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Under agenda item 2, we will take background evidence from Scottish Executive officials to inform the committee's consideration of its proposed early years inquiry. In passing, I should say that we have received apologies from Adam Ingram, who is unable to join us this morning.
Essentially, the briefing paper provides the committee with an update on the work that we are currently engaged in. I am aware that we provided a briefing to the committee in June 2004 just prior to announcing the national review of the early years and child care workforce. The briefing paper tries to bring the committee up to date on the main initiatives. A wide range of initiatives is being taken forward across the Executive, but the paper focuses on work within the education portfolio. However, we are keeping in close contact with much of the related work, especially that which is being carried out by the Health Department. We have also provided the committee with information about the funding for key services—to expand child care and sure start Scotland in particular—and with basic information about the pre-school education position and several other initiatives. We are happy to answer the committee's questions about those or other matters.
The amounts of money to which various parts of your submission refer are impressive and reflect growing and varied provision. The other side of the coin is that the situation looks patchy because all sorts of pots of money and initiatives are involved, some of which look similar to others. Are Executive officials considering how comprehensive provision is and the ease and cost of access? Do people who look for child care and early years learning provision need a case manager to organise that for them?
The multiplicity of funding is probably more of a problem for professionals and those who provide services. We have given them clear steers—certainly in the consultation draft of the integrated early years strategy—about our intention to increase flexibility in the existing funding streams' boundaries, with a view to encouraging local authorities and other stakeholders to bring together what are seen as separate sources of funding in the interests of delivering the most effective services for our youngest children.
In relation to the extended schools child care pilot and the working for families fund, you mention that work has been done to evaluate whether the cost of child care puts people off and is difficult to overcome, particularly for disadvantaged parents. Will that lead to something such as a report or research outcome that would give us guidance? If so, what might be the timescale for that?
That matter was covered in recently published research—the survey on parents' access to and need for child care, which showed a reasonably positive funding picture. We are aware of more particular problems, especially in the more vulnerable rural and urban areas. The working for families fund is intended to address those. My colleagues who work in the social inclusion division, which is part of the communities portfolio, will examine the subject more closely. The moneys that have been made available have had early evaluation, but I am conscious that colleagues will do more work on that. I assume that more information will be available in the next 12 to 18 months.
I have one or two other points to make, but first I will throw open the meeting to other committee members.
I noted from your helpful submission that the integrated early years strategy, which was expected to be produced last year, is subject to a process of rethinking as a result of ministers' overall strategy. You are still working on a draft document. Will you give us insight—I know that that is difficult if the document has not had ministerial clearance—into the likely timescale for producing the draft document? What will happen to the draft document afterwards? Will it be subject to further consultation?
We intend to issue the final document as soon as possible, because the substantive content is largely unchanged from the consultation draft that was issued in March 2003. Essentially, we are still committed to what we described as the five building blocks of that integrated early years strategy. You will be aware that, since that time, ministers have been examining a wider range of issues around early years child care as well as their wider policies on children and young people's services and have asked us to recast that early years strategy in light of their developing thinking. As a result, although the current document is broader in focus than the consultation draft, the substantive messages remain the same.
So the document is not likely to be subject to further consultation.
I do not think so. We have not discussed that with ministers but, given that the fundamental messages are unchanged, our assumption is that we would not necessarily need to consult again.
When might the document be produced?
We hope that it will be produced within the next few months.
The committee will want to add value to what is happening. However, it is difficult to know exactly what we want to find out until we see the document.
Indeed. Ministers intend to make their position a lot clearer over the next few months. I hope that the document might be publicly available again by the end of March.
Nevertheless, you have said that it is likely that its central substance will be similar to that of the earlier consultation paper.
Absolutely. The fundamental messages of drawing services together, the importance of joint planning and commissioning of services and the identification of shared outcomes towards which all the services will be required to work remain unchanged and are central to our thinking.
