Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Official Report 527KB pdf

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Early Years and Childcare

The next item of business is a briefing from Audit Scotland. I welcome Caroline Gardner, the Auditor General for Scotland; Antony Clark, assistant director at Audit Scotland; Tricia Meldrum, senior manager at Audit Scotland; and Rebecca Smallwood, senior auditor at Audit Scotland. The purpose of this session is to allow the Auditor General to brief the committee on her report “Early Learning and Childcare” and to allow members to ask questions on the findings. I understand that the Auditor General will first make a short statement.

Thank you, convener. As you know, improving outcomes for children and their families is a priority for the Scottish Government. My report, with the Accounts Commission, “Early Learning and Childcare” looks at how the Scottish Government expanded free provision of childcare to 600 hours in 2014 and what impact that has had on children and parents. It also looks at planning for the expansion to 1,140 hours by 2020.

The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 increased funded early learning and childcare. From August 2014, entitlement rose from 475 hours to 600 hours a year for all three and four-year-olds, and for eligible two-year-olds, which is estimated as 15 per cent of two-year-olds. From August 2015, eligibility expanded to around a quarter of two-year-olds.

We found that the Government and councils worked well together to expand provision, and parents are positive about the benefits for their children. Parents in our research reported a range of benefits, including improvements in cognitive development, social skills and behaviour, and children being better prepared for school. However, they also reported a limited impact on their ability to work, due to the number of hours available and the way in which those hours are provided, such as half-day sessions with fixed start and pick-up times.

Since 2014, the Government has invested almost £650 million of additional funding for the expansion to 600 hours, but the Government was not clear about the specific outcomes that it expected to achieve for children and parents. When the expansion was introduced, the Government stated that improving outcomes for children and outcomes for parents were equally important objectives, but there is a potential conflict between them. Improving outcomes for children means focusing on quality, whereas flexibility is more important if the aim is to improve outcomes for parents. The Government has now stated that the primary aim of the further expansion to 1,140 hours is to improve outcomes for children.

The report highlights the lack of options appraisal to inform the expansion. The Government implemented the increase to 600 hours without comparing the costs and the outcomes associated with different ways of achieving its objectives. There is a lack of clear evidence that increasing the number of funded hours each week for children already receiving early learning and childcare improves their outcomes. The evidence is clearer that starting nursery at an earlier age can benefit children, particularly those in lower socioeconomic groups or with poorer home learning environments. The Government could have considered other ways of achieving its objectives, such as earlier access to funded early learning and childcare for all children for fewer hours, or earlier access to more hours for those children who are likely to benefit most.

The Government did not plan how to evaluate the impact of the expansion to 600 hours or make sure that baseline data was available, so it is 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, including publishing some baseline data. The Government and councils are working hard to plan for the expansion to 1,140 hours by August 2020, but councils had to prepare their initial expansion plans in the absence of important information about how the system will work from 2020, such as the quality standard expected, the flexibility required, and how the new funding follows the child model will work. Given the scale of the changes required, we feel that the Government should have started detailed planning with councils sooner.

Councils’ initial estimate of the costs of delivering 1,140 hours is around £1 billion a year, which is significantly higher than the Government’s figure of around £840 million. Councils estimate that they will need 12,000 extra whole-time equivalent staff, and £690 million for changes to infrastructure, while the Government expects that the expansion will need between 6,000 and 8,000 more staff, and it has initially allocated around £400 million for infrastructure. Some of the differences between those figures are due to different assumptions about flexibility, workforce and the uptake of funded places by eligible children.

The Government and councils are now working together to develop the plans, but it is clear that the expansion will require a significant increase in staffing and infrastructure over the next two and a half years, and it is difficult to see how that can be achieved on time.

We are happy to answer the committee’s questions.

09:45  

You talked about the difference between local authorities’ estimates and the Government’s estimates. Why is the report based on the local government figures? We seem to be taking those as the correct figures and the Government’s figures as a shortfall. Could it be anything to do with the way that potential uptake is being measured? Are local authorities suggesting a higher uptake than the Government is suggesting?

