Seòmar agus comataidhean

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37815 on 4 June 2025

Information about the Scottish Government’s steps to reform or modernise these public bodies is included below.

(a) Scottish Enterprise

As our national enterprise agency, Scottish Enterprise is focused on delivering a programme of support to help businesses to start and scale, increase and improve productivity, access finance and attract investment, develop new products and services, enter new markets, and positively impact on their communities. Through its missions-based approach, Scottish Enterprise focuses on targeted areas and opportunities with the greatest potential for transformational change and impact on Scotland’s economic growth Scottish Enterprise’s workforce innovation specialists can offer businesses tailored guidance to help build workplace culture across areas like workforce planning and organisational design.

(b) Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council

On 22 January 2025, the Minister for Higher and Further Education; and Minister for Veterans announced the next steps in delivering plans to simplify the post-school funding body landscape. Changes will include funding of apprenticeships moving from Skills Development Scotland to the Scottish Funding Council, as well as moving all student support funding within the Student Awards Agency Scotland.

On 5 February, the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill was formally introduced to the Scottish Parliament. On 6 February, the Minister for Higher and Further Education; and Veterans announced the introduction of Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill to Parliament.

We are pressing ahead with the proposal to consolidate all post-school provision funding within the Scottish Funding Council and all student support funding within the Student Awards Agency Scotland. This Government committed to bringing learner support funding together in one place, and funding for apprenticeship provision together in one place

None of the changes we are bringing about are a reflection on the performance of any individual organisation, indeed there is strength and depth across all our public bodies. Skills Development Scotland will continue to play an important role working to Ministerial priorities across the skills system, particularly their ongoing careers delivery role. We will work with Skills Development Scotland regarding their remaining functions and will set out further details in the coming months. All of our public bodies will have to transform to meet the needs of the system following these changes.

The Scottish Funding Council will be a fundamentally different organisation. This change means that all apprenticeships will be overseen by the Scottish Funding Council. This will also result in Student Awards Agency Scotland taking responsibility for all further education student support funding, with the Scottish Funding Council no longer involved in this process.

(c) Scottish Social Services Council

Last year, following Scottish Government investment, the Scottish Social Services Council launched their ‘Futureproofing Programme’, an ambitious programme of streamlining and modernisation to registration services which have brought in efficiencies and multiple improvements which benefit the registered workforce, including those working in early learning and childcare. More information on the Futureproofing Programme can be accessed here: Registration is changing - Scottish Social Services Council.

We recognise how vital early learning and childcare is in all parts of Scotland, both in relation to giving children the best start in life and supporting families to work.

We are working with local government and our partners in the sector to develop long-term workforce plans that address workforce issues and ensure sustainable delivery of the 1140 funded entitlement.

At a national level, several work programmes are underway to support childcare provision in rural areas and areas of disadvantage including:

• funding the national childminder recruitment and retention programme;
• making grants available to local authorities via the Addressing Depopulation Action Plan Fund, two of which will contain a focus on addressing childcare issues in areas affected by acute population decline;
• continuing our investment of £16 million over two years into our early adopter communities;
• providing funding to local authorities to enable payment of the real Living Wage to childcare workers in private and voluntary services providing funded ELC; and
• continuing to provide funding to local authorities to enable additional teachers or degree-qualified childcare professionals to work in ELC settings in the most disadvantaged areas.

To support those children who benefit most from high quality early learning and childcare (ELC) provision, the Scottish Government made a commitment that, from August 2018, nurseries in the most disadvantaged areas would benefit from an additional teacher or degree-qualified ELC professional. These posts are described nationally as Equity and Excellence Leads (originally Additional Graduates) and have different names and job specifications locally.

Snapshot figures of graduate level posts in ELC are published annually in the Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland publication. Data in the tables is gathered from centres (either local authority or partner provider centres) with children registered for the funded entitlement at the time of the Census. In 2024, this was collected from 9 – 13 September. As of September 2024, there were 356 (317 FTE) Equity and Excellence Leads in post, which equates to 73% of those that are funded.

The majority of the Scottish Government’s funding to Local Government is provided through the General Revenue Grant. As of 2024-25, and in line with the Verity House Agreement, this covers all funding for statutory ELC provision, including for Equity and Excellence Leads.

It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on ELC, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

We are working with local authority partners to take forward an evaluation of the Equity and Excellence Leads programme, which will seek to identify good practice, any lessons learned and how best to support this critical resource going forward.

Working with our Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group, the Scottish Government has set out a multi-year (2018-2025) strategy for evaluating the impact of the ELC expansion to 1140 hours on outcomes for children, parents and families. We expect to publish the 2018-2025 Evaluation Final Report in December 2025. This will draw together findings from across all the strands of the evaluation work.

As set out in our Evaluation Strategy, alongside the evaluation of outcomes, an economic evaluation is being undertaken to assess the economic costs and benefits of the 1140 expansion. The economic evaluation will include an element of standard economic appraisal technique using Cost-Benefit analysis. But we also recognise that it will not be possible to capture all of the possible impacts of the ELC expansion by focusing purely on benefits that can be expressed as a monetary value (i.e. in £). Therefore, this will be accompanied by a “Cost-Consequence analysis” – a type of analysis most commonly used in health-economics, which will allow the economic evaluation to draw on a wider range of data than monetary impacts and present a more comprehensive picture of the impacts of the policy intervention by reporting outcomes separately from each other.

This information is not available broken down by qualification level or local authority.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37812 on 4 June 2025.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

In 2016, prior to the expansion, it was estimated 11,000 people (9,000 full time equivalent workers) would be required to deliver the transformative early learning and childcare (ELC) expansion.

Until June 2024, daycare of children staff registered with the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC)were required to complete a minimum of 60 hours — or 10 days — of Continuous Professional Learning (CPL) over each 5-year registration period. This equated to at least 12 hours of CPL per year. This requirement applied to all staff registered with the SSSC, including full-time, part-time, sessional, self-employed and agency workers.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The Care Inspectorate report data publicly on their Datastore which may be able to assist with this question or alternatively the Care Inspectorate could be approached directly for a response.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all eligible children have access to high quality early learning and childcare (ELC) in order to receive the support they need to reach their full learning potential, and to give them the best possible start in life. The Scottish Government and local government have worked in close partnership throughout the delivery of the 1140 expansion, underpinned by a joint policy framework and a multi-year funding agreement.

Questions about the scrutiny of ELC services should be directed to the relevant bodies:

• Local authorities are responsible for meeting their statutory duties in relation to funded ELC. Statutory requirements for the fitness of premises to be used for the provision of ELC are set out in Section 10 of The Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland (Requirements for Care Services) Regulations 2011.
• Under section 53 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, the Care Inspectorate has statutory obligations to carry out inspections of all ELC and school age childcare settings that are registered with them. The Scottish Social Services Council is the regulator for the social work, social care and children and young people workforce in Scotland.