I suppose that it is difficult to ask questions about a strategy that has not yet been published. However, is it fair to say that the main developments or concerns revolve around accessing child care rather than learning and education? Although nursery provision has been extended to many, the overlap with child care is the source of concern—if I can put it like that—and needs further development.
We are very aware of existing gaps in child care. Although provision has expanded significantly over the past two or three years, the parents' needs survey has identified gaps in particular parts of the system, such as the provision of out-of-school care for older children aged between 10 and 14. Members will not be surprised to learn that there are also gaps in provision for families in which the parents work unsocial hours. The briefing paper points out that, in that respect, we are expanding our sitter services.
That raises the issue of where child care or early years learning takes place. Obviously, it sometimes takes place in schools or centres of some sort. However, making arrangements when people move from one place to another must be awkward. Is any interest being taken in the concept of family centres, which are being developed in England? At first glance, they sound like quite a good idea.
Our draft integrated early years strategy is essentially predicated on the same model as family centres, although we have chosen not to call them family centres or, indeed, children centres. One of the key ideas in the document concerns the need to draw services physically together as far as possible. That may well happen around existing types of provision so that, for example, a nursery school becomes the hub of the early years community in a certain locality, to which would be drawn a range of other services, whether services for parents or more services for children.
Perhaps I am going further than I should on this, but does that have any implications for the number of schools that would be required in areas where schools are being closed?
I am not sure that I could comment on that.
My point is that, although arguments can be made about the economic viability of a school in the context of the provision of mainstream education, if nursery provision and wider early years provision is added, the economics become slightly different. Could that be examined? It is quite a complex matter.
Yes. I have not looked into that. Much early years provision is provided very effectively by the private sector. One solution to what may be a potential problem—I do not know whether it is a problem—is the fact that we have a range of provision. The message that we are giving out is that communities need to build around what is there and what is currently being used by parents and families. That may not necessarily be a school; in fact, in many cases it will not be.
I apologise for arriving late. I had to take my child to nursery in West Lothian. The nursery started at 8 o'clock and my transport was meant to get me here for quarter to 10, but that was impossible, which is relevant to the subject that we are discussing.
That is a clever excuse.
Transport and the location of child care services are important. We could look at that, as long as we do not duplicate the work that is about to be published.
I do not want to anticipate the outcome of ministerial consideration. We are aware of the transport issues in rural areas and we are exploring different ways of providing services. We have looked into the possibility of providing peripatetic services. In some remote areas, local authorities already provide a range of early years services using the peripatetic outreach model. It may be possible to roll that out further, but no decisions have yet been made.
I understand that you have just launched your zero-to-three guidelines.
Yes.
It would be helpful if the committee could receive copies of those guidelines, if we have not already. The content of provision has implications for the early years development of children. If there is disparity in provision—a wide range of provision—especially in rural as compared to urban areas, how can you ensure that every child gets the same opportunities even though the context and the environment in which the provision is delivered might differ from one part of Scotland to another?
The obvious answer is that that is why we have the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001 and why the care commission is charged, jointly with Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education in certain circumstances, to inspect all the formal care provision. It is their responsibility to ensure that wherever a child receives the service, the quality of the service is as high as it can be and that it fully meets our and the minister's expectations about the type of service available and the quality of care in that service. There are genuine issues in that area.
I return to the subject of support for parents. I note what is in the briefing, but how much progress has been made to link in with parents in more deprived areas or parents who are drug abusers? The committee was taken aback by the numbers of children and young people who live with drug-abusing parents.
We are working closely with our colleagues in the Health Department on their strategy for working with parents who abuse drugs and the impact of that abuse on their children. So we are engaging at a policy level.
Sure start Scotland is a major programme that is targeted at providing support for families with very young children. A major part of the programme are the various supporting strands for parents—that could be peer support, parenting skills classes or supported parent and child development. The programme accords to the needs of individual families. The sure start Scotland guidance makes it clear that parents and families should be involved in the development of those services so that their needs are at the heart of the programme.
