Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-37817

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 22 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 5 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will publish an updated cost-benefit analysis of its policy to provide 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare, since its roll-out in 2014.

Working with our Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group, the Scottish Government has set out a multi-year (2018-2025) strategy for evaluating the impact of the ELC expansion to 1140 hours on outcomes for children, parents and families. We expect to publish the 2018-2025 Evaluation Final Report in December 2025. This will draw together findings from across all the strands of the evaluation work.

As set out in our Evaluation Strategy, alongside the evaluation of outcomes, an economic evaluation is being undertaken to assess the economic costs and benefits of the 1140 expansion. The economic evaluation will include an element of standard economic appraisal technique using Cost-Benefit analysis. But we also recognise that it will not be possible to capture all of the possible impacts of the ELC expansion by focusing purely on benefits that can be expressed as a monetary value (i.e. in £). Therefore, this will be accompanied by a “Cost-Consequence analysis” – a type of analysis most commonly used in health-economics, which will allow the economic evaluation to draw on a wider range of data than monetary impacts and present a more comprehensive picture of the impacts of the policy intervention by reporting outcomes separately from each other.

Question reference: S6W-37864

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 22 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 5 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many hours of funded continuous professional development have been accessed by early learning and childcare staff in each of the last three years.

Until June 2024, daycare of children staff registered with the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC)were required to complete a minimum of 60 hours — or 10 days — of Continuous Professional Learning (CPL) over each 5-year registration period. This equated to at least 12 hours of CPL per year. This requirement applied to all staff registered with the SSSC, including full-time, part-time, sessional, self-employed and agency workers.

From June 2024, the SSSC CPL requirements focus on developing key skills and knowledge tailored to the individual role and career stage, moving away from the previous system of requiring a number of hours and days of study. Registrants have to complete a declaration every year to confirm that they have completed CPL for the year against the core learning elements, and in particular the mandatory areas of trauma informed practice and child protection.

The SSSC does not record the number of hours of CPL accessed by daycare of children staff.

Question reference: S6W-37866

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 22 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 5 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to address any regional inequalities in the early learning and childcare workforce in (a) general and (b) relation to (i) recruitment and (ii) retention in (A) rural and (B) deprived areas.

We recognise how vital early learning and childcare is in all parts of Scotland, both in relation to giving children the best start in life and supporting families to work.

We are working with local government and our partners in the sector to develop long-term workforce plans that address workforce issues and ensure sustainable delivery of the 1140 funded entitlement.

At a national level, several work programmes are underway to support childcare provision in rural areas and areas of disadvantage including:

funding the national childminder recruitment and retention programme;
making grants available to local authorities via the Addressing Depopulation Action Plan Fund, two of which will contain a focus on addressing childcare issues in areas affected by acute population decline;
continuing our investment of £16 million over two years into our early adopter communities;
providing funding to local authorities to enable payment of the real Living Wage to childcare workers in private and voluntary services providing funded ELC; and
continuing to provide funding to local authorities to enable additional teachers or degree-qualified childcare professionals to work in ELC settings in the most disadvantaged areas.

Question reference: S6O-04770

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 04 June 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 11 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the recent EY assessment of the Scottish economy.

Question reference: S6W-37815

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 4 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what it has done to address reported concerns that the expansion of funded hours has led to staff burnout and retention issues in the early learning sector.

The Scottish Government is working with local authorities and other partners to develop long-term workforce plans that address retention issues and support staff wellbeing across the ELC sector.

In 2025-26, we are providing £9.7 million to local authorities to enable payment of the real Living Wage to childcare workers in private and voluntary services providing funded ELC. Building on last year’s recurring investment of £16 million, this funding for the further increase to at least £12.60 per hour demonstrates our commitment to the Fair Work agenda. The Scottish Government remains the only part of the UK to fund the payment of the real Living Wage to ELC staff in the private and third sectors.

In addition, we have worked with partners to develop a range of new resources for the childcare workforce, including a new continuous professional learning portal which features a mental health and wellbeing resource specifically for early years professionals. We are working with Skills Development Scotland and funded partners in the private and voluntary sector to pilot ways of working that support efficiencies in services and allow practitioners to prioritise their professional learning within working hours.