I do not think that we are saying that either figure is right; we are simply pointing out the difference between the two. In some ways, I am not surprised that there is a difference between the Government and councils at this stage. What we say in the report is that councils did not have some of the information that they needed about quality, flexibility and how the funding follows the child model will work, which has led to some of the differences. We also know that councils have done their modelling from the bottom up, whereas the Government has done it from the top down. Given the short time available until August 2020, we think that that makes it harder to get the right staffing and infrastructure in place on time.

Are the Government and councils now working closely to achieve that?

They are at the moment, yes.

I apologise for having to leave early.

I have two brief questions, the first of which relates to the convener’s question. On workforce numbers, there appears to be some discrepancy between the numbers being talked about by Government ministers and the numbers talked about in your report. Can you shed any light on that discrepancy and, more to the point, what is going to fill the gap? When you were going through this exercise, did you come across training or other policies that are in place to ensure that we have enough trained staff to fulfil the policy?

I will ask Rebecca Smallwood to pick that point up, if I may.

You talked about the difference between the councils’ estimates of the workforce and the Scottish Government’s estimates of the workforce. Part of that difference is due to the fact that the council figures that we have in the report also include central staff, for example administration staff, who are not counted in the Government’s figures. The Government is purely estimating the number of practitioners.

The modelling used was also different. The Government has taken a zero-based approach, which looks at how many hours a day a practitioner will be delivering early learning and childcare—which works out at six of the seven hours that they are employed—and how many weeks of the year they will be able to provide that for. Its estimate is based on the existing workforce and the potential new workforce delivering at the same level of productivity. The model takes into account the number of hours that will be needed for the expansion to 1,140 hours and works out how many practitioners would be needed. It assumes that there is the potential to make efficiencies in the way in which existing staff work at the moment.

The councils are not always explicit about their approaches. However, where there is information on that, we can see that they have taken their current model for staffing and scaled it up for the expansion to 1,140 hours, taking account of the change of ratios if a longer day is being provided. The councils and the Government have basically taken different approaches to the modelling, which partly explains the differences between the figures.

That is a helpful answer, although it suggests that the point about flexibility has not been taken into account. Small nursery classes in small schools, in parts of Scotland that many of us represent, will be very different from big nurseries here in Edinburgh. Please correct me if I am wrong, but it does not strike me that the model that you have just described would take into account the difference between having four kids in a class and having lots more kids in a class, for example in the middle of a city.

The Scottish Government’s model assumes an hour a day per child to account for flexibility. However, I do not think that the Government has modelled for rural versus city areas.

Following on from Tavish Scott’s questions, there is a variable picture across local authorities. Is it a similar picture on take-up among eligible two-year-olds? Are the same local authorities that offer more flexibility offering a larger percentage of eligible two-year-olds access to nursery, or is that completely off the mark?

It is worth saying that understanding how many eligible two-year-olds are taking up their place is not as straightforward as we initially assumed that it would be. The number of eligible children depends on factors that are individual to each child and family, for example the benefits that they receive, whether the children are looked-after children and so on. I will ask the team to pick up the question of the variability across local government.

It is about not just eligible two-year-olds but whether three and four-year-olds are taking up their nursery places.

The problem that we have is the way in which the information is collected at the moment. We do not know exactly how many children are eligible in each council area. We know what the uptake is among two-year-olds overall, but not all two-year-olds are eligible, so it is hard for us to compare across councils. The councils that have a higher uptake among two-year-olds may well have a higher number of eligible two-year-olds, so that makes it difficult for us.

It is also hard to quantify which councils are the most flexible. The information that we have shows some of the models that are on offer, but it is hard for us to quantify, using those models, what proportion of places are open for half a day, from 8 o’clock until 6 o’clock or from 9 o’clock until 4 o’clock.

Why is it difficult? Did the councils not give you that information? It seems to me quite fundamental that you should be told, at the very least, how many children are eligible and how many nurseries offer flexible places.

