An Equal Start

Transcription

An Equal Start

An Equal Start
A plan for equality in early learning
and care in Scotland
John Davis
Rona MacNicol
Lynn McNair
Jamie Mann
Melissa O’Neill
Ben Wray
January 2016
COMMON WEAL is a think-and-do tank that
advocates policies that put All of Us First. For
more information on Common Weal Policy visit
allofusfirst.org/policy or email ben@common.scot
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Authors’
John Davis is a Professor of Childhood Inclusion at
the University of Edinburgh. He is author of the SSSC
Taking The First Steps report that evaluated the impact
of the BA Childhood Practice. His research has been
employed in various national and international contexts
and has examined a range of issues, such as creativity,
innovation,inclusion, participation, social justice, integrated
working and multi-professional working.
Rona Macnicol is a second year undergraduate of History
and Politics at the University of Glasgow. She is interested
in the impact government policy can have on narrowing
socioeconomic inequalities and is particularly concerned
with the relationship between top-down policy making and
grassroots community engagement.
Jamie Mann is a freelance researcher, journalist and
copywriter. As a former Research Project Development
Manager for the University of Edinburgh’s Institute
of Education Community and Society, he developed
knowledge exchange projects and events that linked
childhood studies/practice, social justice, inclusion and
fairness, and co-managed the Early Learning and Care
Policy Lab with Prof. John Davis. Jamie is a contributor to
two books and his work has been published in a range of
traditional and new media publications.
Lynn McNair is a Teaching Fellow at the University of
Edinburgh as well as a final year PhD student. She has more
than 30 years experience working in Early Years education,
was awarded an OBE for services to Early Education in
2009, and is an award-winning author. Lynn would say her
passion for egalitarianism, emancipation, democracy, and
her belief that children are rich, active, resourceful beings,
came from being a mother and observing her children
playing freely. Trusting in their abilities and capabilities is
what puts energy into her work with children today.
Melissa O’Neill is currently an Early Years Officer. She is a
former BA childhood practice student of the University of
Edinburgh. She has over 12 years experience of working
with Children and Families in a variety of early learning and
childcare services in both the private and public sector.
Ben Wray is Head of Policy & Research at Common Weal.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Fairer Funding for Our Kids, and Jenny
Gorevan in particular, for advice and information in the
writing of this report.
Thanks to Malcolm Fraser, Bill Munsie, Katie-Gallogly Swan
and everyone who participated in the Common Weal early
years Policy Lab, which informed and inspired this report.
Contents
Introduction | Page 5
Part 1: Facing up to the scale of the challenge | Page 5
Capacity
Funding model
Quality of provision
Part 2: A two-part plan for delivering | Page 10
A) Infrastructure and skills Investment | Page 11
Costs
Partnership buy-outs
B) National Childcare Service | Page 12
Costs
Parent affordability
Availability and flexibility
Revenue return from increased full-time
employment and parent costs
Management Structure
Delivering
Part 3: A Common Weal vision for early years education | Page 17
Early years curriculum
Staff qualifications
Part 4: Beyond 30 free hours – where
childcare provision needs to go in the future | Page 23
Conclusion | Page 25
References | Page 26
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AN EQUAL START: A plan for equality in early learning and care in Scotland
Introduction
The Scottish Government has voiced a clear commitment
to making childcare affordable, accessible and to a
world class standard. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has
proposed to double the expenditure on childcare in order
to achieve this.
The key change proposed is to increase the amount of
free hours of childcare available to all 3-4 year olds and
‘vulnerable’ 2 year olds from 15 to 30 per week (1,140 per
year). This doubling of free hours brings with it challenges,
most notably that the childcare sector in Scotland is not
currently prepared for such a significant increase in the
statutory right of 145,000 young children to 30 hours per
week of high-quality childcare by 2020.
The purpose of this report is not to further analyse the
childcare sector in Scotland, but to offer solutions to the big
challenge the Scottish Government has set itself. This report
is about how the Scottish Government can deliver on its
commitment to transform the childcare sector in Scotland.
“We argue strongly that not only is this
approach the only way of ensuring increased
quality of provision in the childcare sector,
but that it is also the most efficient and cost
effective, fitting into the Scottish Government’s
planned budget for childcare from 2020.”
In Part 1, we lay out the scale of the challenge, providing a
detailed account of what is required in terms of increased
staff, centres and places to cope with moving to 30 hours.
We argue that the current infrastructure of the childcare
sector, which is fragmented and privatised, will almost
certainly be unable to cope with this challenge without a
radical restructuring of the sector.
Part 2 outlines our plan for restructuring the childcare
sector: a menu of options to manage the infrastructure and
skills investment needed to transition to 30 hours, and a
National Childcare Service, which will be responsible for
ensuring the effective delivery of childcare through public
provision. We argue strongly that not only is this approach
the only way of ensuring increased quality of provision in
the childcare sector, but that it is also the most efficient and
cost effective, fitting into the Scottish Government’s planned
budget for childcare from 2020.
In Part 3, we look at how this new structure could help
deliver an inspiring vision for early years education, with a
national early years curriculum delivered by well-paid and
qualified childhood practitioners.
Part 4 looks further ahead. Beyond delivering 30 hours,
what could be done in the future to optimise Scotland’s
childcare sector? We earmark improvements in flexibility,
affordability and quality that could make early learning and
care in Scotland among the best in the world.
Early learning and care in Scotland has made consistent
progress over the past decade on staff qualifications,
availability of childcare and quality of provision. A single
qualification framework and registration system has been
established, and promoted a creative pedagogy based
around play. The move to 30 free hours per week is now an
opportunity to take early learning and care to a new level,
where equality is embedded in every part of the system, for
young children, parents and professionals. This report is a
plan for an equal start.
Part 1: Facing up
to the scale of the
challenge
88.6 per cent of local authority childcare
centres in Scotland only provide half
day places.
The Scottish Government’s commitment to double its
current allocation of 15 hours of free childcare a week (600
hours per year), follows its ambition that Scotland will be
“the best place in the world to bring up children” (Scottish
Government, 2013a).
The challenge is enormous, and this report contends that
the current architecture of the childcare sector in Scotland
will not be capable of delivering without a radically new
approach. To understand the scale of the transformation
required, we need to grasp the limitations of the current
capacity, funding model and quality of provision in the
childcare sector in Scotland.
Capacity
The Scottish Government has stated that 120,000 3-4 year
olds and 20,000 ‘vulnerable’ 2 year olds are eligible for free
hours in Scotland (Scottish Government, 2015a). No eligible
children attendance figures are gathered, but Growing Up
in Scotland’s data (2014a) estimates that “upwards of 90 per
cent” of eligible children take up their place.
Whatever the exact figures, the data shows insufficient
capacity in the system for moving from 15 to 30 free hours
(a half-day to a full-day). Even if every Care Inspectorateregistered nursery place, including private sector places
that are not in ‘partnership’ with local councils and therefore
cannot access the free hours, were used to their maximum
capacity, there would only be 110,082 places available for a
full-day (Gorevan, 2015).¹
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Capacity Challenge
1. Extra places
needed:
2. Extra Childcare
Centres needed:
3. Extra staff
needed:
On this basis, we can see that even by harnessing the
full capacity of the current childcare system – something
entirely unrealistic in practice – there would still not be
sufficient places to match the 30 hours, full-day commitment
of the Scottish Government. Moreover, after taking out nonpartnership nurseries from the calculation – which do not
currently receive state subsidy for free hours – there is a
further reduction of 12,170 places (leaving 97,912 places
in total).
The regional inequities in childcare places are also
significant. Only three of the 32 local authorities (Eilean
Sair, Shetland Islands and the Highlands) have sufficient
capacity for full-day places, while West Dunbartonshire (51
per cent) and North Lanarkshire (50 per cent) are at fewer
than half of sufficient capacity, with 18 local authorities
in total (more than half) requiring at least a 20 per cent
increase in places to have space for full-day care (Gorevan,
2015). The need for increased places in some parts of the
country is therefore extremely pressing and will require a
transformation in capacity to meet demand when 30 hour
full-day places are introduced.
The greatest gaps in provision occur in rural settings,
areas of high depravation, and disabled children’s spaces
(Commission for Childcare Reform, 2015). This gap indicates
a need for a specialised national strategy to specifically
address each of these issues.
While it is impossible to come up with an entirely scientific
figure for the number of extra places required, we can be
sure that the 30 free hours will mean that the take-up of
funded childcare places will rise significantly. Given that
there is currently space for 98,000 full day places in local
authority and partnership nurseries, we believe that a
fair estimate for extra full day places needed by 2020 is
approximately 45,000. Full-day places would then equal the
number of total eligible children (with birth rates rising by
0.5 per cent per year we anticipate this to be 145,000).2
The average local authority childcare centre is big enough
to take 40 children, therefore the number of average-sized
new childcare centres needed to get up to capacity would
be 1,125.
“Implementing 45,000 new places, 1,125
new childcare centres and 10,970 new staff
with a highly uneven distribution across
Scotland, will require a national strategy to
be carried out effectively.”
Finally, the childcare staff:child ratio for 3 year olds and over
is 1:8, while it is 1:5 for 2 year olds, therefore 6180 staff will
need to be found to deal with the extra places (with the
requisite skills, discussed in Part 3). Additionally, existing
childcare centres will require as much as a 20 per cent
increase in staffing, as many are run in four hour sessions,
which allows for a 1:10 staff:child ratio, but with many centres
necessarily shifting to full-day care that ratio must be
reduced to 1:8 (and 1:5 for 2 year olds).
Furthermore, as discussed in detail in part 2, we propose
to build flexibility into the childcare system by having all
centres open from 8-6pm (50 hours) Monday-Friday (more
than the working week of one member of staff). On top of
that, managers will be needed for each new centre. A total
of 10,970 new staff - a doubling of the current workforce
- would ensure that staff:child ratios were met across
the sector for 145,000 places, with 9845 new childhood
practitioners and 1,125 new managers (one for each centre).3
Implementing 45,000 new places, 1,125 new childcare
centres and 10,970 new staff with a highly uneven
distribution across Scotland, will require a national strategy
to be carried out effectively. To put the extent of such an
investment into context, there are currently 1,545 local
authority childcare centres in Scotland and 959 partnership
centres, with 9780 staff (Scottish Government, 2014b)4. A
45 per cent rise in centres and an 89 per cent rise in staff
will be required - local authorities will not be capable of
shouldering the increased capacity burden alone.
¹ This figure does not include 5,500 registered childminders, who are often looking after children from 0-15 and can only care for a maximum of three children at once.
Childminders are therefore not necessarily optimal for looking after children in early years, but if we added them to the total figure, again presuming working at maximum
capacity, it would only add an extra 16,500 places.
2 We have decided not to include non-partnership childcare centres in our estimate of new childcare places needed. There are 462 childcare centres that are non-partner, 277
of these are playgroups. We believe a significant number of the centres - about one-third - are connected to private schools, and therefore are unlikely to be interested in being
part of a National Childcare Service with a national curriculum, pay scales and standards, and therefore would not be seeking the free hours under our proposal. Playgroups
may not be in a position to scale up to provide full-day delivery. We understand this is not the case for all non-partnership childcare centres, some of which have not received
free hours funding from local authorities for quality reasons or because the council is providing sufficient place already. However, our overall assessment is that it would be safer
to leave non-partnership centres out of the figures, with the caveat that they should not be automatically excluded from being providers of Government funded hours.