How widely available are those services at the moment?
Funding goes to all 32 local authorities to identify local need.
Who monitors that programme?
There is an evaluation programme. A map of services, which is available on the website, was published in 2002 and details are in the briefing. We are doing another mapping exercise to see where progress has been made a couple of years on. We hope that that will give us a lot more detail.
Will that be published fairly soon?
I think that we are hoping to publish it in April.
I have a question about a slightly different point. You gave us a helpful list of all the different projects in your written evidence, but there are a number of commitments in the partnership agreement and it is not always obvious how the programmes relate to the commitments. It would be interesting to map out how the Executive sees each of the programmes contributing to the commitments in the partnership agreement. The first of the commitments is to improve the transition between nursery and primary and primary and secondary. What is the Executive doing to try to improve those transitions?
The fundamental work that is being developed to address that commitment is the three-to-18 curriculum review, which will also address the commitment to increase the flexibility of primary 1—at least that is our assumption. One of the principles that underpins the review is about managing transitions more effectively and smoothing them for children at whatever stage they occur. We are also looking to roll forward some of the approaches that have been developed successfully in the early years sector into more formal kinds of education. That is a substantial strand of work.
When are the results of that research likely to be published?
We have not yet let that tender. It is envisaged that the work will take between 12 and 18 months, so that will take us into next year.
That is interesting in the light of the current disputes about discipline in schools later on and how a problem develops. It would be interesting to see what can be done in the early years to tackle the issue.
It would be interesting, if it is possible, to get some information that maps out how the Executive's programmes and initiatives link with and contribute to the partnership agreement commitments.
We can do that.
Page 2 of your helpful submission mentions
Probably the most useful research that we have published recently is the baseline study. I cannot remember its title, but we may have provided a link to it in our submission. If we have not, we can send it to the committee.
I note that there is to be a child care workforce review. Would I be right in thinking that, at present, you are broadly content with the training and qualifications for child care employees?
We are in the process of a national review of the early years and child care workforce, by which we essentially mean people who would describe themselves as nursery nurses, people working in out-of-school care settings and people who would describe themselves as play workers. There are currently around 14 different qualifications for those workers at different levels, and they tend to be quite specialist. Part of the purpose behind the review is to examine those qualifications and determine how we might increase the career prospects of workers by, for example, improving flexibility and allowing movement between what are currently different sectors of the workforce. My colleague, Penny Curtis, might like to say a bit more on that.
There are five work strands to the workforce review. Perhaps the largest job for one of those strands is an examination of qualifications and training. There is a range of issues, such as whether there should be different levels of qualifications for some or all the workforce or a more generic qualification that would allow people to move across the different sectors. The qualifications might apply to the early years and child care sectors and to other children's services or related professions. How the workforce can access those qualifications also needs to be considered.
I am sure that increased flexibility will generally be welcome.
We are certainly content with the outcomes of the inspection programme. The joint inspection programme that has been developed and is currently being delivered was originally described as transitional. Essentially, it was expected to test out the model that had been developed. It will come as no surprise to any of you to learn that there have been some hiccups and difficulties. It has been necessary to make some minor adjustments. However, over the piece, the arrangements are working quite well. The approach has been different from that to which most providers had been accustomed. That in itself has required a bit of a shift in people's approach to inspections.
Education and child care straddle departmental responsibilities. You are all Education Department officials, but education and child care straddle your department and, presumably, the communities portfolio and other areas, which can cause awkwardness. The curriculum applies from three to 18. A lot of child care stuff applies before the age of three, so there is an issue there. In earlier discussions, we have heard that there is a nothing-to-18 curriculum, with associated provision and arrangements, in Scandinavian countries.
That is certainly true. The Cabinet delivery group on children and young people draws together the work of different departments and ministerial portfolios relating to children and young people. That is a driver for both co-ordination and progress across different Executive departments in relation to the various work streams.
