Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is working together with local authorities and wider stakeholders to ensure that early learning and childcare (ELC) is promoted in a range of ways. This includes:

• The development of an ELC hub on www.parentclub.scot/elc as a trusted place for information on ELC.
• The use of social media to reach parents and carers as well as those working with them.
• The development of leaflets and posters about the ELC expansion, being disseminated via ELC settings; libraries and stakeholders.
• The inclusion of an ELC leaflet in the Scottish Book Trusts toddler Bookbug bag, which is distributed to all 1 year olds in Scotland.

We also know that trusted professionals are key to reaching families who are less likely to take up their ELC place, so we are working with partners to ensure that professionals such as Health Visitors, Housing Officers and Family Nurses are aware of the ELC offer and the changes that are taking place with the expansion to 1140 hours. This includes the development of a ‘toolkit’ for partners to use to ensure consistent messaging.

Other planned work for 2019-20 includes:

• The distribution of a multi-language leaflet that will contain a high level outline of the ELC offer in 6 languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Urdu, Gaelic, Polish, and Arabic and signpost parents to where they can get further info on ELC.
• The development of a marketing campaign which is likely to include channels such as radio, outdoor advertising, digital and social media, along with targeted activity with a range of stakeholder and partners relevant to the target audience. The main focus of this campaign will be timed to coincide with the local authority application window.

We are also working internally across Government to make best use of new systems and capabilities, such as Best Start Grant, to identify opportunities for shared communications where we can deliver key messages about ELC and particularly the 2 year old entitlement.

My statement of 1 May 2018 confirmed that the Scottish Government and local government had reached a landmark multi-year funding package to enable the near doubling of the statutory entitlement to funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours each for all 3 and 4 year olds and eligible 2 year olds from August 2020. Supported by that agreement, an enormous amount of work is underway in local authorities across Scotland to phase in the new offer ahead of full implementation from August 2020.

Our funding agreement with local government, whilst runs until 2021-22, includes resources sufficient to deliver a near doubling of the uptake of funded ELC among eligible 2 year olds. We and local government are working in partnership with the ELC sector and through other services to raise awareness of the offer for 2 year olds. In addition to increasing the information available nationally, including through a new ELC Hub on Parent Club, we are working with partners to ensure that trusted professionals, such as Health Visitors, Housing Officers and Family Nurses, are aware of the ELC offer for 2 year olds and able to signpost eligible families to more information about what is available locally.

We are also working with the UK Government to secure a legal data-sharing gateway to enable Scottish local authorities to receive information from the Department for Work and Pensions about potentially eligible families. The UK Department for Education has attributed a significant increase in uptake of their 2 year old offer to a similar data-sharing gateway already in place for English local authorities.

Investment in Early Learning and Childcare Nurseries, the increase in Health Visitor numbers and the implementation of the Universal Health Visiting Pathway are among the steps the Scottish Government is taking to ensure children and families get access to the right support in their earliest years. The Universal Pathway, published in October 2015, recognises that poverty is one of the biggest risk factors linked to poorer health and development outcomes. It includes three Child Health Reviews which assess children’s growth and development. These contacts provide an opportunity for health visitors, children and their parents to build a strong relationship, in which health visitors can appropriately support all families, including acting as a gateway to other services.

Additionally from August 2020, we are near doubling the statutory entitlement to funded early learning and childcare from 600 hours to 1140 hours each for all 3 and 4 year olds and around a quarter of 2 year olds. Evidence shows that high quality ELC has a positive impact on children’s outcomes. Our offer of funded ELC for 2 year olds is targeted towards those children who are most likely to benefit from early access to high quality funded ELC. Our commitment to funding 435 Equity and Excellence leads in ELC settings serving Scotland’s most disadvantaged communities means that many of the eligible two year olds are also benefitting from access to an extra graduate-level practitioner who can further support their development.

The broad range of action we are taking to tackle child poverty is set out within our first annual progress report due under the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act – published on 26 June 2019. This sets out the clear steps we have taken towards genuine reductions in child poverty levels, including plans for the new Scottish Child Payment.

Total Hectarage claimed in Shetland in 2014 by scheme:

2014 payments to businesses in Shetland by scheme and amount:

Scheme   Amount of Businesses   Amount Paid

Single Farm Payment (Predecessor to BPS)   898 £3,500,000

LFASS       800 £2,538,718.44

RP       149 £1,183,217.60

LMO       144 £218,830

Please note;

• BPS/Greening - Not applicable as BPS scheme only came into existence in 2015.
• AECS – Not applicable as AECS scheme only came into existence in 2016.

The upgrading of car parking facilities at the Stones of Stenness was one of three pilot projects supported by the Scottish Government's Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund. The Scottish Government has provided £80,000 towards the total cost of the work which is being delivered by Orkney Islands Council. Historic Environment Scotland has contributed an additional £100,000. Highlands and Islands Enterprise has not contributed towards this project. In addition to the contribution that Orkney Islands Council are making in delivering the project, we understand that it intends to utilise a portion of the residual funding from a fund it established to support its World Heritage Sites.

I will make a statement to the Scottish Parliament later this month, setting out the progress that has been made and outlining the Scottish Government's next steps for ensuring the delivery of Scotland's education reforms.

The number of participants in the Forum varied from meeting to meeting, depending on members’ availability. In total around 30-35 people were involved over the four meetings of the Forum. Details on the make-up of the P1 Practitioner Forum were provided in response to S5W-22894 n 9 May 2019. As this sets out, information on whether the teachers on the Forum were teaching P1 in 2017-18 and 2018-19 was not gathered. The published information does however make clear that the vast majority of teachers on the Forum had taught P1 classes and had been involved with SNSA within schools. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Since 2013, we have supported key aspects of language learning by providing an additional £30.2million to local authorities and £9.67million to Scotland’s National Centre for Languages (SCILT) and the Confucius Institute for Scotland’s Schools for the implementation of our 1+2 language policy.

Local authorities are using our funding to support language learning in a range of ways to meet their local circumstances, including teacher participation in immersion courses, teacher professional learning and classroom resources. Education Scotland has recently published new educational resources for teachers and more are planned. SCILT is providing professional learning programmes in language teaching and learning. SCILT is also helping schools make links to communities and businesses to improve language learning and understanding and helping schools promote language learning to young people and parents.

Annual targets are set for intakes into modern languages secondary teacher education courses to help address any recruitment difficulties in these subjects.

Our evidence shows that the majority of both secondary and primary schools are now meeting the full entitlement to learning a first additional language from P1 onwards and, across all age groups, more young people than ever before are learning languages.