3 The Scottish Government’s ‘Scotland’s Future’ white paper (2013) proposed a move to 30 free hours of childcare and suggested that it would create 35,000 new jobs. This
figure was worked out by multiplying the number of increased hours (at that time 665) by the existing staff ratio e.g. if 22500 staff deliver 475 hours, then 31850 staff are
needed to deliver 665 increased hours. However, this formulation doesn’t take account of existing staff increasing their hours and staff already doing parent funded childcare
extended hours. Our formulation takes account of these factors because it is based on a calculation of the number of extra places needed to cover a full-day of 30 hours and
multiplied by staff:child ratios for 3 and 4 year olds and for 2 year olds.
4 The 9780 figure for staff is ‘whole time equivalent’, meaning it’s the number of staff there would be if they were all working full-time hours. This figure is used as it is a more
accurate point of comparison for the number of new full-time staff needed in the sector than the actual total number of staff in total (12850) who currently work in partnership
providers and local authorities. The SSSC (2013) have a figure of 30,250 registered workers in day care of children services. 7500 are out of school care workers, and we have
estimated that an average 10 staff per non-partner provider would mean the non-partnership whole time equivalent staff would be 4620, meaning the actual number would
likely be about 6000. While this still leaves a relatively small anomaly between the 12850 figure and the SSSC’s figure, this is to be expected as the two figures are calculated differently.
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Funding Model
£439m was paid by the Scottish Government to local
authorities to spend on childcare in 2014/15 (Scottish
Government, 2014c). However, that figure is not ring-fenced,
therefore the amount that is spent on childcare in practise
by local authorities is difficult to assess accurately.
Capacity Challenge
1. Scottish Government
• Childcare funding to local authorities
not ring-fenced.
2. Local Authorities
• Reduced budget
• Only run half-day places
3. Private providers
• Don’t get enough funding per place
• Insecurity in funding supply for
owners and staff
4. Families the real losers
• Can’t access/audit funded hours
• Children moved between childcare
centers: no security
Local Government has been one of the most severely
affected by austerity. Add to that an eight year-long council
tax freeze, and there is evidence that under financial
pressure, some childcare funding is being reallocated, with
a knock-on effect on the ability for some parents to access
their 15 free hours.
Local authorities deliver about two-thirds of mandatory
fifteen hours of childcare directly and the rest comes
through paying private sector and voluntary ‘partnership’
childcare centres an amount aimed to cover 15 hours for
its places. However, many partnership providers claim that
the figure they receive is not enough to cover the essential
costs of delivering the free hours, and admit that they
therefore pass much of the costs on to parents (Commission
for Childcare Reform, 2015).
Many parents have little choice but to go to private providers
either because it is the only provider with space in their area,
or, because, unlike many local authority childcare centres,
it is providing full day care, which many parents need to
stay in work. Rather than getting the first 15 hours free and
paying for the rest of the care, they end up paying for much
of the first 15 hours too. Recent figures from the Family and
Childcare Trust Cost Survey (2015) show that childcare in
Scotland is the second most expensive in Europe.
As the Commission for Childcare Reform (2015) pointed
out: “Individual providers have been open with us that they
charge parents more per hour than they receive from local
authorities, and say that they have to do that to balance
the books because of chronic underfunding by their local
authority. They have also been clear that they would be
unwilling to accept a child who
only required the 600 hours
because that would not be
financially viable on the basis of
the funding they receive from the
local authority.”
Partnership providers have said
the funding gap is as much as
£1,100 per child per year, while
the Commission’s evidence
arrived at a gap of £300 per
child per year. FoI data on
‘council spend’ on local authority
childcare places and partnership
places (Gorevan, 2015) revealed that £4.54 is the cost
per hour for local authority places compared to £3.57 for
partnership places.
Furthermore, many private sector childcare centres do not
receive any funding from local authorities (‘non-partnership’),
either because the local authority has enough places to
cover the 15 free hours, the quality is below the standard
they are willing to fund, or a combination of the two. Glasgow
City Council operates a points system for allocating its
funding to private providers based on the Care Inspectorate
inspection data each year. If a private provider in one
geographical lot falls below that of another, the funding will
be switched (local authorities all have different systems in
place for partnership funding, creating further confusion).
Not knowing whether they can offer the 15 free hours to
parents can create turmoil for the private providers, which,
in-turn, has a knock on effect on employment
stability for staff. Parents working full time with their children
in partnership childcare centres may suddenly find out that
their child will have to be moved to another private provider,
or to a local authority centre that only provides half-day care
(FoI’s revealed 88.6 per cent of local authority places only
provide half-day care (Gorevan, 2015)). For many parents,
this may be the difference between working or not, and
for private providers, it could be the difference between
retaining or letting staff go.
The Commission for Childcare Reform surmised the
difficult financial relationship between local authorities and
partnership providers: “We understand that local authorities
are under financial pressure and therefore seek to maximise
use of their own provision, which may account for the
reduction in funded places for partner providers. We also
understand that the relationship between authorities and
providers is based on a procurement approach that is about
agreeing a price, rather than agreeing a reasonable cost.
We understand that providers are willing to accept contracts
that fail to meet their full costs because most of the parents
who can afford to pay are glad to get at least some subsidy
and are willing to pay the difference. Finally, we recognise
that because money for childcare is not ring-fenced within
the local government settlement, it is not possible to identify
a specific allocation of funding for childcare from Scottish
Government to local authorities.”
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“Continuing with this haphazard funding
arrangement between the Scottish
Government and local authorities, and
between local authorities and partnership
providers, is unsustainable, as the real
losers are parents unable to enact their
right to 15 hours of free childcare.”
Continuing with this haphazard funding arrangement
between the Scottish Government and local authorities,
and between local authorities and partnership providers, is
unsustainable, as the real losers are parents unable to enact
their right to 15 hours of free childcare. It’s not even clear how
a parent would be able to request accurate evidence from
a partnership provider that 15 hours of childcare was free,
since there is no commonly held hourly rate throughout the
sector for the cost of childcare, which is why costs for parents
can differ massively from region to region, childcare centre
to childcare centre. Such are the consequences of having a
childcare sector that was described by the Commission for
Childcare Reform as “one of the most privatised in Europe,
with a majority of providers being either small businesses or
micro-businesses”.
Neither are local authorities ideally placed to fund the sort of
large-scale capital investment that would be needed to build
the new childcare centres. The legacy of PFI (The Guardian,
2015) and more recently ‘Lobo’ loans (Local Authority Debt
Audit, 2015) have forced councils to use
extortionate amounts of their budget on debt repayments,
with the cost of borrowing from the Public Works Loan
Board significantly more expensive under George Osborne’s
Chancellorship. While there are measures local
government could take to increase its ability to borrow for
investment, it is already over-burdened and could not be
considered a reliable partner in carrying out the necessary
capital investment.
There is also a problem with local authority costs for childcare
that is a source of tension: many workers commute between
local authority areas, and prefer to drop off and pick up their
children where they work. For example, someone living and
paying council tax in East Renfrewshire are a financial burden
in the form of childcare costs on Glasgow City Council.
Similarly, some children will require two different childcare
providers in the same day because the current funding
arrangements require their parents to do so, or because their
parents have two part-time jobs in different areas.
Councils are not equipped to take on the scale of the
investment challenge in expanding childcare provision. As
the Commission for Childcare Reform pointed out; “Eight local
authorities in Scotland (25 per cent) reported in 2015 that they
had no supply/demand data on childcare in their areas, and
could not estimate whether and to what extent a gap existed.”
What is needed is a coordinated national strategy that can
meet the 30 hours of free childcare in a way that ensures
cost effectiveness and meeting demand in every part
of Scotland.
Quality of Provision
Thinking about capacity and funding models is irrelevant if
it is not tied to a strategy to improve the quality of provision
of childcare in Scotland. Putting more weight on the already
creaking and fragmented childcare sector is unlikely to
produce positive outcomes.
The Siraj Review into the childcare workforce in Scotland
(Siraj, Kingston, 2015) raised concerns regarding the sectors
ability to increase provision for 2 year olds: “Introduction
of free hours for ‘vulnerable’ 2 year olds bring further
challenges around the quality of service in the private
sector.” It specifically suggests there will be a need for
further training and CPD. This is particularly relevant in
relation to the involvement of early years professionals in
integrated and multi-professional working that holistically
supports ‘vulnerable’ 2 year olds.
Equality inequities
1. Pay
• Average hourly pay in local authority childcare: £11
• Average hourly pay in private provider
childcare: £7-8.50
2. Council Spending
• Highland Council spend per childcare place per
hour: £2.91
• Inverclyde Council spend per childcare place per
hour: £7.19
3. Private Vs Public
• Private: “Negative effect of entrepreneurs” can mean
cutting corners: e.g. training on the job.
The OECD Starting Strong papers (2001) indicated that
quality early services should be embedded in wider local
and community-based integrated services. High quality
early years services connect and foster learning across
different locations (local spaces, the childcare centre, the
family home and the homes of relatives). There is little point
in developing high quality early years centres if we do not,
at the same time, address the whole system around the
child and family.
The Scottish Government accepted the Siraj Review’s
recommendations concerning the need for greater
involvement of early years professionals in the early years
collaborative and community planning partnerships. The
Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 (2014d) also
places a duty on each local authority and the relevant health
board to jointly prepare plans, deliver services and provide
a named person as a key link for parents and children.
The Siraj Review emphasised that whilst the uplift in
qualifications in the sector has begun to raise the status of
practitioners in their communities, tackling pay inequality
should be a key government priority. The Siraj Review
argued that more people could be encouraged into the
sector by “raising the status” of childcare work through
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providing a “professional wage” commensurate with the
uplift in qualifications.
Siraj found a “deep divide” in pay between local authorities
and the private sector, with “the largest inequalities in the
private and third sector”. The SSSC confirmed in evidence
to Siraj that a significant amount of workers in the private
and voluntary sector were paid “below the living wage”. The
Unison trade union analysis of pay rates (2015) found that
average public sector pay for childhood practitioners was
£11 per hour, compared to £7-8.50 in the private sector.
Regional differences in local authority childcare pay are
also substantial, with FoI information revealing the cost
per council place (majority of costs being wages) in the
Highlands is only £2.91, compared to £7.19 in Inverclyde
(Gorevan, 2015).
The success of Danish and Swedish models of childcare
has been built upon the professional standards of the staff,
who are paid a wage which encourages the idea that the
early learning and care sector is a professional industry. If
issues of pay and status are addressed then there is greater
likelihood that early years professionals will be perceived,
by other professionals, as key players within integrated
service delivery.
“From the parent’s point of view (and also
indeed from the childcare employee’s), it ought
not to matter whether the childcare service is
run by the private sector, or the not-for-profit
sector, or by the local authority directly. The
fact that it does matter indicates a problem.”
