Chamber and committees

Information on local authority pre-primary education capital expenditure is provided to Scottish Government by local authorities. This includes, but is not limited to, nursery provision. The most up to date data is for 2015-16 and is shown in the following table.

The Financial Review of Early Learning and Childcare (Scottish Government, 2016) estimated that the average unit cost (cost per hour per child) in local authority settings was £5.45 for 3 and 4 year olds and £7.74 for 2 year olds. In funded provider settings (private and third sector), the unit cost for 0-5 year olds was estimated to average £3.70.

The distribution of these additional workers across local authorities will reflect local plans for implementing the expanded entitlement. Local authorities have recently submitted ELC Expansion Plans, which provide initial estimates of the workforce required in each area. The Scottish Government’s multi-disciplinary delivery support team, co-designed with local authorities, is currently discussing these plans with local authorities. Those discussions, identifying good practice as well as areas for improvement, will inform individual feedback to authorities as well as a national learning report, to be published later in the year.

The number of two-year olds registered for funded Early Learning and Childcare is published by local authority within the annual ‘Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland’ report available on the Scottish Government website (http://www.gov.scot/stats/bulletins/01255). Currently information is collected on the number of registrations and this might be a slight overestimate of the number of children accessing funded provision due to some children being registered at more than one setting. Children accessing provision outwith the local authority that they live would also affect the breakdown by local authority. The Scottish Government is currently making improvements to data collection through the ELC Data Transformation Project.

In September 2016, the Scottish Government published “The Financial Review of early learning and childcare in Scotland: the current landscape” (http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0050/00506148.pdf ). This shows (page 53) that over the financial years 2014-15 to 2016-17 the Scottish Government has provided £170 million capital funding to local authorities to support implementation of the early learning and childcare elements of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 expenditure. A further £30 million of capital funding was provided to local authorities in 2017-18. It is for each local authority to decide how it will utilise these funds.

All correspondence received by the Scottish Government, addressed to Ministers, is processed via the Ministerial and Corporate Correspondence System (MACCS). MACCS records the type of response required, and directs responses to the relevant team within SG to answer. MACCS has limited functionality as a management information tool; therefore we are unable to provide detailed information on subjects raised by correspondents.

The Scottish Government has instructed no external legal advice in relation to the Children and Young People (Information Sharing) (Scotland) Bill.

Under our new Funding Follows the Child approach, local authorities will retain the statutory responsibility for ensuring that funded early learning and childcare entitlement is available to all eligible children in their areas. We are working closely with authorities to ensure that there are sufficient places available, across settings in all sectors, to deliver entitlement to 1140 hours of early learning and childcare from August 2020.

Under the new Funding Follows the Child model, to be implemented from 2020, local authorities will continue to negotiate and agree rates locally with providers in the private and third sectors who want to deliver the funded entitlement and who meet the national standard. Funding rates will have to reflect national policy priorities, including payment of the Living Wage, and ensure financially sustainable provision across all sectors.

The total number of Education Scotland inspections carried out each academic year for the last five years for Dumfries and Galloway :

Inspection Figures for Academic Years August 2012 to July 2017

*includesEarly Learning and Childcare settings, and Primary, Secondary, All through, Independent and Special schools.

All figures include short model inspections resulting in QI evaluations and 'try out' inspections not resulting in QI evaluations.