Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Official Report 606KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Provision of Early Learning and Childcare (Specified Children) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2019 [Draft]

Agenda item 2 is on draft subordinate legislation that is subject to affirmative procedure. Information about the instrument is provided in paper 1. There is also a submissions pack, including letters from the minister on issues that were raised during scrutiny of an instrument on funded childcare. The affirmative instrument will be dealt with under two agenda items. First, the committee has the opportunity to ask questions of the minister and her officials. After that there will be a formal debate on the motion that is published in the agenda.

I welcome Maree Todd MSP, who is the Minister for Children and Young People; Dr Alison Cumming, who is the deputy director of early learning and childcare; and Claire Cullen, who is a solicitor in the school education branch of the legal directorate of the Scottish Government. Ms Todd will make an opening statement.

Thank you very much, and good morning. The eligibility criteria for the funded early learning and childcare offer to two-year-olds are set out in legislation, and include looked-after children and children who are subject to kinship care or a guardianship order. The funded provision also covers children whose parents receive certain qualifying benefits—for example, universal credit and the benefits that will be superseded by universal credit. The order is concerned with one of the qualifying benefits.

Legislation currently specifies that a two-year-old is eligible when their parent receives the maximum child tax credit and maximum working tax credits, and when their annual income does not exceed a threshold that has been set, in United Kingdom, regulations at £6,420.

Due to changes in UK Government policy, it is now technically no longer possible for a parent who is aged 25 or over to meet that criterion. The UK Government has decided to increase the national living wage, but it has also frozen income thresholds for the maximum award of working tax credits and child tax credits at £6,420. The combined effect of the changes is that a parent who is over 25 and who works the minimum hours to qualify for working tax credits—16 hours a week—can now earn no less than about £6,800. Left unchanged, those UK Government policies would result in a significant decrease in the number of two-year-old children who are eligible for funded early learning and childcare in Scotland, despite there being no significant difference in the household circumstances of their families.

Scottish Government and local government agree that we do not wish those children to be unable to access funded early learning and childcare. It is important to be clear that no two-year-old who is currently receiving funded early learning and childcare will be affected by the changes, because once a child has met the eligibility criteria, they remain eligible despite any changes in circumstances.

The purpose of the order is to protect eligibility for two-year-olds whom we would expect to be eligible for funded early learning and childcare. The order will increase the income threshold to £7,320 per year for households that are in receipt of both child tax credit and working tax credits. That will mean that a similar profile of children will remain eligible for the entitlement, thereby ensuring that the two-year-old children who stand to benefit most will continue to have access to high-quality funded early learning and childcare.

Stakeholders that represent children and families, including Save the Children and One Parent Families Scotland, have indicated their support for the order. Our local government colleagues and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities representatives are also supportive of the legislative change. Although we do not expect a significant financial impact for local authorities, we have agreed, with COSLA, measures to monitor and respond jointly to any impact. Thank you.

Thank you, minister. We move to questions.

Thank you very much, convener. From looking at the numbers in the policy note, my understanding is that, without the change, the number of eligible two-year-olds would decrease by 4,000. What proportion of the 14,000 children who are currently eligible are taking up places, and how you think the instrument might impact on that?

Daniel Johnson is quite right—we need this Scottish statutory instrument to protect eligibility for the children whom we are trying to target. We think that, at the moment, about 25 per cent of the two-year-old population in Scotland is eligible, and that about 10 per cent of the whole two-year-old population take up the offer, which is about 40 per cent of the eligible children. We are putting in a lot of work across the board to improve uptake. A number of measures are in place, which I can elaborate on if you want.

Could you elaborate a little bit? My understanding is that you committed in 2018 to doubling uptake to 60 per cent. It sounds as though some progress has been made on that, if uptake is 40 per cent, but what steps are you taking to ensure maximum take-up of this important benefit?

That is an absolutely key aim of the Government, which recognises that the ELC expansion will deliver real benefits to eligible children and families. It will reduce the poverty-related attainment gap, more parents will have the opportunity to be in training, work and study and family resilience will improve. We are very keen—as are our local authority partners—to ensure that parents of children who are eligible are aware of the offer and are encouraged to take it up. We are working with local authorities and with private and third sector services to increase uptake.

At national level, the Scottish Government has been working with the children and young people improvement collaborative since September 2018 to support nine local authorities, through multi-agency teams, to use improvement methods to increase awareness and uptake of funded ELC for two-year-olds. The collaborative is due to report this month. We will then share across the country the lessons that those nine local authorities have learned.

We are also working with the UK Government to develop a legal gateway and a data-sharing agreement. You will be aware that, in England, local authorities have had access to Department for Work and Pensions data since 2011, which has helped them to identify eligible parents. We have been working very hard with the UK Government to try to deliver that legal gateway so that our local authorities can also identify eligible families and target the offer.

