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The Scottish Government continues to provide £100,000 annual funding to enable CELCIS to support the facilitation of a Virtual Head Teacher network. There are currently 18 virtual head teachers (or equivalent) who are members of the network with a standing offer of support to other local authorities who are considering implementing the role. The network has recently been expanded to include two Attainment Advisers from Education Scotland to offer additional support to the network and virtual head teachers.

Funding is provided to CELCIS for them to facilitate, support and manage a network of Virtual Head Teachers. This includes undertaking research and evaluation around the development of the role in Scotland and how it can help improve the lives and education outcomes of care experienced young people. Decisions around the introduction of the role remain with each individual local authority.

In the information held by the Scottish Government, teaching posts are classified into three employment types: Permanent, Temporary, and Temporary-Teacher Induction Scheme. For the purposes of this response, teachers on the Teacher Induction Scheme have been included in the Temporary category.

Teachers may be employed on a permanent contract but be categorised as Temporary if they are working in a post classified as a temporary employment type.

The following table shows the percentage of permanent and temporary full-time equivalent (FTE) teacher posts across all sectors (Primary, Secondary, Special and Centrally Employed) from 2010.

Percentage of teachers (FTE) with Permanent and Temporary posts

There could be a number of contributing factors relating to the differences of recorded Additional Support Needs (ASN) data between ELC and schools.

The 34% of learners who were recorded as requiring additional support in the 2022 pupil census represents a cohort of learners who have spent a longer period of time in primary, secondary and special school settings compared to ELC. The length of time children and young people spend in primary, secondary and special school settings combined with their individual stage of development, strengths, areas of need and circumstances provides increased opportunities to identify, understand and record their needs. It is therefore highly likely that there will be a higher incidence of reporting in school settings compared to ELC settings.

An additional support need can arise for any reason and may not be permanent. There is a wide spectrum of support that may be needed, from support to overcome barriers arising from health or disability, to support for social and emotional reasons. In addition, the factors which give rise to additional support are often interconnected. Children and young people may also have more than one type of additional need that has been identified over a period of time in primary and secondary settings. This means that the total percentage for ASN categories does not equal the sum of individual types of additional support needs.

Identifying additional support needs in young children should be a holistic and collaborative approach that is centred around the child. It usually takes place over a period of time, to take cognisance of the child’s individual stage of development, strengths, areas of need and circumstances. It should involve the gathering of information from varied sources in order to identify their needs and to suggest appropriate interventions, support and planning. This can include consultation which actively involves educators, parents/carers, the child and other agencies. This is often not achievable until primary or secondary school, and is another factor that is reflected in the differences in recorded statistics.

In the 2023-2024 Programme for Government the Scottish Government announced that we would develop and trial a digital service that will give parents and carers greater scope to manage their childcare.

We know that the current childcare system can be difficult for families to navigate, particularly for those on the lowest incomes, and are at an early stage of designing a digital service that will make it easier for parents and carers to manage their childcare.

The Scottish Government has been supporting innovative childminder recruitment pilots within 14 Local Authorities, in partnership with the Scottish Childminding Association. To date, 69 candidates have been supported through the programme to complete their registration as childminders with the Care Inspectorate. A further 116 are currently working towards their registration. We have also begun to explore ways of streamlining and reducing the administrative burden on childminders.

As announced in the 2023 Programme for Government, we will continue to build on this work and scale up these pilots to support and grow our childminding workforce. We will also implement a range of measures to address retention issues, including trialling a mentoring scheme and models of ‘funded time off the floor’ to support childminders to undertake professional development opportunities, planning or administration duties.

The Scottish Government is considering the approach to publication of the strategic framework and plan for the early learning and school age childcare profession in light of the new childcare commitments included in the Programme for Government 2023-24 and will provide an update in due course.

We are continuing to work with the Framework Steering Group and other partners to support delivery of the actions developed as part of the original plan. We have, for example, already developed a range of new learning resources, implemented a Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) fee waiver, released new mental health and wellbeing resources for the workforce and will shortly launch a new national portal for professional learning.

We are also continuing to support the profession by providing local authorities with an additional £16 million to deliver the Programme for Government commitment to increase pay to £12 per hour for staff in the Private Voluntary and Independent (PVI) sector who are delivering funded early learning and childcare from April 2024. This demonstrates our commitment to the Fair Work agenda, as we remain the only part of the UK to pay ELC staff in the PVI sector the real Living Wage.

The draft Budget 2024-25 confirmed that an additional £16 million will be made available to local authorities in year to deliver our Programme for Government commitment to increase pay to £12 per hour for staff in the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector who are delivering funded ELC from April 2024. The commitment will also be implemented in a fair and sustainable way for childminders delivering funded ELC.

The Scottish Government and COSLA will publish updated guidance for setting rates for 2024-25 shortly to reflect how the additional funding being provided to enable delivery of the £12 per hour commitment will be reflected in the sustainable rates that funded providers in the private, third and childminding sector will receive in 2024-25.

The Care Inspectorate publishes annual statistics on the number of childminders operating in Scotland. The following table summarises published Care Inspectorate data from the last 10 years. The figure for 2023 is expected to be published in the autumn of 2024.

We committed in our Strategic Childcare Plan, published October 2022 Best Start - strategic early learning and school age childcare plan 2022 to 2026 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) to work with local authorities to maximise uptake of the existing two year old offer using new access to data on eligible families in their local area.

Since then we have finalised data sharing arrangements with the UK Government and established ‘datapipeline’ – a digital platform from which local authorities can access lists of households in their area that meet the majority of ‘qualifying benefits’ criteria and have a child of the relevant age.

From this data we have been able to produce local and national estimates of the eligible population of two-year-olds. This has allowed us to publish uptake rates for two-year-olds by local authority for the first time ( Summary statistics for schools in Scotland 2023 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) , allowing more transparency on the national picture for uptake for two-year-olds as well as informing local authorities’ own understanding of their uptake rates.

With support from the Improvement Service, we have held a series of webinars with local authorities on making best use of the new data and on access to funded ELC for two-year-olds with a care experienced parent.

We are also offering one-to-one support, through the Improvement Service, to local authorities that would like to work on maximising uptake of funded ELC for two-year-olds.

It is not the case that 10% of children are not registered to receive their entitlement to funded early learning and childcare (ELC). The 2023 ELC Census showed an estimated uptake rate of 97% for eligible three and four year olds, and an uptake rate of 52% for eligible 2 year olds. Improvement Service data from September 2023 showed that 98% of children registered for funded ELC were reported to be accessing more than 600 hours, and 90% of registered children were accessing the full 1140 funded hours. This is not the same as 10% of children not being registered for funded ELC.

Families are not required to use the full 1140 entitlement. A 2022 parent survey found that when families were not using their full entitlement, this was often through choice. Typically, they did not need or want the full entitlement, or decided they did not wish to put their child in nursery for so many hours. However, around a fifth of those not using the full entitlement said they could not get the sessions they wanted at their preferred setting. We continue to work with local authorities to ensure that funded ELC hours are flexible and accessible to families.