In August 2021, after a one-year delay to take account of the pandemic, free early learning and childcare hours in Scotland almost doubled, from 600 to 1,140 a year, with the government funding the policy to the tune of around £1 billion annually.
Now, a new joint report, from the auditor general and Accounts Commission, into the expansion questions whether the government can ever know if the primary aim of the increase - to improve outcomes for children and, in particular, those who are more vulnerable and disadvantaged - has been achieved.
The report says that currently it is “too early to assess whether the expansion has led to better outcomes for children”. It also says that while the government has an evaluation strategy in place, it will be hard to draw firm conclusions in future because it will be “difficult to identify the specific contribution of the expansion to changes in outcomes for children and their families”.
The report says “a range of other ongoing policies will also contribute”; that “a range of external factors, such as cost-of-living pressures, present further complexity”; and that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will make the evaluation more challenging.
The report highlights that the pandemic has already led to an increase in the percentage of children with one or more development concerns aged 13-15 months and 27-30 months. Similarly, the proportion of primary school pupils achieving the expected Curriculum for Excellence early level in P1 was lower in 2020-21 than in 2018-19.
The report also says that it is “difficult” for the government and councils to assess the extent to which funded early learning and childcare (ELC) is meeting the needs of children with additional support needs because of gaps in the data. It recommends that councils and the government “work together” to address this and other gaps, which include whether all establishments delivering the free nursery hours are paying their staff the real living wage.
The government said it would provide funding for the pay uplift - in particular in the private and third sectors - as part of the national rollout in a bid to make jobs working with pre-school children more attractive and also to reduce high levels of staff turnover, which can impact on continuity of care.
However, today’s report says that “the extent to which funded providers are paying the living wage to relevant staff is still unclear”.
Stephen Boyle, auditor general for Scotland, said: “The Scottish government has worked well with its partners to expand early learning and childcare hours. But the sector is fragile, which could affect flexibility and choice for families if funding and workforce risks are not addressed.
“An important next step for ministers is to effectively evaluate whether the policy has improved the lives of children and parents, and delivered value for money. But that task has been made tougher by the effects of the pandemic.”
The main source of evidence when it comes to whether outcomes for children and their families are improving, according to the report, will be the Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare (SSELC).
The SSELC gathers data on children’s social, emotional, behavioural and cognitive development when they leave nursery to start school. This includes their self-confidence, interactions with peers, problem-solving skills and vocabulary. It also measures children’s physical and mental health and wellbeing, for example their general health and motor skills.
For parents, the SSELC measures their health and wellbeing, their belief in their parenting ability, their engagement with their child’s learning and development, and their uptake of work, training or study. Data on family wellbeing is also gathered in the SSELC. This is based on a combination of measures covering parent wellbeing, home environment and parent-child relationships
The Scottish government plans to assess the policy’s value for money by comparing the costs and outcomes of providing 600 hours of funded nursery care in 2018-19 with the costs and outcomes of providing 1,140 hours in 2023-24.
The longitudinal survey, Growing Up in Scotland, warned in 2017 that to increase nursery hours to 30 per week might have “detrimental effects”, if the expansion resulted in a dip in the quality of nursery provision.
The 1,140 hours expansion is equivalent to about 30 hours of funded nursery per week in school term time.
The government has committed to providing “high-quality, flexible ELC that is accessible and affordable for all families”.
All providers of funded nursery hours must have Care Inspectorate quality evaluations of “good” or better on key inspection questions that relate to quality of care and learning, staffing, management, leadership and environment. Where a setting fails to meet the required standard, this can ultimately result in a council removing its funded provider status.
In December 2021, 89 per cent of funded early learning and childcare providers had the grades required by the national standard compared with 91 per cent of settings in December 2020 and 93 per cent of settings in 2014.
The report also notes that “a high turnover of staff can impact on children’s experiences, which feed into a setting’s quality grades”, and adds: “This continues to be a risk, given the ongoing recruitment and retention challenges.”
The number of full-time equivalent council staff working in ELC increased by almost 8,000 between 2016-17 and August 2021. However, across the range of day care of children services - which includes funded ELC, non-funded ELC services and out-of-school care - the percentage of services reporting staff vacancies increased from 21 per cent in 2020 to 31 per cent in 2021, according to the report.