— Commission for Childcare Reform
The Commission for Childcare Reform also outlined a
fundamental problem with the current system for assessing
the quality of individual childcare providers in Scotland. It’s
worth quoting their comments in full:
“There is still no system in Scotland of ensuring the quality
of the child’s overall experience of childcare, when they
attend a number of different services across a single day or
week. Considering how fragmented our childcare system
is, where so many parents must scramble for solutions
to compensate for the absence of sufficient integrated
provision, this is a significant gap.”
“A further aspect of quality which has not yet received
sufficient attention in Scotland or the UK is ensuring/
regulating the transparency and fairness of how public
money is spent on childcare. Simple reliance on childcare
markets is a poor guarantor for ensuring that sufficient
quality provision can be made available in deprived
neighbourhoods, or rural areas, or for children with
additional support needs.”
“It is also a poor guarantor for ensuring parents can reliably
access the quality provision they seek within a mixed
economy. From the parent’s point of view (and also indeed
from the childcare employee’s), it ought not to matter
whether the childcare service is run by the private sector,
or the not-for-profit sector, or by the local authority directly.
The fact that it does matter indicates a problem.”
The Growing Up in Scotland study and The Siraj Review
indicated that the early learning and care sector needed
greater clarity concerning indicators of quality and
measures of improved outcomes. Concerns have been
raised over the effectiveness of private sector providers.
The Siraj Review noted a “lower level of quality in partner
provider settings, particularly within private sector provision,
in Scotland”, adding that there was “negative effects of
entrepreneurs” in childcare provision, including “that some
were too concerned with keeping their costs low by training
staff on the job, which can increase the number of staff with
low or no qualifications.”
Growing Up in Scotland used a combination of Care
Inspectorate and Education Scotland indicators to find “that
37 per cent of children who attended a primary school
nursery class had a provider graded very good or excellent
on each Care Inspectorate quality theme compared with 16
per cent of children attending a private provider.”
We are not seeking to be overly critical of private providers
in a way that raises fears amongst parents who use their
services. The vast majority of private providers receive a
rating of ‘good’ for their services. However, our aim is to
be much more ambitious and to ensure that all providers
receive excellent ratings across all the regions of Scotland.
The Growing Up in Scotland study found that the Care
Inspectorate ‘Care and Support’ theme was the only current
key inspection theme that could be connected to improved
outcomes of school age children. On a positive note, 95
per cent of providers are currently rated as 'good' or 'very
good' for that theme. This indicates that many private
providers successfully support children and parents in
their settings. However, our expectation should be that
all children experience services are excellent across all
inspection criteria - this is one of the biggest challenges that
faces the Scottish Government. Simply put, the Scottish
Government needs to speedily decide what structural
changes are required to ensure that all providers become
excellent, in as short a time as possible.
The Siraj Review drew from the Growing Up In Scotland
research to correctly conclude there was a need to clarify
the inspection and quality criteria for early learning and care
providers. We argue that the criteria must be clarified and
applied in ways that enable all providers to offer services of
the highest quality throughout Scotland.
The Scottish Government has responded to the Siraj Review
(2015c) by accepting the need to: “Transform the collection
of data on early learning and childcare - to meet current
and future needs”; increase research on “delivery of choice
and flexibility” and “shift from measuring ‘harder’ technical
inputs to ‘softer’ outcomes”.
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The Care Inspectorate are currently reviewing their
inspection criteria and have carried out a consultation
process (Scottish Government, 2014e). It will be important,
as we shift to a position where we better understand
outcomes and quality indicators, to avoid falling into the trap
of enforcing the use of formal child-assessment to judge
quality. Such an approach is likely to disrupt early learning
and is counter to the spirit of the research in the field which
indicates that flexible, informal and creative early learning
has positive impacts on school aged outcomes.
Key issues confronting the sector include how to
demonstrate money for value, inspect for quality, and
collect data/research on improved outcomes for children
and parents. The Scottish Government has set up a specific
Project Board to oversee the planning of the expansion to
1,140 hours per year and a Workforce and Quality Group that
will report to the Project Board on issues of quality (2015c).
This Project Board remit includes ensuring that all work
undertaken to implement Workforce Review
recommendations is contextualised within the longer term
workforce planning required.
The Commission for Childcare Reform concluded that
no single person or organisation has up to this point
taken responsibility for ensuring families have access
to the affordable, high quality childcare they need. They
recommended that this gap be addressed by a partnership
approach involving the Scottish Government (developing
strategies for change) and local authorities (delivering
change). Their central conclusion was that strong focused
leadership was needed to drive forward the complex
childcare agenda.
Yet, it is not clear to us that the Project Board is the
appropriate vehicle to: radically change the status quo,
swiftly drive leadership, creatively develop structures, and
cohesively stimulate major innovation.
In particular, recent reviews (and the Scottish government’s
response) lack clarity on whether they are going to tackle
inequalities in provision between providers that have an
entrepreneurial focus (as defined by market forces) and
those that are solely concerned with delivering quality
provision (as defined by children and parents).
The expansion of childcare to 30 hours for 3 and 4 year
olds and ‘vulnerable’ 2 year olds is at risk of failing to
increase quality if the emphasis for change involves us
solely administering sticking-plasters to the existing system.
If we simply put more pressure on existing partnership
providers, open up free hours to currently non-partnership
providers and force childminders (some poorly trained)
to take their maximum allocation of children, then it is
difficult to envisage how quality could be maintained,
never mind improved.
The Siraj Review identified key gaps in the field, the
Commission for Childcare Reform called for greater
partnership working and the Scottish Government’s
responses have been clear and considered. However,
neither of the reviews identified how we structurally
and practically are going to create so many new excellent
early learning and care spaces in the short space of time
that they are needed. What is required now is a clear
plan for delivering a massive expansion of the highest
quality provision.
Part 2: A two-part
plan for delivering
A National Childcare Service delivering 30 hours
of free childcare under public provision to a
uniformly excellent standard.
Within the Scottish Government’s cost envelope of £880m
for 2019/20.
We have outlined why the current architecture of childcare
provision is in no position to meet the challenge of the
increased capacity, funding and quality that will be required
to move to 30 hours of free childcare provision by 2020. In
Part 2 we aim to provide a plan for what needs to be done
to change this situation.
This plan is split into two parts:
First, the infrastructure and skills development needed
to get the sector prepared for 1,140 hours per year will
require a big injection of capital investment which we
estimate to be over £800m. The £441m per year of
increased revenue spending (to £880m) on childcare is
needed for the increased wages and maintenance of the
expanded childcare service, therefore, money for the capital
investment will have to come from elsewhere. We propose
a number of ways the Scottish Government could achieve
a quick transition in the childcare sector to get it up to
capacity.
Second, the childcare sector will be restructured into a
National Childcare Service, with all 30 hours provided
through public provision and a common set of standards for
quality, availability, affordability, flexibility and staffing. This
transition would take place over the four years from 20162020.
The intention would be to make childcare institutionally akin
to school education, which is run by local government but
with statutory national standards and framework in place for
5 For example, the Health department is receiving a 112.8 per cent increase in its capital budget for 2016/17 as a number of hospitals scheduled to be built using the ‘non-profit
distributing’ (NPD) method (where private sector companies do the building of public infrastructure projects and are paid for it over 20-30 years using future revenues) have
been reclassified by the ONS as public-sector, and therefore must be accounted for in current budget spend.
6This is explained in more depth by Wray (TBC 2016) titled ‘Scottish Government tools for public investment’.
7The case for which is made in a soon to be published paper by Common Weal, New Economics Foundation, Move Your Money, and Friends of the Earth Scotland paper (Bone,
TBC 2016).
8Special thanks to Malcolm Fraser for this.
07
overall governance of the sector. In this circumstance, there
would be no competition for places and provision would
uniformly be provided on the basis of meeting the needs of
the child, not profitability.
Restructuring of early learning and care provision will be
complex. The tripartite (public, private and voluntary) nature
of current provision will encounter obstacles, such as, how
to encourage the transitioning of private companies into
a universal service. Yet, it will also provide opportunities
regarding how to enable community governance of new
local centres. The two-part approach outlined below – a
specific plan to carry out the rapid investment needed in the
sector, and a National Childcare Service to ensure effective
delivery - is, we believe, the simplest and most effective
way to address the obstacles and take advantage of the
opportunities in transitioning to 1,140 hours.
A) Infrastructure and skills investment
In Part 1 we outlined the increase in capacity needed to
prepare the childcare sector for moving from 15 to 30 free
hours: 45,000 new places, 1,125 new childcare centres and
9,000 new staff. The Scottish Government has four years to
deliver the rapid infrastructure and skills investment needed
to achieve this. There are three major tasks:
Skills and Infrastructure Investment major tasks
1) Assess Demand: Conduct a full-scale audit of
childcare capacity across Scotland so that the investment
in new childcare centres and new staff can be efficient
and precise in meeting need, as well as taking account of
regional inequities, the needs of rural communities and
the requirements of disabled children (who should have
equitable access to early learning and childcare provision.)
2) Capital Investment: Finance and run the building of
the new childcare centres to a high standard, and offer buyouts to existing partnership providers (voluntary/private) to
become part of the new National Childcare Service.
3) Skill-up Professionals: Ensure there are enough
trained staff for the new hours needed, through
subsidising training for childhood practitioners and
those who want to become childcare practitioners
(discussed in detail in Part 3.)
Delivering 1) is straight forward: a taskforce should be
established to come up with accurate supply/demand data
in every part of the country, and should work with local
authorities and the inspection organisations in achieving
this. The detail should be meticulous with a map produced
of where new childcare centres should be built in each local
authority area.
For 2) and 3), the Scottish Government has various tools
it can use to raise the capital for infrastructure investment
and training.
The Scottish Government’s capital budget is rising by five
per cent in real terms, from £3bn to £3.2bn in 2019/20.
A report by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre
(SPICe) (2016) on the Scottish Government’s draft budget
2016/17 revealed that £1.1bn is available for the infrastructure
capital budget. While a substantial sum of this is likely to
be already allocated on the Scottish Government’s large
infrastructure pipeline, the data shows a large degree of
flexibility in how the capital budget is spent year on year.5
Therefore, the most straightforward way to carry out the
infrastructure investment would be to pay for it directly
through reallocating sums from the capital budget.
The Scottish Government could also borrow money from
its capital borrowing budget, which is 10 per cent of its total
capital budget (£300m rising to £320m by 2019/20).
If the Scottish Government did not want to front load the
funds for this and carry out the building of the childcare
centres directly, it could establish a government-run Special
Purpose Vehicle (SPV). An SPV is created by another entity
to carry out a specific task or set of tasks, and has its own
governance system in place to do this. The benefit of this
business model is that the government can raise capital
from other means.6
Ideally, the lender would be a newly established Scottish
National Investment Bank7, but even without this it would be
possible to find multiple sources of lending and even issue
bonds for private and pension financial investment in the
project.
One of the above menu of options is likely to be much more
favourable than simply allocating an extra sum of money
to local authorities to spend on infrastructure investment
for childcare. As discussed in Part 1, local authorities face
reduced budgets and rising debts, and therefore adding
the burden of building new childcare centres will not be a
reliable means of ensuring it happens to the extent and to
the quality in which is required.