The issue is that the councils do not know which two-year-olds are eligible in their area. There are issues around information sharing between the Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the councils. Although councils employ a variety of strategies to promote uptake among eligible two-year-olds, we know that one of the reasons for a lower uptake than anticipated is that parents do not necessarily know that their child is eligible.

If the information is not there, does that make it difficult for the Government to do the work that you are saying should have been done to analyse take-up?

There is a broader issue beyond the two-year-olds, which is data on the actual activity levels of funded early learning and childcare throughout Scotland and within local authority areas. I look to Rebecca Smallwood to correct me if I get this wrong, but the data is gathered on an annual census, which simply captures how many children are registered in different settings at a point in the year. Local authorities do not necessarily have good, reliable data from their partner providers about the number of parents that use funded places and pay to top up early learning and childcare. That is important information to help local authorities to understand the capacity in the system at the moment and the gaps that need to be filled as we move towards the expansion to 1,140 hours. The Government and local authorities are aware of that issue and are working through it as part of their expansion planning, but there are significant issues around data availability to inform appropriate planning.

Can I follow up on the fact that you do not seem to have obtained information from councils about flexibility? I accept the point about the DWP and the two-year-olds, but surely councils must know, for example, how many of their providers are open from 8 o’clock until 6 o’clock. That sort of information must surely be available to you.

That information is available—the Care Inspectorate collects information on that. The issue is that although a setting might be open for those hours, it might not have places for all children for all of those hours. A small proportion might be offered the extended provision, but a large number may get a part-day place. That information is not collected consistently.

Local authorities have clearly got to start gathering that information in some way.

Let us go back to the workforce issue to pick up something that Tavish Scott said. I want to be clear about the difference between the number of staff that the Scottish Governnent says will be needed to deliver the 1,140 hours and what local authorities are saying, which is that 12,000 staff will be needed. There is a difference of 4,000 between the two figures, and I want to be absolutely clear. In a previous answer, Ms Smallwood said that a lot of that difference is down to local authorities including administration staff in their estimate. Is that correct?

The councils’ figure includes admin staff.

Is that 4,000 admin staff?

No. Some of the difference is because of the inclusion of admin staff, but some of it will be because they have taken different approaches to modelling how many staff they will need in the future. The Government’s approach assumes that the existing staff might be able to deliver ELC more efficiently. It has taken a uniform approach to the number of hours a day that someone can do it. The councils have looked at the existing staffing models and have adjusted them to take account of changes to staffing ratios, because, if people are working a longer day, there will need to be more members of staff.

If the purpose of increasing the number of hours is to improve outcomes for children, surely more staff will be needed. It would seem a huge underestimate to say that the 8,000 whole-time equivalent staff could deliver the level of care and education that are required for the increased number of children in the system while improving outcomes.

As Rebecca Smallwood says, the Government’s figure is based on a standard assumption about the ratio of staff to children across Scotland, whereas the councils’ figures are built up for each of the 32 local authorities, taking the provision they currently have but scaling it up from 600 to 1,140 hours. As Rebecca says, there is also a difference because of the inclusion of admin staff in the councils’ figures. Some of the difference will come down to quality, some will come down to flexibility and some will be down to the fact that there is an element of negotiation about the funding that is required.

The point that we are making is that there is a gap. We suspect that the Scottish Government’s figures are on the low side, and there is not very much time to get those staff in place before August 2020.

I would have expected both the Government’s figures and the local authorities’ figures to use the same basis to calculate the staff to children ratio—that there would not be any difference—but it seems that one is calculating the ratio slightly differently.

I think that it is a question for the Government. I can see that there may be an element of flexibility in some nursery settings, which the Government will want to understand. Equally, however, for us to be 19 months away from the point at which the 1,140 hours’ entitlement is meant to be delivered and for there to be that big a gap between the staffing assumptions that the two levels of government are working on seems a problem that will make it harder to get the childcare in place by August 2020.

I have a final question. In your opening remarks, you said that the Government should have started planning with councils earlier to meet the target. I accept that I am asking you to speculate, but do you think there is a danger that the target of 1,140 hours will not be met by 2020?

