Chamber and committees

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

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.

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 Financial Review can be found here: http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0050/00506148.pdf

The GTCS have accredited 3 programmes for aspiring headteachers. These are the Scottish Qualification for Headship, the Flexible Route to Headship and the Into Headship programmes. Only the Into Headship programme is currently operating and has recruited cohorts over the last three years.

The Into Headship programme is aimed at those teachers whose next post will be that of a head teacher, likely to be within two to three years. Details of numbers on that programme are outlined in S5W-12536 on 21 November 2017. 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

Scotland is participating in the Teacher Questionnaire of the 2018 administration of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This will cover teacher job satisfaction and an assessment of the factors they believe are hindering instruction.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Local authority capital expenditure: Pre-primary Education, £ million

2011-12	£5.7
2012-13	£4.9
2013-14	£3.9
2014-15	£16.9
2015-16	£75.8

Source: Local Authority Capital Returns CR Final