Finally, I want to ask about the role of playgroups. Obviously, with the provision of nursery education, playgroups have changed over the years. Some playgroups have whole-heartedly entered into the new regime and others have perhaps faded away. What work are you doing with what used to be the playgroup sector to make the best use of the talents of the volunteers and others who are involved?
We provide direct funding to the Scottish Pre-school Playgroup Association and work closely with it with respect to its interests in promoting the work of playgroups and ensuring the quality and expansion of playgroups, where that is necessary. There has been a shift in focus in playgroups, which essentially started from grass-roots activity. Many playgroups developed as a result of parent-led initiatives to fill gaps in the provision of formal care in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but with the expansion of formal care, many people have thought that they no longer need playgroups in their locality. As a consequence, some playgroups have declined—indeed, some have ceased to exist.
I have a definitional question. One of the commitments in the partnership agreement was to
Indeed. The latter point is important. People who live in poverty do not necessarily live in wards or areas that are defined as deprived or vulnerable if postcode definitions are considered. The main piece of work on the provision of child care in more vulnerable communities is being taken forward under the communities portfolio by colleagues in the social inclusion division of the Scottish Executive Development Department, who provide the working for families funding that we referred to in the briefing paper. Some £10 million will be provided this year and next, and that will rise to £15 million in successive years. That money is targeted at particular areas. Funding is based on what I fear is a rather complex set of indicators that I do not have details about, although colleagues in the social inclusion division could undoubtedly provide the committee with information about them.
You mentioned the EPPE research, the insights it produced and the lessons that can be learned, but it is not mentioned in the briefing you have sent us and, given that you are embarking on a longitudinal study in Scotland and the new birth cohort will not be recruited—understandably—until 2008, it would be of value to our inquiry if we could get a sense of what the seven-year longitudinal study reveals in the context of the UK. It might be helpful if, as well as providing us with the relevant internet address, you could also tell us what you think are the main insights of that research and what you have taken from it in relation to policy development and the shaping of the Scottish longitudinal study.
Certainly.
Paragraph 4 of committee paper ED/S2/05/2/3 says that you will continue support for breakfast clubs. Could you give me an update on progress? Are breakfast clubs only in local authority nurseries and schools, or are they elsewhere as well?
The provision is essentially in local authority schools and pre-schools. They might not necessarily be provided by the local authority; they might be provided by voluntary sector providers or others. There has been a fairly substantial increase—around 25 per cent, although I would have to check the detailed statistics to be sure—in the number of children who are accessing breakfast club provision and other care provision before the start of the school day. We record that through our pre-school and day care census rather than by number of providers.
Do you have a target of increasing that number or a strategy to do so?
We have quite consciously not set central targets for the provision of any of these forms of child care, unlike our colleagues in England. We chose not to do that because we think that local authorities and their partners are better placed to identify the local level of need. There is no doubt that patterns of need shift according to geographic area. We require local authorities to work through the child care partnerships, which bring together a range of service providers and interest groups—including parents, in particular—to identify a local need and deliver the range of services that are required to meet that need.
I am trying to point out the fact that there is an uneven spread of provision of breakfast clubs across local authorities. I wondered whether there was a strategy to deal with that or whether you envisaged making any progress in that regard, but you are saying that it is down to local authorities.
At the moment, we have not issued any central targets. Again I say to you that ministerial thinking in relation to the broader sweep of childcare is still developing. We would expect their thinking to become a lot clearer and become publicly known over the coming months. At that point, we might be able to say something more concrete about breakfast clubs.
Presumably there is also an issue relating to the demand for the service, leaving aside what the target might be.
That is why, so far, we have tended to allow local authorities to identify the levels of demand, which vary widely across the country. We want to ensure that the money that is allocated to local authorities for all forms of child care—because we do not distinguish between the various models of child care provision—can be used as flexibly as possible, in accordance with local needs.