In the report, we say that we think it will now be difficult. That is not to say that the target cannot be met, but there is an awful lot to be done in terms of training and recruiting the number of staff that are required while extending and improving buildings or building new buildings for nursery provision where that is needed. We know, from the amounts of money that are involved, that both of those are big pieces of work. As we have been discussing, there are still differences of view about how much investment is needed, but 18 months is not a long time in which to make that investment, particularly when all councils are trying to increase their provision by that amount at the same time.

They also have to recruit and train new staff.

Exactly.

I apologise to the witnesses and to colleagues for my slightly late arrival this morning. I would like to drill down into some very interesting comments that Ms Smallwood and Mr Clark have just made about the data. Accuracy of data is obviously crucial in guiding the policy.

You have given us some idea of where you think there are discrepancies. Could I ask for a little bit more detail about that? Is it your impression that there are considerable difficulties in getting the information that ought to be coming from the DWP and HMRC to inform councils, or is that data there but not being extrapolated correctly? What do you feel is the problem in getting hold of that crucial information?

I think that the problem is around data sharing. It would probably be worth taking the issue up with the Scottish Government, because it will have more of the detail. There have been on-going discussions between the Government and the DWP on the matter and it might be able to give you a more up-to-date picture of progress.

You say the problem is around data sharing. Is the problem likely to be increased given the data protection changes that are coming in in May?

I am not sure whether those changes will cover it.

I feel very strongly that there are two issues here. The first is that, from a policy angle, we have to improve the accuracy of the data that needs to be collected. Secondly, it is important to ensure that the parents with eligible youngsters know what their entitlement is. Do you feel that there is a lot more work to be done on the second of those issues? Do local authorities need to make a lot of changes in how they ensure that parents are aware of what their entitlement is?

10:00  

We found that informing the parents of eligible two-year-olds, in particular, of their entitlement is key in getting the take-up figure up from around 10 per cent to 25 per cent. Some councils have done some very good work, but the evidence that we heard from parents was that the issue is more widely one for parents of three and four-year-olds as well.

It is obviously a complex area, and it is difficult for parents to navigate their way through what they are entitled to, what options are available and so on. We include a recommendation that councils and the Government should help to make that information clearer for parents, so that they understand what they are entitled to and what options are available to them.

Right. We are told that there is a 97 per cent uptake of registration for funded places. Do you get the impression that 97 per cent is an accurate figure?

As Antony Clark said, that figure is based on a census at a point in time. The census is carried out once a year, so that was the number of registered children at that point in time. However, we do not know how many children that is. There is also an element of double counting, as children could be registered at more than one place.

Is it not key that we identify exactly where those eligible children are?

We are aware that the Scottish Government and councils are working together to improve the recording of data around the uptake of places, registrations and so on.

Do you have any idea when that work is going to be completed?

We think that it will be in place around the 2020 expansion date.

You are quite right that the information must be out there for parents. How can we get that if there is a barrier preventing the sharing of information between the DWP and the Scottish Government, local authorities or whoever is responsible for it? We cannot get the information out there unless we have it.

The evidence from the research that Rebecca Smallwood and Tricia Meldrum have mentioned is that one of the best ways of making people aware of their eligibility for these important services is through people such as health visitors and staff who are engaging with families anyway. There is a role for staff working in the community to act as the communicators of eligibility, making sure that people are taking up the funded early learning and childcare services that they are entitled to.

A broader point is that strategic planning is important for local authorities. In the report, we make the point that local authorities need to get better at developing proper strategic commissioning plans for the services they will need to deliver after the expansion. That should involve engaging with communities and understanding the needs of families and parents, which will inform the appropriate targeting of the resources that are being invested for the future.

Given the complexities of the welfare system, the information surely has to be shared between the DWP, local authorities and the Government to make sure that the health visitors are giving the right information to the right people.

Absolutely. That is key for the grouping of eligible two-year-olds.

That is primarily what I am talking about.

For three and four-year-olds, the entitlement is universal, so it is much more about all health visitors and general practitioner practices knowing what the entitlements are and being able to point parents in the right direction. Our work showed that that makes a big difference to parents’ take-up.

