Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Official Report 648KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 (Modification) Order 2021 [Draft]

Item 2 is consideration of draft subordinate legislation that is subject to the affirmative procedure; details of the instrument appear in paper 3. The consideration of an affirmative instrument has two agenda items: the committee will first have an opportunity to ask questions of the minister and then item 3 will be a debate on the motion.

I welcome to the committee meeting Maree Todd, the Minister for Children and Young People; Simon Mair, the head of 1,140 strategy and delivery at the Scottish Government; and Carolyn O’Malley, principal legal officer in the Scottish Government legal directorate.

I invite the minister to make an opening statement to explain the order.

Thank you. When I attended the committee on 9 December, I reported that the early learning and childcare programme joint delivery board had recommended a new 1,140 hours delivery date of August 2021. Following careful consideration and agreement to that recommendation by the Scottish ministers and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities leaders, I confirmed that date to Parliament on 14 December. We took another important step towards the delivery of the transformational ELC expansion programme on 22 January, when I was pleased to lay the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 (Modification) Order 2021 in Parliament. That instrument will reinstate the duty on education authorities to make 1,140 hours of funded ELC available to eligible children in each year for which they are eligible, with a pro rata amount for each part of a year from August 2021.

I assure the committee that the Scottish Government continues to work closely with local government to assess the impact of the current lockdown on the delivery of 1,140 hours and address any emerging risks to the programme.

In spite of the difficulties of the pandemic, including the current restrictions on ELC provision, local authorities and early learning and childcare providers have continued to work extremely hard to progress the expansion. The Scottish Government also continues to support local authorities to deliver the new entitlement in advance of the new statutory date, where it is possible to do so. We have agreed with councils a shared commitment that, where they can deliver expanded hours ahead of August 2021, that will be offered to families.

I am pleased to report that, since I attended the committee on 9 December, the number of local authorities that are delivering the expanded 1,140 hours in full has increased from 14 to 15 and many more local authorities are providing part of the 1,140 hours where they can. By reinstating the duty on education authorities to provide 1,140 hours, the instrument is crucial to the expansion of funded ELC. We know that the ELC expansion programme can provide transformational benefits for children and families and we remain committed to delivering it.

I am happy to respond to questions from the committee.

I thank the minister for that update. I think that we all welcome the reintroduction of the 1,140-hour target. Having adequate childcare in place is clearly important, perhaps more so now than before the lockdown.

Before Covid-19, a key concern, as highlighted by Audit Scotland, was the availability of the buildings that are required to deliver the 1,140 hours. A significant proportion of those buildings were required to be completed through last summer in order to be ready for the autumn. Can the minister update us on the preparedness and readiness of the buildings and on the capital requirements for meeting the 1,140 requirement?

I thank the member for that excellent question, and I am pleased to be able to answer it. Data that was available in January 2020 showed that the ELC infrastructure programme was on track to deliver about 90 per cent of the forecast number of additional spaces that are required in August 2020. That, combined with contingency plans having been identified for 100 per cent of the critical capital projects, provided us with confidence this time last year that sufficient spaces would be available for the beginning of the academic year.

The pandemic has, of course, had an impact, which has largely been felt in construction and in recruitment. Although recruitment is very much on track, construction is not back to full pre-pandemic capacity. Despite that, we are confident that the construction that we require for the project will be completed in time for the reinstatement. We have worked closely with COSLA and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, and we have interrogated the evidence that we have in an extremely detailed way to assure ourselves that local authorities are ready.

That process included data and intelligence gathering across local authorities, and all the components of delivery were assessed. As you will remember me discussing at the committee in December, we requested that an independent health-check review be carried out on the programme, and the findings of that review supported the readiness of assessment.

We do not underestimate the challenges ahead of us, particularly given the second wave of pandemic that we have faced, but we are confident that we can deliver the programme in August this year.

Good morning, minister. I have some questions on the roll-out of the policy. Although the numerical increase in August 2021 is welcome, what consideration has been given to the principle of the funding following the child? One of the primary concerns that we have heard is about the limited availability of hours on offer to parents, primarily as a result of the additional hours being available only at public-provided nurseries, which have limited hours of the day on offer or indeed limited days of the week available—and certainly no availability during school holidays. What consultation has been carried out on that principle, and will the policy improve the situation?