That was a useful briefing and follow-up. We are grateful for your assistance.
We will provide the additional information in due course.
That would be welcome. Thank you.
I would like to see an analysis of what the Executive is doing to support the partnership agreement commitments, because it is a bit disjointed.
What did you say?
I am asking the Executive to map out how all the initiatives relate to the commitments, because we have a set of commitments and a set of initiatives, but they are not well cross-referenced. That information would be helpful.
In fairness, that does not relate to the terms of reference.
Maybe not, but it would help to inform us in taking decisions. It is suggested that we address three issues:
I ask Martin Verity to say something on that, because there have been discussions with the Communities Committee clerk.
The discussion was with another clerk, convener. However, broadly speaking, if the committee wants to do an inquiry in a particular area, we will consult the clerks of affected committees. I am not aware of any conflicting work by other committees that would be a problem. If the committee sticks too rigidly to its remit, often it cannot follow through on questions that arise in its inquiry.
It would be an interesting area to look at. The terminology "areas of high unemployment" is used in the partnership agreement. I would like to examine support for families on low incomes, which would broaden out the inquiry to include individuals on low incomes who are finding it difficult to access education and training.
It is open to us to make observations on that.
It might be an interesting area to follow up.
I take your point. There might be issues about how effectively it relates to other care and the transition between nursery and primary. A number of issues are connected with it.
I echo that point. One question is whether expanding free nursery places from just morning sessions and afternoon sessions to all-day sessions is the best use of resources, but that policy is already in place, and it is successful, so we should not spend a huge amount of time on it.
It is an issue of interpretation. Holding the Executive to account is the central core, but the remit is sufficiently general for us to address a series of implications and transitions, what might happen in future, and the principle of flexibility which, as officials said, is the overriding issue. The phraseology is not necessarily inhibiting.
If someone from outside was to read the remit as the starting point, they might get the wrong impression. Rather than examine the progress that has been made, we should explore the future direction of early-years education policy. The points raised in paragraph 2, which are followed up in paragraph 5, are the core for me. They are the areas that I want to explore.
The central point that I think you are making is whether people who may give evidence will understand the terms of reference.
Exactly. We are looking at the future development of policy, not the current development or implementation of policy.
There are many initiatives here. It is a question of how they tie together and are understood. The point about the terms of reference being more easily understood by the customer, as it were, as opposed to the provider has been made. I do not think that we should forget about the overall effectiveness or otherwise of current provision and how it can be made more comprehensive. Such issues are about development, but they are also about accountability, which in some respects is our main focus in relation to what the Executive is doing.
Coming back to the point that Ken Macintosh made and the one that the convener has just made, I want to suggest an alternative phraseology to the terms of reference in paragraph 3, to tie them to the forthcoming policy statement from the Executive rather than the partnership agreement. Most partnership commitments were made or thought about in 2002, when much of the emerging evidence in this fast-moving area was perhaps not apparent. My suggestion, both to give us precision and to look forward, would be to consider making the terms of reference: "To examine progress being made by the Scottish Executive to deliver effective early years education in light of the forthcoming Executive policy statement and with particular respect to the following areas:", and we would go on to list the four issues mentioned in paragraph 2. That alternative suggestion ties the terms of reference to the forthcoming document, which is meant to integrate policy, but also flags up the emerging agenda that is captured in paragraph 2.
I have three thoughts on that. First, that suggestion is helpful, but the terms of reference should also refer to the commitments in the partnership agreement. Secondly, in order to give the committee flexibility, the terms of reference should say: "the following issues, amongst others". I have forgotten what the third point was.
It could say: "In light of commitments in the partnership agreement and the forthcoming policy statement." We want to have a wee bit of scrutiny of where the Scottish Executive has reached and how we might suggest it treats the issues.
My third point was about education and child care. Education is in the committee's remit, but I think that we should also take wider issues such as that on board in the inquiry.