Costs
After seeking expert advice8, we estimate the cost of
infrastructure development for an average-sized high quality
childcare centre (taking 40 children) including landscaping
and outdoors play area to be £750,000 (£844m for 1,125
centres). While not all centres will have to be built (the
Scottish Government is likely to reallocate use of existing
publicly owned estate and purchase estate) the cost of
partnership buy-outs (see below for more information)
means that an overall estimate of costs for new publicly
owned National Childcare Service centres of £800m is a
good estimate. That’s equivalent to one-fourth of the total
capital budget over one year, or one-sixteenth over the
four financial years from 2016/17 to 2019/20 (capital costs
are assessed on the period in which the asset is being
constructed).
The Scottish Government could of course attempt to save
money by not providing outdoors space and building
cheaply. However, the long term costs of constructing
buildings that people don’t enjoy working in, children do
08
not enjoy playing in, and are likely to need re-construction
work within a couple of decades, far outweigh the short
term outlay on building high-quality centres. As is discussed
in Part 3, the best early learning and care centres are
designed so that they do not “lock down” children, but
rather provide plenty of outdoor space at all times of year
to “encourage play and nurture creativity” (Royal Institute of
British Architects, 2015).
Infrastructure and Skills investment costs
Partnership Buy-Outs
The offer of buy-outs to partnership childcare centres would
not be compulsory – childcare centres could reject the offer,
but their funding for the 30 free hours would be reviewed,
and if it did not meet the new criteria of the National
Childcare Service (outlined below), it would be taken away.
Partnerships accepting the offer would have all staff kept
on, and would be re-graded and re-trained accordingly,
with a substantial improvement in pay for managers and
childhood practitioners.
1. Childcare Centres
• £844m for 1,125 high-quality
childcare centres
2. Skills
• £159m per year to train 50% of
total childcare staff to degree-level
qualifications by 2020
“The best early learning and care centres
are designed so that they do not ‘lock
down’ children, but rather provide plenty
of outdoor space at all times of year to
‘encourage play and nurture creativity’.”
In Part 3 we make the case for training new and existing
childhood practitioners to degree level and all childcare
managers gaining masters level qualifications in
management and childcare degrees. Our target is 50 per
cent by 2020 and 100 per cent by 2030. The volume and
cost of this rapid investment in skills in the higher education
sector means that we propose the establishment of a special
fund to pay development costs (the cost of tuition fees) to
universities worth £9,000 per student until 2021 (for those
studying part-time fees would also be covered by the fund)
and covering the cost of training new higher education staff.
Based on estimating half of the new degree level
qualifications coming from new childhood practitioners
and half coming from existing practitioners gaining an
additional 240 credits, the special fund for development
costs (including manager’s masters-level qualifications and
training new higher education staff) would be £159m per
year until 2020.
This is a substantial figure for rapid skills investment, but
the outcome would be an industry with highly qualified
childhood practitioners. This could be the case as soon as
full-day, publicly paid for childcare begins in 2020, starting
the National Childcare Service off on a strong footing. We
propose paying for this with childcare revenue spending
until 2019/20, as costs will not rise significantly until the
move to 30 free hours in 2020. Therefore, revenue spend
is likely to be available for transition costs such as skills
investment from 2016-20.
We believe this to be an attractive proposition for the
majority of staff working in partnership childcare centres. For
childcare workers, it offers the prospect of improved terms
and conditions. As well as giving managers/owners a lump
sum from the buy-out, it offers the prospect of increased
security and relief from the stress that many small businesses
in the childcare sector have to deal with; e.g. constant
change and the need to fill up places from year to year.
For parents, they will no longer have to worry about
inconsistencies in the quality of childcare provision between
different centres, and will be able to send their child to
one centre for the whole day. Many centres currently only
open for half-days, forcing parents to move their children
between different centres.
While Common Weal’s general approach is to always
support the success of small businesses, we believe that
early years learning and care, like school education and
healthcare, is of such fundamental importance to a child’s
development it should not be treated as a business, and
therefore should be publicly provided for.
B) National Childcare Service
A National Childcare Service, which would be established
in 2020 and would be responsible for the high-quality
delivery of 30 free hours of childcare per week in Scotland,
is affordable within the planned budget for the sector over
the next five years.
Costs
The Scottish Government has said that by 2019/20, revenue
spending on childcare in Scotland will rise from £439 million
in 2014/15 to £880 million (Scottish Government, 2015b).
The major cost for the National Childcare Service will be the
salaries of childhood practitioners and childcare managers.
In Part 3 we look at the targets for staff qualifications in the
National Childcare Service, setting a target of 50 per cent
of all staff fully qualified (to degree level) by the time of the
launch of the service in 2020 and 100 per cent by 2030.
The pay of staff would be based on a pay scale for fully
qualified staff and HND level qualified staff, with the wage
estimates in the table below for year one pay. Our cost
estimates are therefore based on meeting these targets by
2020.9
9 There are currently  teachers working in early years settings, but some fall into the category of childhood practitioners and some are managers, therefore we have
assumed they are in one or other category for the purposes of these figures.
09
The total staff costs of £601m would be easily affordable
within the Scottish Government’s planned budget, and
would leave plenty of money for the rest of the transition
to a National Childcare Service: establishing a national
framework, set of standards and curriculum that all childcare
centres would uniformly operate under. Other costs would
include paying for cooking, janitorial and secretarial duties
in each childcare centre, as well as electricity and food
costs. They would also pay a fee to local authorities for
regional recruitment and administration services.
In Part 4 we look at how affordability could be further
improved so that, eventually, childcare is entirely free at the
point of use for parents. For now, we need to understand
what support is provided for by the UK benefits system, and
therefore to what extent the parent-paid hours of childcare
are subsidised, in order to assess affordability.
Staff wages for childhood practitioners and
managers in the National Childcare Service
Number
of wholetime
equivalent staff
9,780
Current
Childhood
practitioners
Current
Managers
2,504
9,845
Additional
Childhood
practitioners
Current
average
public
sector
pay
Current
average
private
and
voluntary
sector
pay
Fully
HND
Total
qualified level pay Increase
pay (year
in staff
one)
costs
Total
Total
increase staff
in staff
costs
costs
after
income
tax return
Total
staff
costs
after
income
tax return
£21,120 £14,880 £26,895 £22,416 £55m
£44m
£241m
£193m
£25,500 £19,500 £36,870 —
£17m
£76m
£46m
£29m
—
—
£26,895 £22,416 £243m £194m
£243m £194m
£41m
Additional
managers
1,125
—
—
£36,870 —
£41m
Total
23,254 —
—
—
£368m £288m £601m
—
£33m
£33m
£466m
The proposed devolution of income tax to the Scottish
Parliament will mean that the Scottish budget will benefit
from increasing tax receipts, and with the national pay
scales increasing wages, childhood practitioners will be
paying the 20p basic rate and managers the 40p upper rate
of income tax, meaning £135m of the total salary cost will
pay for itself.
As more staff reach full qualifications and pay increases,
staff costs would accumulate. However, because all staff
would start on either a probationary teacher salary or a
year one teacher salary, the first year costs would allow for
a significant amount of revenue spend to be put towards
initial startup costs for the National Childcare Service, costs
which would subside in future years.
£4.54, which would cost £750m in the context of delivering
1,140 hours per year, and that is without any uplift in pay.
Our proposal is cost effective, eliminates inequalities in the
sector, and raises pay for qualified childhood practitioners
and managers so that it puts them on a par with the teaching
profession, It also meets the staff:child ratios required for fullday provision of 3-4 year olds and ‘vulnerable’ 2 year olds,
and does so through public provision.
Parent affordability
Expanding free childcare from 15 to 30 hours per week
will significantly reduce childcare costs for parents, but for
most in full-time work it will not eradicate them. On average,
full-time workers in Scotland work 38 hours per week. The
rest of the cost of full-time childcare will have to be paid
for by parents.
Childcare vouchers are being replaced by a Tax Free
Childcare Scheme, where working parents will be able to
pay into a ‘childcare account’, which will be topped up by
the UK Government. For every 80p parents pay into the
account to cover childcare costs, 20p will be topped up by
the government (with a cap of £2,000 per year). However,
for those on low incomes, take up for this is likely to be low,
as it means you cannot claim Working Tax Credit (which will
by 2017 be rolled into Universal Credit). The Commission for
Childcare Reform analysis found that only when receiving
very low levels of Universal Credit will the Childcare
Account be financially beneficial for parents. Two-thirds
of working parents do not currently receive any financial
support beyond the 600 hours per year free childcare, and
therefore it will be these parents (mostly middle-income)
who will benefit from the new Tax Free Childcare Scheme.
Those who take up the Tax Free Childcare Scheme will
essentially receive a 20 per cent reduction in total financial
costs. Combined with the move from 15 to 30 free hours,
this is significant especially for those with more than one
child in childcare or after school care. A couple of examples
will help to illustrate this:
10
Tax Free Childcare Scheme parent costs
Example 1: A household with one 3 year old child using
40 hours of childcare per week (assuming a rate of £10
an hour) will cost £80 per week (£320 per month).
Without the extra free hours or the Tax Free Childcare
Scheme, the cost would have been £250 per week
(£1000 per month).
Example 2: A household with three children - a 1 year
old, a 4 year old and a 10 year old in an after school
club. The 1 and 4 year old are in 35 hours of childcare
per week and the 10 year old in 15 hours per week.
Assuming £15 an hour for the 1 year old, £10 an hour for
the 4 year old and £5 an hour for the 10 year old, the
cost will be £160 per week (£640 per month).
Without the extra free hours or the Tax Free Childcare
Scheme, the cost would have been £575 per week
(£2,300 per month).
We can conclude that for middle-income full-time
parents, the extra hours and increased financial
support with the Tax Free Childcare Scheme reduces
childcare costs to about one-third of the what they
were before the changes. However, for parents
looking for 50 hours of childcare per week, the
reduction in cost would be significantly less, especially
if they have more than one child, as they would hit the
cap of the £2,000 top-up per year.
For low income parents, Working Tax Credit and Universal Credit both have a childcare element in defining how
much can be claimed. To qualify, the parent must regularly
use registered childcare. For the Working Tax Credit, the
childcare element is calculated as 70 per cent of the total
average costs of childcare, with a maximum of £122.50 per
week for one child (£210 a week for two or more children).
For the Universal Credit childcare element, as of 2016, it will
be worth 85 per cent of total average childcare costs.
It is impossible to come up with a precise account of the
winners and losers from the roll out of Universal Credit as it
is subject to change, but the number of people who receive
Universal Credit as opposed to Working Tax Credit will fall
slightly as Universal Credit is assessed on capital as well
as income. Households that have over £16,000 capital –
including savings, investments, property value etc. – will not
be applicable.
For those who will receive the childcare element of
Universal Credit, we can say that on top of a doubling
of free hours in Scotland, there will be a 15 per cent
improvement in the financial support they receive.
Taking the 15 extra hours and the 15 per cent improvement
in financial support, the increase in childcare subsidy is
highly significant - as much as an 80 per cent drop per
month for parents with one 3-4-year old child. We will use
the same examples as above, but this time for the childcare
element of Universal Credit.