Question reference: S6W-37806

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 4 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many early learning and childcare settings have failed to meet Care Inspectorate standards between 2015 and 2024.

The Care Inspectorate is the independent scrutiny body and regulator for care services in Scotland. It looks at the quality of care in Scotland (including in Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) settings) to ensure it meets high standards and to promote the safety, protection and wellbeing of all service users including children in ELC settings.

The Care Inspectorate publishes an annual report with their national findings on the availability and quality of registered daycare of children and childminding services for children and families across Scotland. The most recent report was published on 24 September 2024: Early Learning and Childcare Statistics 2023.

Figure 10 in this report provides quality data in relation to all daycare of children and childminding services:

Figure 10: Percentage of services holding evaluations of good or better, and very good or excellent in all assessed themes or key questions, 2014 to 2023.

	All evaluations Good, Very Good or Excellent		All evaluations Very Good or Excellent
Year	Childminding	Daycare of Children	Childminding	Daycare of Children
2014	91.0%	90.3%	49.6%	42.2%
2015	91.8%	88.4%	48.8%	41.5%
2016	91.8%	87.6%	48.7%	40.3%
2017	92.1%	88.3%	47.6%	37.8%
2018	91.9%	88.0%	45.2%	35.7%
2019	91.7%	87.7%	44.0%	33.7%
2020	92.6%	88.7%	44.2%	33.0%
2021	92.8%	87.7%	43.9%	31.7%
2022	92.0%	88.5%	41.7%	31.5%
2023	92.6%	88.3%	39.6%	30.0%

Note: Any services that have not yet been inspected are not included in the table above.

Figure 18 in the report provides the data in relation to funded ELC settings.

Figure 18: Proportion of daycare of children services offering funded places holding evaluations of good or better and very good or excellent in all assessed themes or key questions on 31 December, 2014 to 2023.

Year	% of services found to be Good or better in all evaluations	% of services found to be very good or excellent in all evaluations
2014	93.2%	49.1%
2015	91.9%	48.1%
2016	91.4%	45.8%
2018	90.6%	40.5%
2019	90.2%	38.1%
2020	90.8%	36.9%
2021	89.4%	34.9%
2022	90.1%	34.6%
2023	89.8%	32.9%

Note: Any services that have not yet been inspected are not included in the above table.

Question reference: S6W-37807

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 4 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many nursery buildings constructed since 2015 have failed to meet the standards set out in Space to Grow: Design guidance for early learning and childcare and out of school care settings.

Question reference: S6W-37809

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 4 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many early learning settings have operated from (a) temporary and (b) modular buildings, since 2015

The information requested is not held centrally. Decisions about where to locate an early learning and childcare (ELC) setting are the responsibility of the service provider. The Scottish Government does not routinely collect or hold information about the characteristics of buildings from which ELC services are provided. Statutory requirements for the fitness of premises to be used for the provision of ELC are set out in Section 10 of The Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland (Requirements for Care Services) Regulations 2011.

Question reference: S6W-37812

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 4 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many early learning staff have left the sector since 2021.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. The Scottish Social Services Council may be able to assist with this question and can be contacted at:[email protected].

The most recently published annual workforce data (Scottish Social Service Sector: Report on 2023 Workforce Data) shows that the number of people working in daycare of children services and childminding reduced by 660 from 45,140 in 2021 to 44,480 in 2023.

Question reference: S6W-37808

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 4 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) nursery and (b) early learning settings have been (i) temporarily and (ii) permanently closed due to building safety concerns, since 2015.

The information requested is not held centrally. Building management responsibilities are a matter for the owners and managers to ensure the safety of their premises. Statutory requirements for the fitness of premises to be used for the provision of early learning and childcare (ELC) are set out in Section 10 of The Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland (Requirements for Care Services) Regulations 2011. The Scottish Government does not routinely collect or hold data about the closure of ELC settings as a result of building safety concerns.