Funding follows the child is a cornerstone of the expansion and is underpinned by the national standard, which all providers have to meet in order to be signed up as funded partners. Thus far, local authorities have used more capacity from the private, voluntary and independent sector than they anticipated—the PVI sector is more involved than they predicted at the beginning of the expansion.

You are right in saying that that sector is precisely where we see the greatest flexibility. However, we are also seeing increased flexibility in local authority provision, with many more local authority nurseries open from 8 am until 6 pm, 52 weeks a year. I expect that aspect to continue to progress. At the moment, early learning and childcare are open only to key workers and vulnerable children. As we progress, I hope, towards a more normal, full opening, particularly come August 2021, I expect that flexibility to increase.

Mr Johnson mentioned how aware we all are of the need for early learning and childcare because of the pandemic. With the pandemic, we have learned just how vital that provision is and what an incredible support it is to families that our focus has always been on the quality of provision for children.

A secondary part of the programme has been ensuring that families get the support and the flexibility that they need. Funding follows the child will deliver those aspects when it is fully rolled out in August 2021. It will put the power into the hands of parents to choose the type of childcare—the hours and the provision, including childminding, which we have talked about many times previously—that suits their family.

I thank the minister for that helpful answer. We all hope that that will be the case; the proof will be in the pudding. I wonder whether the policy will assist with another area of concern that has been raised, which is the sustainability of the PVI sector, and with the role of childminders, which is also important.

One of the key issues that nurseries that I have spoken to have raised is the rate that is negotiated with their local authority. I accept that that is negotiated between councils and nurseries that choose to participate in the 1,140 scheme, but the general feedback has been that there seems to be either a presumption in favour of service provision by council-operated nurseries or a limit on the budget that the council has to negotiate with the PVI sector. Are we likely to see any improvements in the average rates that are paid to the PVI sector in order to make those funded places more sustainable? We are often told that we are heavily subsidising them with private paying places in the PVI sector, which is completely unsustainable for nurseries that choose to participate in the Government scheme.

I might ask my colleague Simon Mair to say a bit more about that issue. The payment of sustainable rates to funded providers has been vital in supporting financial sustainability throughout the pandemic. The landmark multiyear funding agreement that the Scottish Government and COSLA reached in April 2018 fully funded the expansion and included funding for the payment of sustainable rates, on which we have given extensive guidance. From August 2021, those rates will have to reflect the cost of delivery to providers.

Local authority funding to the private and third sectors has increased significantly in recent years. Average rates for delivery of 600 hours have increased by 26 per cent between August 2017 and August 2019. In April 2019, we issued guidance to local authorities to set sustainable rates for funded providers in the private and third sectors. That included childminders. Does Simon Mair have anything to add? It is an old question that we have gone over many times, and I genuinely believe that significant improvements have been made.

08:45  

I think that you have covered the main points. There is an important point about the level of guidance that has been provided to local authorities and the emphasis on local authorities working with their partners in the private and voluntary sectors to set rates that cover the true costs of delivering 1,140 hours. The only addition that I would make to your comments is that a key component is funding follows the child, which you have been talking about already, in that parents have the ability to take their provision in partnership settings or local authority settings, which to some extent directs the use of funding, as the funding goes with the child to the partnership setting.

I see no other questions, so we will move to item 3, which is the formal debate on motion S5M-23949.

Motion moved,

That the Education and Skills Committee recommends that the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 (Modification) Order 2021 [draft] be approved.—[Maree Todd]

Motion agreed to.

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Special Restrictions on Adoptions from Nigeria (Scotland) Order 2021 (SSI 2021/30)

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Education (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 (SSI 2021/31)

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Education (Fees and Student Support) (EU Exit) (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 (SSI 2021/28)

Item 4 is consideration of three negative instruments, details of which are in papers 4, 5 and 6. Do members have any comments on the instruments?

As no member has any comments, we will move on. I thank the minister and her officials for attending the committee this morning.