Childcare element of Universal Credit parent costs
Example 1: A household with one 3 year old child using
40 hours of childcare per week (assuming a rate of £10
an hour) will cost £15 per week (£60 per month).
Without the increase in free hours or the extra 15 per
cent in financial support, the cost would have been
£75 per week (£300 per month).
Example 2: A household with three children - a 1 year
old, a 4 year old and a 10 year old in an after school
club. The 1 and 4 year old are in 35 hours of childcare
per week and the 10 year old 15 hours. Assuming £15
an hour for the 1 year old, £10 an hour for the 4 year
old and £5 an hour for the 10 year old the cost will be
£30 per week (£120 a month).
Without either the increase in free hours or the extra 15
per cent in financial support the cost would have been
£97.50 per week (£390 per month.)
We can conclude that for low-income full-time parents,
the extra hours and the increased financial support
from the childcare element of Universal Credit means
childcare costs are somewhere between one-third
to one-fifth the cost they were before the changes,
depending on the number of children. However, this
reduction is likely to be more like 50 per cent for
parents looking for 50 hours of childcare per week, as
20 hours would have to be paid for by the parent.
We should also set this within its proper context. Overall,
most in-work parents are likely to be worse off from
Universal Credit than Working Tax Credit. A single mother of
two, working full-time on the minimum wage, is set to
be £2,981 worse off per year under Universal Credit (The
Herald, 2016). Therefore, although the childcare element of
Universal Credit is set to be improved, the total amount is
what really matters in terms of childcare affordability, and
that is set to drop.
As discussed in Part 1, parents do not currently have a
commonly held cost per hour for childcare, with prices
varying wildly. A National Childcare Service would have a
national price per hour for parent-paid hours across the
different age groups.
Availability and flexibility
The Commission for Childcare Reform argued that 50 hours
of childcare per week should be made available so that fulltime parents can have all-day childcare, but that should be
the maximum amount that young children should be away
from their parents.
11
8-6pm
Monday-Friday
National
Childcare Service
uniform opening
times
For example, for some parents, three days of 8am-6pm
childcare will be appropriate, whereas for others, five days
of 9am-3pm – school hours - will work. No child should have
to be moved between childcare centres – for every place,
there should be one centre that can provide all-day care,
taking out the anxiety and inconvenience of availability and
moving children between centres, which can be a feature of
the current system.
Revenue return from increased full-time employment and
parent costs
Vastly improved affordability and availability of childcare
will mean that, over time, a significant amount of this
expenditure would come back in revenue as more parents
(especially women) re-enter full-time work and begin paying
income tax. As it stands, only 15 per cent of local authorities
say that they have enough childcare for parents who
work full-time (down from 23 per cent in 2014), making it
extraordinarily difficult for young parents who want to work
full-time to do so.
Economic impact of women (re)entering
full time-work
1. 2% increase
£200m in income tax revenue
This is essential for full-time parents. Unless they can be
confident of having all-day care, they can’t be sure that they
will be able to work full-time hours. In many ways the hours
are irrelevant from the point of view of full-time parents –
they pay up front for all-day care and receive the free hours
in three lump sums across the year, so it is the shift from
half-day to full-day that matters to them. If a maximum of six
hours per day is delivered, most full-time parents will not
experience that as a fundamental change in the nature of
childcare delivery in Scotland. The all-day care availability is
paramount. In Part 4 we discuss how this flexibility could be
further extended, but we believe this to be an important first
step that is affordable and viable in the current context.
“If a maximum of six hours per day is
delivered, most full-time parents will not
experience that as a fundamental change in
the nature of childcare delivery in Scotland.
The all-day care availability is paramount.”
As discussed above, building flexibility into the system
will require extra staffing to deal with the increased
opening hours. Hours worked vary widely across the
childcare sector, as some local authorities just put on
enough childcare for the 15 free hours, whereas some
partnership centres can be open for over 50 hours a week.
We believe no member of staff should be working more
than 40 hours per week, meaning that at minimum if all
centres are running for 50 hours per week, a 20 per cent
increase in staffing is necessary. Of course not all staff will
want to significantly increase their hours, and part-time
arrangements should be accommodated for. All changes
to staff working hours should only be implemented after
thorough consultation and negotiation with the workforce
and trade unions.
With the aim of establishing childcare centres on a needs
basis across Scotland so that every 3-4 year old and
‘vulnerable’ 2 year old has a place, a National Childcare
Service can ensure that availability is no longer a problem
for parents, flexibility is built into the system and competition
for places is eradicated.
2. Swedish levels of full-time
employment
£700m in income tax revenue
3. Economic impact
Up to £2.2bn increase in economic activity
Women in Scotland’s Economy Research Centre (WiSE) at
Glasgow Caledonian University (Thomas, Ross, Campbell,
2014) have found that underemployment – the wish of
part-time workers to work more hours – is generally
higher for women as many more tend to work part-time
than men. WiSE believes that the true extent of voluntary
underemployment is likely to be hidden “under conditions
of constraint such as inability to find suitable, affordable
childcare.”
SPICe figures (2014) also show that a significant number of
those out of work, as well as underemployed, would look
to find work under different circumstances. Of the 207,000
mothers of working age in 2011, the majority of the 64,000
of them who described themselves as “economically
inactive’” (not looking for work) cited “looking after family,
home” as their main reason, with 14,000 stating that they
would like to work.
A 2011 report by Save the Children titled ‘Making work pay
– the childcare trap’ found that a quarter of the parents in
severe poverty who responded had given up work, a third
had turned down a job, and a quarter had not been able to
take up education or training, all because of difficulties in
accessing childcare.
A Scottish Government report has calculated the potential
returns from increased female labour market participation
(2013b): at the lower end of the scale, if there was a two
per cent increase in female employment, there would be
a £200m increase in tax revenue, paying for a quarter of
childcare costs. If that figure reached Swedish levels of
female full-time employment, there would be a £700m
increase in tax revenues, almost covering the full cost of 30
hours a week public provision of childcare (assuming the
12
Scotland Bill passes and income tax power is devolved).
That is not to mention the wider economic benefit (up to
£2.2bn) of increased numbers of women in full-time work.
The SPICe report (2014) argued that benefits could also
be gained from increased productivity. There would also
be wider economic benefits from boosting available
household income to workers from increased wages and
to parents from increased free childcare, freeing up income
that had previously been allocated to paying for additional
childcare hours.
Each local area would begin from different starting points
and it would be important to enable local and regional
flexibility so that the National Childcare Service could focus
on responding as quickly as possible to local needs. The
National Childcare Service (in collaboration with SSSC,
Care Inspectorate and Education Scotland) and the Project
Board (discussed in Part 1) would work collectively to
ensure national standards, quality indicators, outcomesand
evaluation, supported local service, development
and delivery.
“The Guardian reported in 2014 of
a ‘hidden army’ of nearly two million
grandparents stepping in due to rising
childcare costs. One Ipsos-Mori poll found
14 per cent had reduced their working
hours, taken early retirement or annual
leave to look after children of siblings.”
Finally, The Guardian reported in 2014 of a “hidden army”
of nearly two million grandparents stepping in due to rising
childcare costs. One Ipsos-Mori poll found 14 per cent had
reduced their working hours, taken early retirement or
annual leave to look after children of siblings. The Family
and Care Trust (2015) found that this phenomenon was
more common in Scotland than England. Making childcare
more affordable and more available would likely bring
many grandparents back into full-time work, increasing tax
returns.
Delivering
Secondly, as discussed above in the ‘affordability’ section,
there would still be some parent-paid childcare costs
from those working full-time using more than their 30 free
hours. While much of this will be subsidised, it will still be
a sizeable income stream for the public purse, which we
predict to be larger than it is currently, despite moving from
15 to 30 hours. This is because under our proposal for a
National Childcare Service, the vast majority of parent-paid
childcare would be in the public sector, whereas previously,
many local authority childcare centres only provided for the
15 free hours, while private providers tended to be open
much longer.
We believe this plan to create a National Childcare Service
(which we would recommend officially calling ‘National Early
Learning and Care Service’) is the only way of ensuring that
the increase to 30 hours delivers:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Management structure
The ‘Taking The First Steps’ report (SSSC, 2014) connected
improved outcomes for children, flexible pedagogy
and creative curriculum with devolved leadership and
management within community-focused early years
services that involved all staff taking responsibility for
issues of quality. By strategically locating centres in local
communities, the National Childcare Service would seek
to ensure that community level participation and decisionmaking was central to the early learning and childcare
management process. The local authority would still
support local processes of recruitment, administration and
planning in coordination with local childcare partnership
boards.
•
The necessary spaces throughout the country
Universally excellent standards
A creative early learning and care curriculum
A national framework for swift innovation and change
A substantial increase in the number of qualified staff
Early learning and care workers no longer suffering the
inequity of poverty wages and having a wage structure
that reflects their professionalism
Increased status for early learning and care workers
resulting from being viewed as professional experts
on learning and development who have a viable
career path
A National Childcare Service is the only vehicle that could
seriously cope with planning this expansion.
13
Part 3: A Common
Weal vision for Early
Years Education
An early years curriculum that promotes
play and supports the creativity of childhood
practitioners.
Underpinned by uniformly qualified, well remunerated staff.
We have outlined the radical changes required in the
architectural structure and funding strategy of childcare
provision in Scotland in order to match the commitment of
30 free hours per week of high-quality childcare. Now we
will look at what our vision is for early years learning and
development, how a National Childcare Service can deliver
this vision and how this will enable us to create the best
start in life for children in Scotland.
Early years curriculum
The key issues concerning quality early learning and care
provision centre on whether the setting: is child focused
(responsive to the views and emotions of parents and
children); uses a flexible creative curriculum; has access to
the outdoors; and is under-pinned by a focus on learning
(rather than money). That is, both Growing Up in Scotland,
and OECD research (2001) tells us that a creative pedagogy,
a culture of listening and a caring/supportive environment
has the most impact on children’s future outcomes.
Firstly, over the last ten years, various initiatives have sought
to shift thinking in the field from being about child ‘day
care’ to being about learning. The Siraj Review once again
emphasised the fact that childcare should not only be about
providing a safe space for young children, but should be a
learning experience.
Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) has researched the
cognitive development of young children and found major
inequalities based on income and parent educational level
that can have a significant effect on children for the rest of
their lives. However, they also found that “activities do have
an influence on children’s cognitive development and that
they can moderate – though by no means eradicate – the
effect of socio-demographic disadvantage.”
In particular, the GUS research points to the importance
of creative early years activities. Hence, the promotion of
creative and innovative pedagogy, curriculum and activities
in early learning and childcare centres should therefore be
of the upmost importance in pursuit of the goal of an equal
start for everyone in life.
The Te Whāriki initiative
In order to avoid the increase in childcare provision
leading to the institutionalisation of early childhood,
Scotland should follow the Swedish model and the
Te Whāriki initiative in New Zealand; both see a well
designed
national early years curriculum, that associates
learning with the environment, as the most important part
of their pre-school system.
The Te Whāriki initiative (1996) built an early years
curriculum that also valued traditional indigenous culture.
Recent discussions in New Zealand have centred on how
this can also support the full range of diverse cultures
that children possess. Hence, a new Scottish early years
curriculum should balance the need to value historical
Scottish cultures with the need to recognise the diverse
cultures that children from a variety of backgrounds
possess.
