Thank you, convener. As you know, the Scottish Government has a major policy of increasing the amount of early learning and childcare that children are entitled to with the aim of improving outcomes for children and helping their parents into work, study or training. From August 2014, entitlement to funded early learning and childcare rose from 475 to 600 hours a year for all three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds. The Scottish Government and councils are now working towards further extending the entitlement to 1,140 hours per year by 2020.
This report looks at planning and implementation of the initial expansion to 600 hours from 2014 and progress towards implementing 1,140 hours by August 2020. It is the first in a planned series of reports and makes recommendations for the crucial next stage of the policy.
The Government and councils have worked well together to expand provision, and parents are positive about the benefits of funded early learning and childcare for their children. However, parents have reported a limited impact on their ability to work due to the number of hours available and the way in which they are provided, particularly their flexibility.
We found that the Government implemented the increase in hours without comparing the costs and outcomes associated with alternative ways of achieving the increase. Although since 2014 it has invested almost £650 million of additional funding in expanding funded early learning and childcare to 600 hours, it was not clear enough about the specific outcomes that it expected to achieve and it did not plan how to evaluate the impact of expansion. It is therefore not yet clear whether the investment is delivering value for money.
The Government has done more to plan how it will evaluate the expansion to 1,140 hours, but there are significant risks that councils will not be able to achieve this goal by 2020. In particular, it will be difficult to put the necessary infrastructure and workforce in place in time. Given the scale of the change required, the Government should have started detailed planning with councils earlier than it did.
Councils prepared initial plans for delivering 1,140 hours in the absence of some important information on things such as quality standards, the required flexibility and how funding will follow the child in future. Their initial estimates of the costs are around £1 billion a year. That is significantly higher than the Scottish Government’s figure of around £840 million, and the Government and councils are currently working together to refine those estimates.
We have made a number of recommendations to reduce the risks of failing to deliver the expansion by August 2020. In particular, the Government and councils urgently need to finalise their plans for recruiting and training the additional staff required and for funding and building the necessary infrastructure.
As always, convener, we will do our best to answer the committee’s questions.