We are working to improve the information that is given to parents and carers in order to help them to make informed decisions about ELC. Once we have identified eligible parents and carers and we are able to make them the offer, we give them good information that helps them to make a good decision on whether it suits their family circumstances to take it up.

Forgive me, minister, but what does that mean? You said the Government is working with local authorities. What is the content of that work? Given that your own figures say that 20 per cent of people who are eligible do not take up the offer because they are not aware of the provision, what steps are you are taking? What information are you providing and how are you communicating information about the scheme?

We are improving the information that is available to parents and carers in order to help them to make informed decisions about ELC, particularly through the ELC parent club. We are continually exploring opportunities to promote the offer for eligible two-year-olds through other services, including the financial health check, the new best start payments, and health visiting, in which ELC is included as a topic that can be discussed at child health development reviews. Unlocking uptake will really be supported by the legal gateway.

Since I became minister, we have been working to try to ensure that we can obtain the legal gateway from the UK Government. There has been real frustration about the slowness of progress, but I can report today that we have made progress. We had agreement back in July that a legal gateway is required, so we are working with UK Government legal drafters on legislation that will be out for consultation before the end of year, I hope. Obviously, the committee would be very welcome to respond to that consultation. Work will be on-going, but unfortunately we will be absolutely at the mercy of the UK parliamentary timetable over the next year. However, we are very keen to see the provision progress through Parliament and become law.

Alongside all that, we are working on technical aspects: as well as work on obtaining the legal gateway, we are working very hard to find out how we will use that gateway so that once it is in place we will be able to hit the ground running in terms of ensuring that we get the offer to where it is required.

When you were here in May, I asked you some questions around children whose entry to primary 1 is deferred. I appreciate that you have provided quite a substantial response in advance of today’s meeting. That response is really about how you intend to collect information on those children on a wide range of characteristics—gender, ethnicity, disability, additional support needs, home postcode and so on. That is interesting, but I am puzzled about where that is going. Once you know those characteristics about the deferred children, what do you intend to change?

Iain Gray is quite right that, over the summer, my officials have been reviewing the current data and working with COSLA to consider other sources of data in order to better inform our understanding of deferral and uptake of ELC. I have written to inform the committee of that work.

I believe that the ELC census will help us to understand the picture around deferral. You will remember that, at the previous meeting, there was a suggestion that some groups in society are particularly disadvantaged by deferral decisions, so we need to understand that picture better before we make decisions about what we will do, going forward.

Core disadvantage has nothing to do with any of those characteristics, though, does it? The core disadvantage is that a child whose parent exercises their absolute right to defer, whose birthday lies between August and December, will be denied free funded hours of ELC. How will counting those children help to address that?

That is not correct at all, Mr Gray. Any child who would not be five at the start of August is automatically entitled to defer that year. For children who are born in January and February, there is an automatic entitlement to funded further ELC. For children who are born between August and December, that right to funded ELC is not automatic: a decision on that must be made with the local authority. In order to improve that decision making, and to improve consistency around the country, I am bringing in statutory guidance that will help local authorities to involve parents in that decision making, to ensure that the decision is based on the principles of getting it right for every child. We are also working hard to improve communication. If you remember—

I am sorry, but are you suggesting that you want to try to change parents’ minds about deferral?

No—not at all.

You said authorities would work with parents to ensure that they make the right decision.

Absolutely.

The decision is entirely the parents’.

One of the things that we have established is that, in different parts of the country, parents get very different responses when they ask about deferral. We want to ensure that responses are consistent and that decisions are made with the parents, based on the principles of GIRFEC.

The decision about deferral is not the local authority’s to make.

No.

The decision about deferral is the parents’ decision to make. Is that correct?

That is absolutely correct, but the decision about funding—

If the parent makes a decision to defer, as they are entitled in law to do, they will be denied automatic funding of the 1,140 hours, after next year. That is where there is unfairness, is it not?

10:15  

I have been very clear. The situation at the moment is that those parents are free to decide to defer. The decision about which there is discretion for the local authority is about whether that deferment should be funded.

Okay—and have you no intention of changing that?

I am not saying that I have no intention of changing it. What I am saying is that I require more information in order to make the decision. I will meet the give them time campaign later this month. I want to discuss progress that we have made on some of its asks and what more might be required to ensure that the campaign’s aims are fulfilled. The campaign’s work so far has been incredible—it has done really well to highlight the issue and to improve communication about it. When I meet the campaigners at the end of this month, I will certainly be happy to discuss any options that they want to explore.

Maree Todd may have already answered this question in her introduction when she talked about working with COSLA, but I will ask it to avoid any doubt. There is a cohort of vulnerable children and families that would benefit from the change. Will funds be made available to local government if there is a shortfall?

We have worked hard with local authorities to understand the potential financial impact. We expect that it will be manageable within the current ring-fenced ELC settlement, which provides for a higher uptake of two-year-old offer than is currently the case.