I take that on board. Thank you.

Good morning. I am sorry to labour the point about data. I seem to be asking this question in every committee I am on. Are you saying that local authorities do not know who all those who are eligible are? If so, is that because, as Liz Smith said, there is a problem in accessing the data? Is there a problem with the process, the legality or whatever? Is that the problem, or is it the fact that the data is just not there at all?

The data is there. The team will keep me right on this. The key problem in councils not knowing who is eligible is around two-year-old children. It is estimated that about 25 per cent of two-year-olds are eligible, either because their parents receive certain benefits or because they are looked-after children. However, councils will not automatically know who those children are without information from HMRC and the DWP. The information is held by those two agencies, but it is not shared with councils at the moment. There is no statutory duty on councils to hold that data themselves, so they have to negotiate with HMRC and the DWP to gain access to it. We understand that that negotiation is under way.

Okay. It is interesting to hear about the difference between the Scottish Government and local government figures. This is a two-pronged question. First, headquarters staff were taken into account: is that HQ staff who are currently in local government as we speak—admin staff and central staff? Secondly, in your opinion, is this just the usual dance that the Scottish Government and local government do—I was a local councillor—or are they effectively negotiating at this point to see how they can deliver the service?

I will start off with the second of your points. I would be surprised if there was not an element of negotiation on the number of staff and the costs involved. That is routine. However, the gap is quite significant at this point. We understand some of the reasons why it is there, given the different approaches that the Government and councils have taken to modelling and estimating the figures, but that gap needs to close.

I am sorry, but I have forgotten what your first question was.

Are the HQ staff already in local government?

Those are the additional admin staff that councils think they will need to expand the provision to 1,140 hours.

Are they additional to the staff who are already there?

That is right.

So, that figure could be part of the negotiation between the two levels of government. There is always a difference between local government and national Government about service delivery, because one is on the front line and one is looking from afar. Work is still being done between the two to reach agreement. Are we in the early stages at this point?

Yes. As I said in my response to the convener’s opening question, we are not so much expressing surprise that there is a gap as noting the size of the gap and the fact that some of it is because the councils did not have the guidance that they needed on things like flexibility, equality standards and how funding will follow the child in the future. That means that it is taking longer to close the gap while the clock is ticking towards 2020.

This is probably a good time to remind members that we need to keep our questions short, as we have an early start to chamber business today. I say that not because your are next, Oliver, but because of previous questions.

I believe you, convener.

I wonder whether there is a detailed breakdown of the difference between the Scottish Government’s and the councils’ figures. You mentioned that admin staff make up some of that difference, but do you have a detailed breakdown?

We might be able to give you something on that. I will give you what we have. You might be better off asking the Government, because the picture is moving all the time. We know that the councils have been changing their figures recently and submitting them to the Government, so it might be able to give you a more up-to-date picture of the difference, which might be more helpful.

That is helpful. I am also interested in whether you feel, even on the basis of the Government’s more optimistic figure, that it will be very difficult to recruit that number of staff in the given timescale.

Our concerns are twofold. Yes, it will be difficult to recruit that number of staff and have them trained to the required standard by August 2020. Alongside that, the investment in infrastructure is significant. Both sides recognise that it is significant, whatever the exact figure is, and everybody will be looking to have that infrastructure in place over the same short period of time, which is why we concluded that it will be difficult to achieve the expansion by August 2020.

In my constituency, there is concern that, as the local authority expands its nursery provision, a number of its staff are likely to come from existing private and voluntary providers. Have you looked at that issue? It would obviously have a significant effect on provision, particularly in smaller rural communities.

We know that it is a concern. Rebecca Smallwood can pick that up.

The partner providers have raised that with us as a concern when we have spoken to them. It is hard for them to recruit in the first place, and they are losing staff to council provision, where they are getting better terms and conditions. They have definitely raised that as a risk.

In Dumfries and Galloway, all the private providers have asked for a halt to the procurement process, because they are worried that they cannot deliver what has been asked of them at the price that the council is willing to pay. It could result in around 2,000 places being lost if some of those providers begin to fold. Have you looked at that in the context of the payment per place?

