The Scottish Government has had no direct engagement with Ayrshire College on the 2025-26 budget.

With the publication of the 2025-26 budget, it is now the role of the Scottish Funding Council to engage closely with colleges to identify the best split of available resources, taking into account Government priorities and the needs of the college sector.

The Scottish Government continues to fully fund local authorities to deliver 1140 hours of Early Learning and Childcare to eligible children across Scotland, backed by around £1 billion funding each year. Local authorities have a duty to make this service available to all eligible children within their area and are responsible for local service delivery planning.

At a national level, several work programmes are underway to support childcare access in rural and island communities. This includes funding a new national childminder recruitment and retention programme, making grants available to local authorities via the Addressing Depopulation Fund(two of which contain a focus on addressing childcare issues) and investing £16 million over two years into our 6 early adopter communities, including those in rural and island locations.

The Scottish Government is also committed to strengthening the childcare workforce. As set out in the draft Scottish Budget we will provide an additional £9.7 million to local authorities in 2025-26 to support an increase in the pay of childcare workers in the private and third sector delivering funded ELC so that they can be paid at least the Real Living Wage of £12.60 from April 2025.

We are now working with local authorities and the Improvement Service on a National Improvement Project which will take focussed action in five local authorities as well as seek out and promote good practice to increase uptake for eligible two year olds across all local authority areas.

We are also progressing our early adopter community (EAC) work in six local authorities, backed by £16 million between 2024-25 and 2025-26. The EACs are expanding access to affordable childcare for low-income families with children from the early years through to the end of primary school and evaluating the difference this can make.

This expansion includes continued investment in four EACs established in 2022 in Dundee, Clackmannanshire, Glasgow and Inverclyde, as well as further expansion into new communities in Fife and Shetland.

Ultimately, it will help us to understand what it takes to design and deliver local childcare systems that support those families most at risk of living in poverty.

We have undertaken two key pieces of research, which were published last year. The first was work to map current ELC provision for younger children in Scotland and the second a literature review undertaken by Public Health Scotland. The purpose of this work was to help us understand and identify what models of ELC are best for younger children.

The evidence suggests that attending high quality formal childcare can have benefits for children’s cognitive development. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds were found to benefit most from early access to formal childcare. However, the evidence of benefits for social, emotional and behavioural outcomes is more limited and mixed. The findings from this research supports taking a considered approach to policy development so that we understand what is right for families with children under three.

We will continue to build on this early insights work by piloting new approaches via funding from the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund to test models of holistic family support, learning from our EACs and reviewing current evidence.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving our existing funded ELC offer and to taking the time needed to deliver a childcare expansion that is both fair and affordable, giving children the best possible start in life and supporting parents and carers to work, train and take up education opportunities.