Scotland's flagship childcare expansion is not without its challenges – Martyn McLaughlin

There have been few policies more ambitious or expensive in recent years than the Scottish Government’s commitment to rapidly upscale the early learning and childcare sector.

It is now more than six years since First Minister Nicola Sturgeon outlined her government’s commitment to expand care for all three and four year-olds, as well as the most vulnerable two year-olds.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the billion-pound rollout has been hailed as one of the flagship achievements of the SNP’s 15 years in power. Only last weekend, Ms Sturgeon described it as a “major milestone” which had doubled provision compared to 2014.

But is it the right kind of provision? Work is ongoing to assess the early learning and childcare (ELC) expansion against the government’s aims, yet it is already clear that it has plenty of challenges.

That much will be made evident today at a meeting of Holyrood’s education, children and young people committee, when MSPs will be asked to scrutinise the delivery of 1,140 annualised hours of care for all eligible children.

At first glance, the successes of the scheme are evident. Across the country, there were 111,574 children receiving funded ELC as of January, with 97,887 accessing their full allocation of hours. There have been hundreds of nursery buildings constructed, refurbished, or extended to accommodate this new demand. Given the widespread disruption caused by Covid, that is an impressive result, and the government and its partners should be rightly proud of it.

But the praise must be qualified. Those statistics also mean that there are close to 14,000 children and their families who are not using their full 1,140-hour allocation. In a system which was designed to bring about unprecedented choice, such a sizable minority is a sign of deeper problems still to be solved.

One of the key drivers behind the ELC expansion was to support parents back into work, study, or training, but the reality is that the intransigence of the childcare system means that is not always possible.

There has been a major increase in free childcare provision across Scotland, but is it meeting the needs of all parents? (Picture: Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

A recent survey by the educational charity, Connect, found that 21 per cent of parents do not take their full entitlement, with just under a fifth of respondents stating that their needs were not being met by the service available.

The reasons for that are plentiful, but centre predominantly on a lack of options around hours, which are often incompatible with parents’ working patterns. Across many local authorities, families are offered set models of childcare, when what they need is week-to-week flexibility.

That need has become even more pronounced with changes to work practices brought about by the pandemic.

Such curtailed options impact every parent, but for those with low-incomes, or who are most vulnerable, it is particularly damaging, forcing them to give up work opportunities, or perversely, pay for childcare that suits their individual circumstances.

Solving that will amount to a logistical headache for local authorities and individual nurseries, but solve it they must. It is one thing emphasising the expanded places that are now available, but if they do not provide a practical fit, the efficacy of the entire expansion will be in doubt.

Any solution will depend not only on the flexibility of local authority nurseries, but ensuring that other childcare providers are in place. That will not be easy. Many private nurseries say the money they receive per child is insufficient to meet their costs and inferior to the payments given to council-run establishments.

A snapshot survey carried out last year by the National Day Nurseries Association found that more than one in five (21 per cent) of its members believe they will operate at a loss, with just over half (55 per cent) believing they will only break even. In the meantime, there is evidence of staff at private, voluntary and independent nurseries giving up their roles to work in supermarkets, or take up delivery jobs, both of which offer better pay.

This is a longstanding issue in the childcare sector, and a fundamental dichotomy at the heart of the expansion. If we do not properly value those who look after our children, what does it say about the value we place on the children themselves?

The situation is arguably even more dire in the childminding sector, where the workforce has contracted by 26 per cent in the last five years, with the loss of nearly 1,500 workers. As things stand, only four per cent of childminders are delivering funded care to eligible two-year-olds, a figure unchanged from 2019.

According to Graeme McAlister, chief executive of the Scottish Childminding Association, a major problem has been the “inequitable and inconsistent” implementation of the national ELC policy at a local level, with councils pushing their own provision over other options.

This is a pertinent and worrying point. As well as being direct providers of childcare, local authorities are responsible for the ELC expansion in their own areas. It is a conflict of interest, and not everyone has been able to reconcile the tensions.

The need to resolve these issues is clear, and will become even more acute in the years ahead. With the government committing to extend free early years education to all one and two-year-olds, starting with children from low-income households, there will be a significant spike in demand.

Those children and their families should be afforded the kind of real choice that has been lacking so far, otherwise a transformative policy will remain hindered by inconsistent implementation.