We refer to it in paragraph 102 of the report, where we make reference to the National Day Nurseries Association’s survey, in which providers talk about the differential rate that they charge parents as opposed to the fee that they receive from local authorities. They highlight it as a risk in the expansion moving forward.

Have you considered setting a standardised national rate across different local authorities? One of the other concerns that I have heard repeatedly is that different local authorities have used different modelling and have a different funding package for third party providers.

We did not look specifically at that as part of the audit. The introduction of a national policy would be a policy matter rather than an audit matter.

Is there any evidence that local authorities calculate the cost of a publicly provided place as X but offer external providers Y, so that they are driving costs out into the private and third sectors? Is that something that you have looked at?

We did not look at the unit cost calculation for local authority provision or private or third sector provision as part of the audit. It is certainly an interesting question, but it was not part of the audit work that we did. Rebecca Smallwood might want to add to that.

The Scottish Government produced a financial review that looked at that difference. The cost of council provision came out, on average, at £5.45 an hour, and I think that councils are paying partner providers, on average, £3.70 an hour. There are differences between the ways in which those rates are calculated, in that the £5.45 for councils is for three and four-year-olds, whereas the partner provider figure is for zero to four-year-olds.

Sorry—councils pay partner providers £3.59. The £3.70 is how much partner providers say it costs them. Councils also identified about 99p an hour as the cost to them of commissioning a partner provider place. That does not go to the partner provider; it is another cost that councils incur.

I imagine that provision for zero to four-year-olds costs more because the ratios are different. The younger the child is, the more it costs, but councils are offering less money. I suppose that that reflects the financial pressures on local authorities.

I have a question about admin staff. People can say, “Well, admin staff—what do they do? We don’t need to count them in the calculation”. However, I want to get a sense of what that cost might be. Has any work been done on the support staff that are needed in order for nurseries to deliver services for all children, but specifically for children with special needs? Has the cost of staff who are deemed to be support staff been brought into play in the calculations? It might be that that support allows a young person to access a nursery place.

I will ask Rebecca Smallwood to comment, but I think that the figure that she mentioned, which is in the councils’ estimates and not in the Government’s, is for the staff that councils need centrally to receive applications from parents of eligible two, three and four-year-olds and then match them with places that meet their needs as closely as possible, rather than for administrative staff in the nurseries themselves.

Is it reasonable to say that, although there might be some economies of scale where higher numbers of places and hours are administered, there are still costs associated with that?

Absolutely. Again, it will vary from council to council depending on what they are starting with and how many children they need to cover when we get to 1,140 hours.

I want to say a bit more about the nature of the young people who are coming in, but the submission that we received from the fair funding for our kids group says:

“The Care Inspectorate reports a third of 3-4 year olds are not receiving a funded place”.

Is it your understanding of the Government’s calculations that it is simply saying, “This is what we give; if we had more, it would be more”? Is it taking into account the deficit in access to places?

Twenty years ago, I did not access a funded place because the hours were ridiculous and were no use to somebody who was in full-time work, but I thought that things had moved on. Is the Government’s calculation based on the number of children in the system being bulked up, or is it acknowledging that there is a space where there is theoretically a right but it is not being accessed?

10:15  

I will ask Rebecca Smallwood to comment in a moment, but there are two complications there. I am sorry—this is complicated. First, as we say in the report, it is difficult to calculate how many children are eligible. The data are about registrations and not about children. There is a bit of complexity there that links back to the figures from the fair funding for our kids group.

Secondly, we know that the Government and councils have made different assumptions about the uptake of eligibility, which is part of the reason for the difference between them. Rebecca, do you want to put some flesh on that?

Yes. I think that the figure that the Care Inspectorate reported about a third of three to four-year-olds not getting their places was in trial statistics that it published only in one year. It labelled them as trial statistics because there were a lot of data quality issues. We believe that it has not published them again since the census figures, and although there are issues around the quality of those, they are probably the more reliable figures out of what is available at the moment on uptake.