The Siraj Review sought to promote the use of the term
‘early learning and care’ to cover the sector. The Scottish
government officially introduced the term ‘Early Learning
and Care’ through the Children and Young People (Scotland)
Act 2014 to convey that nurture and learning are indivisible
in the early years. In their response to the Siraj Review, the
Scottish Government indicated that “the national practice
guidance ‘Building the Ambition’ (2014f) had also set out
a clear definition of ‘early learning and childcare’
for practitioners working with babies, toddlers and
young children.”
The recent reviews (Siraj, Kingston, 2015, Commission
for Chidcare Reform, 2015) in seeking to create universal
solutions, have tended to treat parents as if they are one
type. They make little mention of the experiences of ethnic
minority or LGBT families who, for example, may experience
discrimination in early learning centres by rarely being
invited to take part in social events, seldom being asked
to carry out leadership tasks during outings, or never
being requested to take management roles on parent
committees. The SSSC ‘Taking the First Steps’ research
findings demonstrated that professionals who possess the
BA Childhood Practice degree, believe the qualification
has made them more knowledgeable concerning issues of
anti-discrimination, rights and social justice. However, it also
indicated that such professionals are less experienced at
utilising this knowledge in practise.
The Scottish Government also suggested that Education
Scotland will promote understanding of this shift in
terminology and emphasis when developing future selfassessment frameworks. These frameworks will connect
three key policy initiatives: ‘Building the Ambition’, ‘Pre-Birth
to Three: Positive Outcomes for Scotland’s Children and
Families’ and ‘A Curriculum for Excellence.’
As a country that promotes anti-discriminatory practice,
consideration should be given to how existing antidiscriminatory approaches should be improved and
promoted within a new early years curriculum and an ‘early
learning and care national curriculum and review group’
should be set up to make recommendations on how to
update the curriculum covering 0-7 years of age.
14
The Swedish model and the Te Whāriki initiative promote
creative and environmentally-based concepts of learning.
They focus on the development of cognitive skills and
non-academic styles of learning. This focus should be
emphasised in the new curriculum by further promoting
learning through play, music and other creative arts and
further developing professional understanding of the
necessity for a healthy diet, energetic lifestyle, physical
exercise and outdoor activity.
Childcare centres need to practise what they preach in the
curriculum, hence, they should be encouraging children to
eat fresh and healthy food as early as possible. Sweden has
very strict guidelines on the need for food to be nutritious
(Crawley, 2006). In this respect food procurement should
be looked at so that nutrition is prioritised over cost, and it
should be part of the early years provision that children are
entitled to fresh, healthy food.
Specifically, an early years curriculum should not include
any form of assessment and testing, and should not be
overly formalised. The aim is not to attain a certain level
of numeracy and literacy skills, but to build confidence
and self-esteem. If a child is interested in something, they
will make the conscious decision to learn about it. They
should not be pressured into the accumulation of specific
knowledge; the focus in early years should be on the needs
of the individual.
Secure people make for better learners.
The evidence for the success of this approach in Sweden is
overwhelming – they have the highest literacy and lowest
illiteracy in the world (OECD, 2012), despite the fact that
reading and writing is not pushed until the age of seven.
Children have been taught to do things for themselves and
early years is crucial to that process of self-led learning as
it ‘builds a base’ in which literacy and numeracy skills can
flourish.
“The evidence for the success of this
approach in Sweden is overwhelming –
they have the highest literacy and lowest
illiteracy in the world, despite the fact that
reading and writing is not pushed until the
age of seven.”
For childhood practitioners, the curriculum should not be
overly-prescriptive – it is there to show what to do but not
how to do it. Innovation and creativity of professionals
should be encouraged, as long as it is based on a clear
set of principles about what they are trying to achieve.
This should include enabling children to self-empower, to
problem solve, come to their own conclusions and work out
their own solutions.
The processes of early years learning should be assessed
holistically by early years professionals and National
Childcare Service managers, to ensure each child
experiences consistent evolution, growth and development
over time. A critical engagement with the processes of
education can be healthy as long as it is not based on
‘deficit model’ assessment of individual children, parents
and professionals – a collaborative culture of participation,
collective decision-making, joint-solution generating and
innovative implementation, review and evaluation should be
developed.
The transition from childcare to primary school should also
be integrated into the early years curriculum. Smoothing
the transition can be very important for the confidence of
children in what can otherwise be traumatic if there is not a
degree of continuity. There should also be flexibility around
the starting point of school that takes into account the
wishes of children and parents. In particular, a ground swell
of support is emerging for moving the school starting age
to seven (Palmer, 2016.) The Scottish Government should
set up a committee to review the pros and cons of this
structural change and make recommendations for the way
forward.
Dunlop (2002) highlighted an example in Scotland where
children were invited to the primary school they would soon
be attending on four weekly visits. The visiting children
carried out activities alongside the children currently
attending the primary school to grow accustomed to the
environment. Strong links between primary schools and
childcare centres can therefore help this process, as well
as policy links in developing primary school and early years
curriculum. Recent research at the University of Edinburgh
(McNair, 2015) has also highlighted a lack of children’s
involvement in processes of transition, parental exclusion
from decision making on deferred entry and a lack of
continuity concerning flexible/child-led curriculum.
Principle component analysis (Fiesta, 2014) regarding the
successful transition of disabled children indicated that
parents believed the key factors to be that organisations:
adopted a child-inclusive ethos; enabled children’s
autonomy and participation; ensured parents were involved
in transition decisions; and made sure that collaborative
planning took place at the earliest opportunity and
was regularly evaluated. In addition to these factors,
professionals suggested that experience of working through
issues of transition, organisational values/characteristics
and post and pre-qualification training were also important
factors.
Transition research (Davis et al 2014) highlights the
importance of community-based democratic practise in
early learning and care centres. It helps to connect our
ideas for reform of the early learning and care sector
to our recommendation for wider reforms concerning
democracy and social justice in local communities. The shift
to a universal service should produce structures that are
flexible, promote local decision making, and enable local
professionals to effectively collaborate with local people to
meet their needs when they arise.
Staff Qualifications
The Scottish qualifications system for early years is
complex, with a variety of qualification types awarded by
15
universities, colleges and in the workplace. However, there
is a single qualifications framework in the sector, and BA
Childhood Practice providers have signed up to an agreed
allocation of credits for each pre-entry qualification. It will be
important when developing staff teams to ensure that the
managers and practitioners have appropriate qualifications
in early years/management and that staff as a whole have
suitable early years-focused qualifications.
The Siraj Review argued that “the term practitioner should
be reviewed as in a lay person’s view it is unlikely to be
associated with someone who is professional or a leading
expert in their sector”. The Scottish Government rejected
this suggestion arguing that the BA Childhood Practice was
now a respected and well known qualification: “The Scottish
Government supports the use of the term ‘practitioner’ for
those working within the early learning and childcare sector:
this is widely understood and accepted as describing those
working within the sector, and links to registration with the
SSSC.”
The SSSC ‘Taking The First Steps’ research indicated that
those in the Early Learning and Care sector who criticised
the Childhood Practice qualification had little understanding
of what the qualification entailed and their position was
likely to be built on personal prejudice rather than sound
data. The Education Scotland ‘Making a Difference’ report
(2012) highlighted the effective practise of many childhood
practitioners and the importance of teachers having an
additional post-graduate qualification or CPD specific to
early learning.
The Education Scotland report also raised questions about
the effectiveness of teachers who do not have experience
of early years. Childhood practitioners have raised concerns
about the use of non-early years-trained teachers in
childcare settings. The Scottish Government has highlighted
the benefits of having a mix of professionals supporting
early years settings.
Our conclusion is that there has to be greater clarity
about the role of teachers in early years settings and that
this clarity must differentiate between: 1) The early years
manager (who should have qualifications that involves
management and early years, e.g. the BA Childhood
Practice or a head teacher qualification, plus post-graduate
training in early years). 2) The early years professional (who
should have a childhood practice qualification or equivalent
e.g. a post-graduate early years teaching qualification). 3) A
teacher (a teacher without management training, may not
have appropriate qualifications or experience concerning
early years, will only have a general teaching qualification
and may have little experience of working in early years
e.g. a few weeks experience carried out during their initial
teaching qualification placements). In the longer term, the
aim should be for all mangers of early years services to be
qualified to masters level and to have taken the same postgraduate qualification.
Headline figures such as, “17.8 per cent of childcare centres
have no access to a GTCS registered teacher” (Scottish
Government, 2014b), hide a more complex picture. The Siraj
Review has encouraged us to argue that teachers who do
not have experience of early years should not be managing
early years services, nor leading day-to-day provision, and
should only be involved in early years services where they
are providing additional (not core) support based on their
specific expertise as teachers e.g. support for issues such
as transition, inclusion, emergent literacy, etc.
Childhood practitioners have been trained to manage
early years settings, general GTC teachers (who lack early
years and management qualifications) have not. Where
both professionals are working in the same early years
setting, it should be assumed that the professional with the
most management qualifications and experience (e.g. the
childhood practitioner) will take the lead in supervising the
professional who has less management qualifications and
experience (e.g. the GTC Teacher who lacks early years and
management qualifications.)
“In particular, it is never appropriate
for head teachers to move a failing
or struggling teacher from the upper
school to a nursery class/school on the
misperception that early years classes are
somehow a ‘soft touch’ or ‘easier’.”
In particular, it is never appropriate for head teachers to
move a failing or struggling teacher from the upper school
to a nursery class/school on the misperception that early
years classes are somehow a ‘soft touch’ or ‘easier’. This
type of management is inadequate because it fails to
address the support needs of the teacher at the point they
occur, forces leadership roles on professionals who do not
have early years experience, and simply compounds the
stress on the teacher who is moved to an environment he/
she does not properly understand.
This mismanagement creates huge tensions where the
re-location involves the struggling teacher becoming a
line manager to more experienced and knowledgeable
professionals who have the BA Childhood Practice
qualification. It also wastes public money as struggling
teachers contribute little to the setting.
The Siraj Review and Scottish Government response has
led to funding being allocated to ensure that primary head
teachers who manage a nursery class can gain training in
early years. This training should also be made available to
teachers who currently work in early years but only have a
general teaching qualification.
Such initiatives will ensure that primary head teachers
become similar to the Childhood Practitioner in that they will
have both management and early years qualifications. At
practitioner level, this requirement will address the inequity
of all other members of staff having to have an early years
practice qualification (minimum HNC/SVQ3.)
There are three major differences between the Childhood
Practice qualification and the general teaching qualification.
16
The Childhood Practice qualification includes: practise
in more than one type of location not simply schooling
(e.g. early years centre, early schooling P1/2 class and
out of school provision); it involves at least a year of early
years-focused work-based learning concurrent with the
qualification (in most cases 3-5 years); and it involves at
least 60 credits of management training.
Some commentators have argued that the four-year
general teaching qualification is somehow superior to
the BA Childhood Practice because it is an honours
degree (SCQF level 10). There is no scientific basis for this
argument. Indeed, in the past many one-year PGDE and
PGCE qualifications for teachers were set at SCQF level 9.
