Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has been supporting innovative childminder recruitment pilots within 14 Local Authorities, in partnership with the Scottish Childminding Association. To date, 69 candidates have been supported through the programme to complete their registration as childminders with the Care Inspectorate. A further 116 are currently working towards their registration. We have also begun to explore ways of streamlining and reducing the administrative burden on childminders.

As announced in the 2023 Programme for Government, we will continue to build on this work and scale up these pilots to support and grow our childminding workforce. We will also implement a range of measures to address retention issues, including trialling a mentoring scheme and models of ‘funded time off the floor’ to support childminders to undertake professional development opportunities, planning or administration duties.

The Care Inspectorate publishes annual statistics on the number of childminders operating in Scotland. The following table summarises published Care Inspectorate data from the last 10 years. The figure for 2023 is expected to be published in the autumn of 2024.

It is not the case that 10% of children are not registered to receive their entitlement to funded early learning and childcare (ELC). The 2023 ELC Census showed an estimated uptake rate of 97% for eligible three and four year olds, and an uptake rate of 52% for eligible 2 year olds. Improvement Service data from September 2023 showed that 98% of children registered for funded ELC were reported to be accessing more than 600 hours, and 90% of registered children were accessing the full 1140 funded hours. This is not the same as 10% of children not being registered for funded ELC.

Families are not required to use the full 1140 entitlement. A 2022 parent survey found that when families were not using their full entitlement, this was often through choice. Typically, they did not need or want the full entitlement, or decided they did not wish to put their child in nursery for so many hours. However, around a fifth of those not using the full entitlement said they could not get the sessions they wanted at their preferred setting. We continue to work with local authorities to ensure that funded ELC hours are flexible and accessible to families.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25100 on 27 February 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The National Recognition and Procedures Agreement (NRPA) is an agreement between Further Education Colleges and trade unions.

While issues around NRPAs are for colleges and trade unions to negotiate and resolve, the Scottish Government, through its Fair Work Agenda, is clear that workers must have effective voice and therefore, expects that they have access to trade union representation.

The Good Governance Steering Group has had oversight of the implementation of the addition of trade union nominees to college boards.

The Good Governance Steering Group is monitoring the progress of trade union nominations and the Scottish Government expects the Group to continue to keep abreast of good governance in the college sector and to inform the Scottish Government of governance issues.

The Scottish Government brought forward the Colleges of Further Education and Regional Strategic Bodies (Membership of Boards) (Scotland) Order 2023, which places a requirement for assigned college boards, regional college boards and both the Lanarkshire Board and the Glasgow Colleges’ Regional Board to have two Trade Union nominees, one from the lecturing staff unions and one from the support staff unions.

The Order came into effect on 31 January 2024 and trade unions are currently working through their election processes to nominate individuals to boards.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25100 on 27 February 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

In my statement to Parliament on 5 December 2023, I reiterated my commitment to streamline funding for colleges, universities and apprenticeships. As a first step, this means bringing together funding for student support into one place and funding for apprenticeships into one place.

The Scottish Government will provide further detail shortly.

The Scottish Government's International Education Strategy was published on 7 February 2024.

Scotland's International Education Strategy - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)