We have agreed with our local authority colleagues that we will monitor the impact of this legislative change. If any action is required, both sides are absolutely committed to taking that action. This is a high priority for both central Government and local authorities. We are very keen to work together and to make sure that the relevant group of families is effectively targeted, because we think it will have a transformative impact on them.

I kind of got that idea in your preamble, but I thought that it was worth while to put it on the public record.

I have a general question about childcare. I was impressed when you answered a question by using a bridge analogy. You said that, before we can cross a bridge, we need to build it. I am wondering about the general infrastructure. Are we making progress on the complement of staff and, of course, the estate—the places for children and families to go—that are required for the change? Are you going to meet the targets that you have set for the endgame? I get the bridge analogy—that is right. How are we with regard to the finish line?

I am confident that we are going to be able to deliver our commitment in August 2020. We have a joint delivery board with a number of local authority partners and Care Inspectorate partners around the table, and we look closely at both intelligence and data. The last data collection was in April, and we proactively published that. We are keen that everybody who is interested in the progress on our commitment is able to access that data. In the future, we will make sure that we let this committee know when we are publishing information, but we are confident that we are absolutely where we would expect to be at this time.

As I have said many times when I have been criticised for the fact that we are not quite there yet, we still have a year to go. The analogy that I used was the Queensferry crossing. Nobody expected to be driving over that Queensferry crossing a year before it was ready.

That explains it. Thank you.

You mentioned that you had a concern that different local authorities were using different criteria when measuring some of the issues around a child’s readiness to go to school and what that meant for funding decisions. Can you say a bit more about what kind of criteria you would like local authorities to use and how you would like to see that standardised?

Is this with regard to the deferral issue?

I am asking about funding decisions related to deferral and the tests that local authorities apply to those decisions.

Central Government is very clear that the schools should be child ready, rather than children having to be school ready. We are very keen that decisions on deferral should be made in a child-centred way. We have seen a number of different deferral policies and there were concerns from parents that they were not able even to see those deferral policies. We have worked hard with local authorities to improve that, so that they take a more child-centred approach and make sure that their policies are transparent and that parents can access them, so that parents can work with the local authority to make a good decision.

There are real improvements and significant changes happening around the country. As well as, we hope, better quality decision making and more standardised criteria, there is a significant shift happening in the way that education is delivered. For example, last week I visited Canal View primary school in Wester Hailes, which made the decision a couple of years ago to switch to play-based pedagogy in ELC and the early years of school. That has made a significant difference to children’s transition into school, with regard to how straightforward it is, how ready they are and how able they are to take advantage of the education that is on offer in early primary. There is an awful lot of change happening, and I am confident that we will make progress on this issue.

Can I seek clarification on something that you just said? I may have misheard slightly. You said that you wanted schools to be ready for the children rather than the children to be ready to go to school. What do you mean by that?

Canal View is an example of exactly that. Children in the early years at school are very young. Some of the concerns that I have expressed around deferral are that those children are not ready to sit at desks yet, for example, or to write. Last week, when I went to Canal View primary school, which is using play-based pedagogy, I walked into the primary classrooms, and they looked just like a nursery. There is free play and the work is child led, and children have made significant improvements in their acquisition of language and numeracy as a result of that change.

Do you make that comment because you feel that provision is not entirely in line with the demands of parents whose children are going to be in those places?

One concern expressed by parents who wish to defer is that they do not want their children to go into a formal learning environment aged five. I am saying that there is a significant shift happening in early years education in schools in Scotland, where there is more evidence of a play-based pedagogy, and the transition into primary is not as challenging for many children.

To confirm, is the Scottish Government having very extensive conversations with councils about that?

Yes, always.

One criticism of the current situation is that the assessment of whether the child is suitable for deferral is being made by people who do not know the child or their background well enough. Is that something that you see changing? Will you discuss that with the give them time campaign?

Yes, undoubtedly. I have heard stories from around the country about parents who feel that they have not been involved in the decision. That is not appropriate. Parents should absolutely be at the centre of the decision. As I said, we are refreshing the statutory guidance, which we hope will improve the quality of decision making so that parents will feel that they are well informed and involved in the decision.

I think that that has exhausted questions from the committee. Agenda item 3 is the formal debate on motion S5M-18219, in the name of the minister. I remind everyone that officials are not permitted to contribute to the formal debate and I ask the minister move the motion.

Motion moved,

That the Education and Skills Committee recommends that the Provision of Early Learning and Childcare (Specified Children) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2019 (SSI 2019/draft) be approved.—[Maree Todd]

Motion agreed to.

The committee must report to Parliament on the instrument. Are members content for me, as convener, to sign off a report to the Parliament on the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

I thank the minister and her officials for their attendance, and I suspend the meeting to allow witnesses to change over.

10:25 Meeting suspended.  

10:27 On resuming—