Chamber and committees

Outdoor play and learning is already an integral everyday part of ELC in Scotland and we know the benefits of high-quality outdoor play for children’s positive physical and mental development. It is our vision that children in Scotland’s ELC sector will spend as much time outdoors as they do indoors, and time outdoors will happen every day in every setting. As outlined in the “Best Start: Strategic early learning and school age childcare plan for Scotland 2022-2026”, which was published on 6 October, we will continue to work with our partners to build on the range of outdoor learning support for providers that we put in place during the pandemic. That will include publishing a new chapter of our popular “Out to Play” ELC practitioner guidance series in the new year, entitled “caring for our outdoor places”. The guidance will set out sustainable ways to explore, look after and care for our outdoor spaces.

Provider neutrality is absolutely central to our approach to delivering ELC, which means that parents and carers can choose to access their child’s ELC entitlement in any provider that meets our key quality criteria, whether that is a childminder, a private or third sector setting, or a local authority nursery. I would certainly be happy, if Sue Webber wants to write to me with the specific details, to come back to her on anything that we can do to assist.

The most recently published figures showing numbers of children receiving funded early learning and childcare at the local authority level are included in the Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland report for 2021. That was published in December 2021 and showed that, in September 2021, there were 1,303 registrations for funded ELC in Argyll and Bute, a rise of 4.6 per cent from the previous year. The figure for September 2020 was 1,246.

In December, the Scottish Government will publish the Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland report for 2022. That report will include figures to show the number of child registrations for funded early learning and childcare in September 2022 at national and local authority level, including Argyll and Bute.

The Scottish Government recognises that childminders are an important element of the Scottish childcare sector, offering families a high-quality, unique and flexible experience of childcare. That is why we are supporting an innovative childminder recruitment pilot, which the Scottish Childminding Association and its partners are leading and which aims to recruit and train more than 100 new childminders in remote and rural areas. With the recruitment of those additional childminders, up to 900 childcare places may be created. We have also provided targeted financial support to childminders during the pandemic, including issuing more than 3,000 grants, each worth £950, through the childcare sector omicron impacts fund.

We will continue to work with our partners to increase the number of childminders in Scotland through the implementation of our commitment to childminding action plan, which was published in 2021.

We want families to be able to access the flexible, supportive and high-quality childcare that childminders can provide, including as part of the funded early learning and childcare entitlement.

It was encouraging that the Scottish Childminding Association’s 2020-21 audit showed an annual increase in the number of childminders delivering funded ELC. We are working with the national childminding sector to explore how to encourage more childminders to offer ELC, including by identifying opportunities for reducing burdens on childminders that might prevent them from offering such provision. We are also working to identify the reasons for the decline in the number of childminders, including by ensuring that the sector’s interests are represented on national forums such as the childcare sector working group and the new national provider forum. Such work helps us to identify where practical support can be provided across the sector.

I apologise to the member if I have misunderstood his question. We support ELC providers and childminding businesses across the piece through our national forums. We ensure that their representative bodies are included on the forums, which look at the training and development needed to ensure that there is a highly skilled workforce across the sector that we can recruit and retain. If I have misunderstood the member’s question, I will be more than happy to write to him.

—interested to know that I will be visiting the ELC and childminding sectors in remote and rural communities before Christmas and engaging and hearing from ELC professionals directly.

I am very aware of the support that we are providing to remote and rural communities with regard to access to childcare. We will continue to work with partners and local authorities to understand the needs of our remote, rural and island communities. Those needs will be taken into account as we develop our strategic framework for Scotland’s childcare profession, in which we will explore with partners a range of issues under themes such as recruitment and retention of ELC professionals across Scotland.

The member might also be—

All children in Scotland should grow up feeling safe, loved and respected. The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that robust child protection measures are in place across Scotland. Last year, we published updated national guidance for child protection. The Scottish Government engages regularly with local authorities on the implementation of consistent good practice on that critical issue. The national guidance implementation group was set up last September to lead on that activity. Education Scotland and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland are both represented in that group.

Liz Smith raises an important point. Child protection and child safeguarding are everyone’s business, whether they are in education or health. I will certainly have my officials look into that and will come back to her in writing.