Scottish Government (2009) research indicated there was
no discernible difference over time between teachers who
had one year qualifications and those who had taken a four
year honours degree.
Similarly, Some BA Childhood Practice programmes
include courses at level 10 (e.g. the University of Edinburgh
Programme includes 120 credits at level 10), yet the SSSC
‘Taking The First Steps’ research indicated broad and
statistically significant similarities in the way that different
BA Childhood Practice programs impacted on students.
In response to the Siraj Review, the Scottish Government
stated that it does not differentiate between teachers and
childhood practitioners: “The Scottish Government has
committed to ensuring there will be an additional degree
qualified staff member, whether that is a teacher or a
Childhood practitioner, in nurseries in the most economically
deprived areas, from 2018.” The key issue is whether the
professional has taken an early years qualification and
whether, following OECD recommendations, we want to
ensure that all such professionals register with the one
professional body.
“We are of the view that, in future, any new
teacher who wishes to work at practitioner
or manager level in early years should
be required to register with the SSSC
and demonstrate appropriate early years
training or qualifications.”
We are of the view that, in future, any new teacher who
wishes to work at practitioner or manager level in early
years should be required to register with the SSSC
and demonstrate appropriate early years training or
qualifications. Overtime, this will mean that all early
years professionals are registered with the one
professional body and all practitioners have appropriate
early years qualifications.
Currently, professionals who have social work or community
education qualifications have to take additional early years
qualifications and be registered with the SSSC. In Scotland,
that is focused on equity and social justice; childhood
practitioners, teachers, social workers, nurses (NMC) and
community educators should not be treated differently. It is
particularly inequitable that nurses (NMC) and community
educators have to change professional bodies but teachers
do not.
In the meantime, the GTC ensure that teachers who
currently work in early years, and do not have appropriate
early years qualifications, should be given a re-registration
condition that they should take appropriate training.
Sweden’s shift
Sweden changed the name of their childcare from
‘family day care’ to ‘pedagogical care’ and moved it from
the Health & Social Affairs department to Education as
a signal of their focus on the importance of early years
for children’s development (OECD, 1999), and as the first
stage in lifelong learning.
The Scottish Government has consistently chosen not to
refer to early years professionals as pedagogues and very
rarely uses the term in their documentation. Our conclusion
is that research should be carried out with childhood
practitioners and early years teachers to identify whether
there is potential for a new term to be adopted. A single
agreed term and single professional grouping would indeed
be a radical outcome compared to the status quo.
Similarly, the last ten years have seen in a huge shift in the
quality and qualifications in early years and care services in
Scotland, which has been led by the SSSC. We recognise
the tremendous efforts of the early learning and care
workforce over the last decade to gain new qualifications,
engage with ideas concerning creative pedagogy, and meet
the succession of policy initiatives developed by various
governments and ministers. Many
providers currently provide high quality early learning and
care services but we need to ensure that all provision
across the sector delivers excellent learning environments
for all children and families.
The Scottish Government continues to recognise the
SSSC as the key leadership body in the field. The shift to
a fully registered workforce has been supported by
various Ministers for Children and Young People who have
all been able to gain the respect of the early learning and
care workforce.
The movement of early learning and care into the education
ministry in Sweden was met with criticism that it led to the
‘schoolification’ of early years (Cohen, B, Moss, P, Petrie,
P, and Wallace, J, 2004). This occurred because managers
who did not have experience, knowledge and qualifications
in early learning and care took over the running of services.
Moving early years to a ministry focused on schooling
Scotland would most likely encounter similar problems to
the Swedish system.
Similarly, the Minister for Children and Young People has
been able to connect early learning and care to wider social
welfare and child law systems through the ‘Getting it Right
for Every Child’ initiative and ‘The Children and Young
17
People (Scotland) Act 2014’. Scotland has had a greater
focus on integrated working in children’s services than other
countries, and our unique experience in this field should
also be taken into account when considering the issue of
which ministry is the most appropriate place to locate Early
Learning and Care.
As the Siraj Review pointed out, there are “clear
links” between the professional development of staff,
qualifications and quality in childcare. Generally, the Review
found that the higher the education level of staff, the higher
the quality of provision, and, the higher the relevance
of qualifications to early years, the higher the quality of
provision (although not the only indicator, group size and
child:staff ratio being important too.)
“By ensuring that early learning and care
continues to have its own identity and by
strengthening this identity in the public eye,
stronger relationships could be built with
local communities to ensure participatory
management, planning and review of local
centres.”
The Siraj Review warned against “historically inaccurate”
interpretations of childcare work that view the “skills
required by practitioners/teachers as merely common
sense and that mothers could teach young children equally
as well, or that play is simply the work of children and the
adults (mostly women) need only to provide resources for
play and supervise children’s experiences.”
In contrast to these historical stereotypes, the National
Childcare Service needs to have appropriate and flexible
management structures that ensure services are responsive
to the aspirations and expressed wishes of children and
parents. By ensuring that early learning and care continues
to have its own identity and by strengthening this identity
in the public eye, stronger relationships could be built with
local communities to ensure participatory management,
planning and review of local centres.
Cowgate under-5’s
A key aspect of this development will be the
involvement of children and parents. Cowgate Under 5’s
Centre consistently receives excellent Care Inspectorate
reports. They have been commended for the way they
engage with parents whether it be through outreach
visits, running courses for parents, or involving parents
as volunteers. The Centre is experienced in enabling
parents to understand the importance of creative and
environmentally-based approaches to learning.
Yet, the Commission for Childcare Reform indicated there
were gaps in parent’s understandings of what high quality
centres looked like. The work currently taking place
to clarify the inspection criteria, quality indicators and
outcome measures for early learning and care must, when
completed, be disseminated in straight forward
ways to parents and children. Examples exist of projects
that have sought to develop parental understanding of
early years learning, but local authorities and early learning
and childcare centres should be encouraged to further
develop events, projects and processes that support
parents to gain knowledge and understanding of what
counts as excellent practice.
The Taking the First steps report highlighted the ability of
childhood practitioners to meet the OECD Starting Strong
recommendations that early years professionals have
relevant degrees and are capable of participatory and
community-based working. The Siraj Review argued that
with the expansion of provision, a key opportunity exists
to emphasise the professional nature of the workforce,
to connect the profession with community planning
partnerships and to link practice to initiatives such as the
early years collaborative.
We now have a degree-led profession that includes
1,200 professional leaders/managers who have the new
Childhood Practice qualifications. 89 per cent of the 30,000
registered workers now have the appropriate qualification
for their level (e.g. HNC/SVQ3) and the other 11 per cent are
studying to achieve their qualifications.
Unison should be encouraged to work with other unions
and qualification providers to set up a National College
of Childhood Practice to ensure proper representation of
the workforce in national negotiation, develop a national
strategy for advertising the changes that will take place in
the profession and promote recognition of the professional
status of the job role.
With another 10,780 staff needed for moving to 30 free
hours, there is a clear need for a rapid increase in the
number of available training places in the early learning
and care sector. The Siraj Review recommended a “15 year
vision and development plan for workforce reform” aimed at
increasing the size and quality of the workforce and this is
the timeline we will propose.
Our view is that children should have a right to professionals
who have degree level qualifications commensurate with
the BA Childhood Practice and that we should value equally
Childhood practitioners and teachers, social workers and
community educators (who have put the time into taking
early years qualifications). Our aim is to have 50 per cent of
staff with a degree level Childhood Practice qualification or
equivalent by 2020 and 100 per cent by 2030.
In the year 2005-06, only 55 per cent of the workforce
had the relevant qualification. So, there has been a 34 per
cent (soon to be 45 per cent) uplift in qualifications in the
sector in nine years. However, most of these qualifications
are not at degree level. Since 2008, 1,200 mangers have
completed the childhood practice degree and there are
around 1,200 staff with teaching qualifications. That means
that around 7,300 staff don’t currently have degrees and
there will be a need to train 7,000 new staff to degree level.
18
Hence, we need to ensure we have the capacity in the
higher education system to deliver 14,300 degrees within 15
years.
“Our target is for half of the degree-level
qualifications to be delivered by 2020 and the
other half to be achieved in the following 10 years
up to 2030, at which point we hope all childhood
professionals and managers are fully qualified.”
Our target is for half of the degree-level qualifications to be
delivered by 2020 and the other half to be achieved in the
following 10 years up to 2030, at which point we hope all
childhood professionals and managers are fully qualified.
There are currently twelve qualification providers and we
estimate they would require an additional 150 PhD level
qualified staff to provide the new qualification.
We would also have an assumption that any professional
who is appointed to a post in a local authority or the
National Childcare Service that is involved in management
and/or development of the sector, will be required to have
a masters degree in Childhood Practice, early learning or
equivalent.
Finally in respect of qualification requirements, our
professional development aims also involve us seeking
to have all early learning centre managers qualified to a
masters level by 2030. This ambitious aim would ensure
that professionals are suitably qualified at every level of the
early learning sector.
We propose that Childhood practitioners and early years
managers have national pay scales that reflect the top
end of current local authority childcare pay and incentivise
progression to degree level qualifications across the sector.
Childhood practitioners at HND level should start at £22,416,
and at degree-level start at £26,895, progressing over time.
For fully-qualified managers, year one salary should start
at £36,870. This would be a substantial pay rise across the
sector, especially for those currently working for private
providers.
This rapid transition to a sector with fully qualified staff will
require careful collaboration with the higher education
sector to ensure the volume of new early learning and care
degrees can be met. In Part 2 we proposed a special fund
running to 2020 that would cover the development costs
(the cost of tuition fees) for those seeking the relevant
qualifications, and for the extra PhD level staff required
to carry out the training. This would be worth £9000
per student and would take the pressure off the higher
education sector to meet the rapid increase in volume.
“This rapid transition to a sector with fully qualified
staff will require careful collaboration with the
higher education sector to ensure the volume of
new early learning and care degrees can be met.”
The Siraj Review proposed increasing the number and
variety of graduate degrees designed for practitioners,
arguing: “Every strong profession has a good initial
graduate route/s. This should not threaten the work-based
Childhood Practice degree programme or discourage
further and higher educational institutions from offering
their initial degree programmes to work-based practitioners
through more creative, flexible delivery options.”
We would echo these proposals, and argue that as well
as offering conversion and upskilling courses for current
primary school teachers, social workers, and community
educators, we should enable a dramatic increase in
innovative Childhood Practice programmes and their
equivalent, particularly at post-graduate level.
The QAAS Standard For Childhood practice has recently
been reviewed (SSSC, 2015) and should form the basis for
any new qualifications in the field.
Currently, the SSSC approve courses in this field and it
should continue to ensure that under-graduate and postgraduate programme providers design programmes that:
meet the same rigorous standards; that are of equal quality;
and that emphasise the new early years curriculum. The
curriculum will be developed over the next few years in a
collaborative process involving children, parents, policy
makers and early years professionals.
The last ten years have seen an impressive shift in Scotland
to where early learning and care is now a degree-managed
profession. We advocate a shift to a position where 100
per cent of professionals have the Childhood Practice
qualification or equivalent. To ensure the highest excellence,
we believe that we also have to ensure that we move to
a position where 100 per cent of managers have masters
qualifications (or equivalent). A masters-led early learning
profession where all managers have qualifications that
exceed the initial qualification achieved by practitioners, will
greatly enhance the reputation of the sector.