I am interested in finding out a bit more about the support in areas of high unemployment—particularly what funding streams are being used there, and how long term those funding streams are—and the monitoring and evaluation of such projects. I am saying that because of what I have seen happening in my region in areas where funding has been put in for such projects. Could we expand on that a bit more? Could we probe a wee bit deeper there?
There is general agreement on that, but is that conceivably an issue that is missing in Wendy Alexander's suggestion for the remit of the inquiry? It does not come out very clearly in the issues in paragraph 2.
We could perhaps add it.
The remit of the inquiry should be about future thinking. Along the way we can consider scrutinising the Executive's commitments to date, which is our responsibility as a committee. I am a bit concerned about the points in paragraph 2. I may have been absent when they were discussed, because I do not recall them. The second bullet point—
I do not remember the discussion, but the document indicates the number of people who choose to look after their children at home rather than use some form of collective provision. The issue that underlies the discussion is whether children are brought up at home and to what extent they get into formal education there.
Obviously, the vast majority are brought up at home, apart from those in care. The list reads as an adult-centric view of child care rather than as a view of early education and development. If we are talking about future thinking in this area, we should consider content that would make for a child-centred approach. The points are all about flexibility for parents and child care provision, support for parenting and availability of choice for parents. The focus must reflect the best interests of the child and what will give the best developmental opportunities, not a value judgment as to whether it is better to be at home or go to nursery.
The point about being child-centred is valid, but the issues of choice should not be excluded.
The second point should really be about the evidence of child development. Paragraph 2 is trying to hint that the work on child development suggests that until somewhere between the ages of two and three, the child bonds better with a single adult than it relates to other children. However, the pattern of Government subsidy is for collective provision in sure start centres and other places rather than for childminders, sitters or nannies. There is a bias in funding that extends through the age range, but the child development literature suggests that child bonding has one pattern until the child is between two and three, then a different one between the ages of three and five. Policy should at least discuss why we subsidise certain forms of child care and not others.
I would be comfortable with that.
Yes, that seems to be a helpful formulation.
I want to add to what Kenny Macintosh and Wendy Alexander said about paragraph 2. As an extension of flexibility of child care provision, there should be sufficient capacity in the system to make certain that parents have access to child care facilities that are relatively close to home and that they are not expected to send their children out a long way to less conveniently situated centres with free places. The services should reflect the aspirations of the families concerned.
That is a sort of sub-aspect of choice.
It is part of the aspect of choice.
I have one other point on paragraph 7, which is about focusing on efficiency and budget considerations. It is about how we do the inquiry and what sort of support we might need in doing it.
Before we leave the subject, I suggest that we discuss with SPICe the extent to which it could support that work—whether or not we go as far as the appointment of an adviser. We could also check whether the information that we can obtain in-house from our SPICe researchers is enough for our current purposes.
Because of the volume of new research, I am tempted to push for an expert adviser. In the past 10 years, there has been an explosion of new research the world over on the subject. I am thinking, for example, of the forthcoming Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report on the subject. This is a classic example of an inquiry that calls for the involvement of an outside agency.
We will return to the subject at our meeting next week, when we will look at the development of the inquiry. Perhaps we could discuss the matter in between now and then. If Wendy Alexander wants to discuss the subject further with Martin Verity, I welcome her doing so. Did you have another point to make, Wendy?
No, that was it. My point was that we need an expert to advise us on what the child psychology literature is saying. I also suggest that we seek to engage our budget advisers in the latter stage of the inquiry, by helping us to look at the costs that are associated with some of our recommendations. I assume that they would be paid £100 a day—or whatever derisory sum the Parliament gives them—for that work. Our report would therefore have a slightly harder edge and not the feel only of a wish list. The criticism that is usually made of committee reports is that they are wish lists.
One angle I have thought of in terms of the relative complexity of the current provision relates to whether there might be some overlapping provision that would offer scope for increased efficiency. That may not be the case, but I suggest that we look into the matter.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—