I think that everyone is basing their projections for the 1,140 hours on the population rather than on how many people are currently taking up their places. For three and four-year-olds, they are basing their figures on the projected population, albeit with different assumptions about what the uptake will be.

Are they looking at the special needs of children? We know that it is more difficult where children’s needs cannot be met within the local authority’s places, and that might distort the figures on the costs. We also need to acknowledge that, if a local authority is effective at getting children with special needs into nursery settings, there will be support needs that go alongside that. Is there any evidence that work has been done on that? Surely we would hope that, given the expansion in hours, children who are currently excluded—I would not say that that happens routinely, but they may find it more difficult to access places—will be accommodated.

That work is on-going. The Scottish Government did a survey of about 10,500 parents and it looked at additional support needs as part of that. It found that 17 per cent of parents who have eligible children with additional support needs were dissatisfied with their access to suitable early learning and childcare, and about half had had one or more difficulty in accessing suitable provision.

There is an ELC inclusion fund of £2 million to help staff to support children with additional support needs, and that funds specialist training for ELC staff as well as equipment. I think that the Government has got to the stage of appointing a partner to administer that fund. It is not yet open for applications, but that is in the pipeline.

I presume that the £2 million will have to be bulked up. If we are increasing eligibility from 600 to 1,140 hours, £2 million is not going to be sufficient.

That is the current figure that we have.

Okay. Thank you.

The difference between the Government’s figures and the council’s figures is proportionately most striking when it comes to infrastructure. Will you expand on how such a dramatic difference has occurred there?

That is the biggest difference. Again, I think it comes down to the parties’ different approaches to modelling. Tricia Meldrum can say a bit more about that.

The Scottish Government’s guidance on infrastructure says that councils should make the best use of their assets first. There is a kind of ordering, and the first thing is to make the best use of what they already have. That includes expanding beyond school hours into school holidays et cetera. They should then look at the availability of partner providers and work with them, and the final option should be to build new infrastructure.

Whether the councils have taken that approach is not very clear from their plans. We understand that that is part of the discussions that are going on between the councils and the Scottish Government as they look at revising the plans. However, whichever way we look at it, I think that a significant amount of additional infrastructure will still be required over a short time period.

Absolutely. I think that the short time period is going to be a particularly acute issue. The Government’s overall figure is £400 million, but the councils estimate more than £400 million for entirely new infrastructure alone. Is there a breakdown of the £400 million? How much of it is for purchasing land, versus the cost of constructing on land that councils already own?

I am not aware of any breakdown. We have a figure of £411 million for new builds, but I do not know the breakdown between land and other things.

Okay. Thank you.

Ms Gardner, if we go right back to the start, you talked in your opening remarks about the Government being unclear about what the outcome priorities were. You said that, if the funding was following the child, it would be quality, and if it was following the parents, it would be flexibility. I am really at a loss to see why those should be two competing and disparate priorities and outcomes. What evidential work has been done on quality? Are you saying that flexibility inevitably reduces quality?

Not at all. Everybody agrees, I think, that an outcomes-based approach is a good thing, and that improving outcomes for children and helping parents into work, training or study are both worth while. The number of childcare hours is not an outcome but an output, although it is one that many parents welcome.

I think the clearest way to put it is that, if we are looking to improve outcomes for children, the evidence does not suggest that providing extra hours for children who are already receiving childcare does much to improve outcomes for children. There is much stronger evidence that starting access to early learning and childcare earlier improves outcomes. If that is the Government’s priority outcome, we think that, rather than making 600 hours available for all children, it should have at least considered whether it could have had more of that outcome by providing fewer hours for all children from the age of two, or by taking the most disadvantaged children and giving them additional hours from the age of two onwards.

The point is not so much that quality and flexibility are in competition, but that the outcome that we are trying to achieve affects the way in which we invest the money that we are putting in. There is significant investment in the policy for very good reasons.

We will finish on that note. I thank the Auditor General and her colleagues for their attendance. I understand that the minister has been watching the evidence from her ministerial office. I will suspend the meeting for a couple of minutes as we await her.

10:22 Meeting suspended.  

10:25 On resuming—