I was quite surprised listening to the education secretary speaking about social mobility this morning. Not because of the nature of the topic - tackling social inequality is very much in vogue with politicians of all stripes these days.

Nor was I particularly surprised to hear him focusing in on the need to improve young children’s speech and language development. It has long been accepted that children’s early speech and language skills are the foundations upon which future learning is built. We have also been aware for some time that teachers and school leaders are becoming increasingly concerned about the number of children arriving in school with speech and language difficulties - our own research on school readiness last year highlighted exactly that issue.

What surprised me about the speech was the Damian Hinds’ willingness to talk about the role parents play in children’s early speech and language development. On the surface, this might seem a ridiculous statement - of course parents and carers play a pivotal role in children’s early language development, to suggest otherwise would be frankly absurd. However, politicians tend to steer well clear of this sort of territory for fear of how it could be portrayed. As the secretary of state himself said this morning, “the home learning environment can be the last taboo in education policy.” Politicians are very wary of saying anything that could inadvertently offend parents, as those parents also happen to be voters.

For this reason, I think this Mr Hinds deserves credit for being prepared to go where others have feared to tread. For a long time closing the attainment gap has been seen as the job of schools and policy development has reflected this. However, it seems patently obvious that schools alone cannot close the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers or, at the very least, their job will be made far easier if parents are on board too. As the Education Endowment Foundation and others have pointed out, the attainment gap already exists by the time children enter school. If we are really serious about closing this gap, it seems only sensible to try and harness the power of parents and carers, especially in those critical pre-school years.

Parents are the primary educators

Parents are, and will always be, the primary educators of their children and if we can help more parents understand the crucial role of early language development and how best to support it, we should seize the opportunity to do so.

There will be those who will suggest that all this shouldn’t be necessary: that parents should already know all this stuff. The usual ‘feckless parents’ trope is likely to resurface at some point. This will get us nowhere. Let’s not forget, there is no parents’ handbook presented on the birth of your first child, and most parents only have the experience of how they themselves were brought up to go by. Those of us who were lucky enough to have had positive childhood experiences are already at an advantage in this respect.

That’s why services aimed specifically at disadvantaged families, like Sure Start centres, can have such a positive impact. Parents benefit from professional support and, critically, places they can go to go to access that help. A commitment to offering parents advice must be backed up by tangible investment into early years services if we are to minimise the gap that exists when children start at school. Similarly, we need to see proper investment in specialist support services that can provide early intervention, such as speech and language therapists. Parents can and should play a key role in a child’s language development, but this does not negate the need for highly trained specialists too.

We have long argued that a focus on the Early Years should be at the heart of any strategy to improve social mobility, and making parents a core part of this is absolutely essential. We shouldn’t forget though that, just like schools, parents can’t do this on their own. Only when we have a truly joined-up approach between parents, pre-schools, schools and essential support services are we likely to see real progress in this area.

James Bowen is director of the NAHT Edge middle leaders’ union, and a former head of an ‘outstanding’ primary. He tweets @JamesJkbowen