to a constituent who said that the cost of their childcare was £1,000 a month. That was for just three days a week because the grandparents provided two days worth of childcare. That family is incurring debt every month to pay for their childcare.

That is a difficult thing, and perhaps only those in certain professional and well-paid jobs can afford it. In all these things, those who have the least are the hardest impacted.

I also hear from constituents who are dropping out of employment or taking pauses in it in order to mind their children. The reality is that they are mostly women. That is not to say that that is the right or wrong thing, but, in our society, it is often women who bear the greatest responsibility for raising children. That leads into things like the gender pay gap, because, during those critical times, women are not getting advancement at work or promotion. Therefore, it is really important to support women generally in society so that we get this absolutely correct. Some of the support for the cost of childcare is welcome, but I find, when I speak to people, that there is a lack of awareness of the existing support measures, such as the support with tax-free childcare. We need more of an education or awareness campaign on the various supports that are available, as well as increasing them. I am doing some touring around the country to schools, nurseries and parents, and I hear directly from parents that they find that raising children is a complex and difficult thing. It is not easy. In all these strategies, we need to get more support to skill parents in that very difficult role. They are bringing up children in an environment that is different from what it was in the past, particularly in the availability of screens. I hear from parents that that is a particularly difficult aspect. When children get as far as nursery school, I often hear that there is a problem in trying to get the child away from a screen. That is not judgement of the parent, but it is another obstacle that our nursery-school teachers face by the time a child gets there: they are having to deal with that issue. Some of the nursery-school teachers that I have spoken to find that the child does not want to go into nursery school because they are told that they cannot have their screen or that it will be controlled. Those are societal issues that I did not face when growing up, because there were no screens like that. Parents need support in dealing with those issues. Recruitment and retention of nursery-school teachers is a really significant issue. I know that a lot of those involved in childminding and nursery-school teaching do not feel that they have sufficient accreditation or professional skill recognition and that they are dealing with issues that are beyond their capability in the complex needs that are presented to them. I hear that increasingly in primary schools. That is why a lot of teachers in primary school — P1 and P2 — are injured daily, being kicked, bitten or spat at. I say that without judgement, but it is the reality that they face. That difficulty, that challenge and that behaviour are also faced by people who are childminding and those involved in nursery education and support. They feel that they do not have sufficient support to deal with the increasingly difficult, challenging and complex behaviour being seen in children in numbers that did not exist in the past. The evidence base for that is clear in the rise of special educational needs and in the delays in development that school principals report with children increasingly coming to school perhaps 18 months or two years behind.

There is much merit in the motion, but this is not about political point-scoring; it is about getting the right strategy and the right support.

738 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not qualifying

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 01:21 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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