Such a change may be daunting for those professionals
who have just spent six or seven years (part-time) securing
their BA Childhood Practice. However, the evidence is
clear that for the highest standards to be maintained, initial
qualifications have to be supported with post-graduate
continual professional development.
These should also be available to the professionals who
inspect early learning services; all inspectors have taken
the registration of care award, but this does not have
specific content on early learning. It is inequitable that the
people who inspect services can sometimes have a lower
qualification level than the professionals they inspect. This
situation must be addressed as quickly as is possible and in
the longer-term early learning inspectors should be required
to have a masters level qualification in early learning and
care.
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“Such a change may be daunting for those
professionals who have just spent six or
seven years (part-time) securing their BA
Childhood Practice. However, the evidence
is clear that for the highest standards to
be maintained, initial qualifications have to
be supported with post-graduate continual
professional development.”
One of the first acts of a National Childcare Service should
be to carry out a consultation to establish the timelines
and staging posts for achieving a masters-led profession
and to generate the terminology that will separate postgraduate initial qualifications and post-graduate advanced
qualifications in Childhood Practice. We have suggested a
2030 timeline; however, the sector should be encouraged
to consider innovative ways to make the necessary changes
at a swifter speed.
All of these radical changes to the early years curriculum
and staff qualifications can only be delivered by a national
strategy with powers to make changes statutory on all
childcare provision. This is why a National Childcare Service
is essential if standards are to be raised and strategies are
to be consistently enacted throughout Scotland.
Part 4: Beyond 30 free
hours — where childcare
provision needs to go in
the future
The long term vision should be free at the point
of use childcare, from 1-4 years old.
Additionally, extending flexibility, creating an after-school
strategy from 0-16 and doing away with top down indicators
of progress should be on the agenda for the future.
In parts 1-3 we have focused on how to most effectively
deliver the doubling of free hours of childcare for 3-4 year
olds and ‘vulnerable’ 2 year olds. But this is far from the end
of our ambitions for early learning and care. We believe the
plan for a National Childcare Service outlined above provides
scope for the future progress and evolution of the sector in
Scotland. The following are just some of the areas that we
would like to see progress in over the next 10-20 years.
Towards free at the point of use childcare
Eventually, the National Childcare Service should be entirely
free at the point of use, like the National Health Service.
The more comprehensive and universal the childcare
service, the more it will be valued by society as a whole, and
therefore the more taxpayers will see it as worth paying for
as an essential part of human development. This will have to
be a gradual process, but the trajectory should be steadily
in this direction. Two major stages in this evolution could be:
1. The ‘Scotland’s Future’ white paper (2013c) made the
case for 30 hours per week free childcare for all 1-4 year
olds by the end of the second parliament of an independent
Scotland, which would have been 2025. SPICe (2014)
estimated that this would cost an additional £1.2bn, bringing
total revenue costs to over £2bn. This would be a more
than doubling of costs, as childcare is more expensive
for 1 and 2 year olds. In the context of the No vote in the
independence referendum, and the Scottish Government
having a consistently reduced fixed budget year on year,
the financial constraints in achieving this in the devolved
context is something we are not blind to. However, making
free childcare available from essentially the end of maternity
leave to school years would be a major incentive for parents
(especially women), to plan to stay in full-time work while
raising a family. The knock on economic and fiscal impact
over the long term, especially on income tax revenue (which
is set to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament), could more
than make up for short term costs. We would therefore like
to see this ambitious target adhered to, despite the No
vote in the referendum. If this is out of reach, then at least
moving to free childcare for all 2 year olds by 2025 should
be achievable. At all times, any increase in childcare must
be combined with ensuring that the experience of children
is enjoyable and meaningful.
2. As discussed in Part 2, the proposed changes at UK and
Scottish level will make a sizeable reduction in childcare
costs for low and middle-income parents, but we should not
be complacent – in Sweden, childcare is entirely free, paid
for through progressive taxation. Furthermore, unclaimed
benefits in the UK can reach as much as one-third, and is
higher for those in-work and those further up the income
bracket. In 2012, over £7bn was not claimed in Working Tax
Credits, including Child Tax Credits. There’s no reason to
think that it will not be similar for Universal Credit and the
Tax Free Childcare Scheme. As Danson, McAlpine, Spicker,
and Sullivan (2012) argued, universal services are always
preferable to means-tested ones. Once again, we are aware
of the financial constraints, but the long term aim should be
to move to 50 hours per week of free childcare.
Flexibility and availability
The 8-6pm Monday-Friday flexible childcare centres
outlined in Part 2 would (for the first time) systematically
build flexibility into the system. Yet, many parents have to
commute long distances to work and 9-5 working hours are
becoming less typical in the modern day work environment.
Many childcare centres in Scotland are currently open
until late in the evening and start early in the morning. We
believe a transition to 7am-7pm childcare should begin as
soon as a qualified childcare workforce in Scotland is of a
size that could accommodate it. There should also be an
assessment about whether this includes flexible provision
for parents who carry out night-shift work, while being
mindful of avoiding the institutionalisation of childhood –
20
as mentioned in Part 2, we concur with the Commission
for Childcare Reform that 50 hours a week should be the
maximum time that young children should be away from
their parents.
excellent provision, it could revolutionise intergenerational
relationships and the use of community spaces in Scotland,
and ultimately lead to a more cohesive society.
Childhood practitioners, quality and self-empowerment
A final issue of availability is school holidays. Current plans
for 30 hours a week amount to 1,140 per year – 38 weeks.
Working parents therefore have to pay for childcare in
the other 14 weeks of the year. The vast majority of these
parents will work, or find another alternative, such as help
from family. As many local authority childcare centres are
attached to primary schools, they are closed during school
holidays and parents therefore need to move their children
to a different, unfamiliar centre over the holiday period. This
upheaval is not practical and expensive for the parent, and
it is disruptive for the child. The National Childcare Service
should carry out a feasibility study alongside workplace
representatives and trade unions, looking into what would
be required to achieve school holiday childcare in all
centres, while ensuring childcare workers themselves still
retain their paid holiday leave and worker’s annual leave
entitlement is equalised across the sector.
An innovative after-school strategy
The early learning and care sector does not only cover early
years. It also covers childminders (who have varying levels
of qualifications) and out of school care professionals who
work to enable positive experiences for children between
school age and 16 years. Questions arise over how the
Scottish Government is going to fund out of school care to
ensure that problems of early years childcare are not simply
shifted up the age range as children transition from early
years services to primary and secondary school.
Recent research (Martin, 2013) has argued that various
Scottish Governments have overlooked the connection
between early learning and childcare settings and their
wider community. If we are to build a Scotland that seeks
to be more equal and inclusive, we should recognise and
further utilise the benefits of intergenerational collaboration
within community spaces. We need to consider what
after-school provision for children up to 16 would look
like if it was truly outdoor-based and involved integrated
collaboration. We also need to consider how to enable
childminders to build strong supportive links with local early
learning and out of school providers, gain access to local
facilities, and develop approaches that maximise children’s
learning in the environment.
In short, we need an after-school strategy to work through
the requirements of school-aged children and to connect
changes in early years initiatives to innovation in out of
school care. A strategy that connects the need for increased
buildings and centres to collective ownership of land, use
of public space, regeneration of high streets and housing
renewal would indeed be radical. Unfortunately, none of
these issues were considered during the recent reviews.
Free, flexible, creative and outdoor-based childcare for all
early years and school age children may be controversial,
but it is our view that if children are enabled to experience
As we go forward, we need to balance the development
of quality indicators with the need to learn from research
in the field (Moss and Dahlberg, 2008) suggesting that
while evaluation for change in early learning and care
services is important, top-down performance indicators and
standardised testing are an anathema to contemporary
ideas concerning creativity and innovation in childhood. It
should be recognised that they are antithetical because topdown processes can lead to poor work cultures, hierarchies
and bullying, all of which prevent us from developing
creative learning environments fit for children.
The ‘Taking the First Steps’ report indicated that childhood
practitioners had become adept at devolving power
within their organisations and that they understood the
benefits of anti-hierarchical practise that enables staff to
be as immediately responsive as possible to the wishes of
children and parents.
Early learning and care has become a hot political issue.
Professionals are subjected to unannounced inspections,
participatory evaluation and external registration. Yet,
they continue to see their role as collaboratively providing
creative, supportive and thoughtful environments for
children.
The Siraj Review was overly dominated by a literature
review that was very academic in nature and highlighted
the top-down criteria that could be used to assess quality.
Siraj assumed that Childhood practitioners were unaware
of this literature. Childhood practitioners are only too
aware of what it feels like to be constantly subjected to
top-performance indicators. Moreover, they are also able
to utilise their learning to critique top-down approaches
using alternative research by other key researchers and
professors in the field.
In Part 3 we outlined our vision for devolved management
and quality leadership that would self-empower Childhood
practitioners to asses and develop quality at all levels
of their organisations. We seek a continual process of
improvement and development over time and a system
to assess processes, rather than staff or children. Such a
system will require participatory working to ensure quality
is defined in partnership with parents and children and
that provision is focussed on the aspirations and wishes
of children, parents and local communities, rather than on
external performance criteria set out by bureaucrats.
21
Conclusion
We believe this report has done something that other
reviews and commissions in the field have not: made
the case for an innovative and radical solution to the
fragmented, haphazard and unequal nature of the childcare
sector. We believe the ideas in this report go well beyond
tinkering with existing structures and methods, and provide
a comprehensive, costed strategy for achieving excellence
in education-focused early learning and childcare provision.
The move from 15 to 30 hours of free childcare is ambitious,
but it won’t be a success without a bold programme of
reform to match it. In respect to the structure of childcare
provision, the terms and conditions of childcare staff, the
current uneven nature of early years education and more
besides, boldness is needed if we are to come up with
solutions that will meet the Scottish Government’s ambition
of making Scotland “the best place in the world to bring
up children”.
We believe our approach matches the seriousness which
the Scottish Government takes improving early years:
we don’t believe a fragmented sector with massive
differentiation in cost, availability and quality throughout
Scotland is good enough for our children.
“In societies that have high levels of
equality, fairness and prosperity, early
years learning and care is treated with the
same seriousness as school education.”
The boldness of our plan is in its simplicity: A National
Childcare Service with one publicly provided for place
per centre; standardised opening and closing times in all
centres across the country allowing parents to access allday care; and uniform pay scales and conditions for staff
based on a clear principle of employing qualified childhood
practitioners. In a phrase, we aim to replace a fundamentally
unequal system with a fundamentally equal one.
In societies that have high levels of equality, fairness and
prosperity, early years learning and care is treated with
the same seriousness as school education. Setting our
ambitions any lower than this would be a dereliction of our
responsibilities to future generations of Scots. While most
would agree with this statement, ambition means nothing
without a concrete plan for achieving it. We believe the
first radical outlines of such a plan have been presented
in this report.
22
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ben@common.scot
0141 249 0850
3rd Floor, 111 Union St,
Glasgow, G1 3TA

An Equal Start

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