Current status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 27 March 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how it measures the impact of funded early learning and childcare on children's (a) development, (b) family wellbeing and (c) parental employment.
As outlined in the Scottish Government’s Evaluation Strategy, published in 2022, we have robust plans in place to evaluate the impact of the ELC expansion to 1140 hours on outcomes for children, parents and families. This includes an economic evaluation that will analyse parental employment outcomes.
We are ensuring that individual components of the evaluation are made available as they are ready and that the learning from these is used to inform policy development and delivery. In August 2024 the Scottish Government drew together existing findings to publish the ELC Expansion to 1140 hours: Interim Evaluation report.
The interim evaluation found promising signs that the expansion is delivering improvements for families across Scotland. For example, in 2022, 88% of parents with a 3 to 5 year old were satisfied with the flexibility they have been offered to use their funded hours in a way that meets their family’s needs.
We expect to publish the Final Evaluation Report on the 1140 ELC expansion in December 2025.