Early Years Scotland’s Best Start: Strategic Early Learning and School Age Childcare Plan 2022 to 2026

The Scottish government recently published its strategic ‘childcare’ plan to guide them through the years 2022 to 2026. Titled “Best Start”, the policy outlined in the plan contributes to national outcomes focused on children and young people, education, health and poverty. The overall policy vision for Best Start is making Scotland the best place in the world to grow up. It aims to achieve this through improving access to rich and nurturing early learning and school age care experiences, where children, and their families and communities, are enabled to reach their full potential and the poverty-gap narrows.

Expansion of Funded Hours

The Scottish Government, through Best Start, establishes a number of strategic priorities for early learning and school aged childcare. Firstly, it prioritises the realisation of the expansion to 1140 hours of funded early learning and care for children and families. This is available term-time, equates to around 30 hours per week and is eligible for 3 and 4 years old. Best Start notes that uptake rates are high for this scheme introduced in 2021. Some 97% of eligible 3- to 4-year olds are accessing some sort of funded ‘childcare’, with 87% accessing the full 1,140 hours as of April 2022. Realising the benefits of the 1,140 hours scheme would mean maximising uptake, embedding quality, considering expansion of the scheme and supporting parents and families to make the appropriate choices on early learning and schools.

Targeting Early Adopters

The second strategic priority lays out further expansion of early learning and school age schemes, with development of a similar scheme that will encompass children between the ages of 1 and 2 years old. This will be achieved through mapping provision for children in this age group, working with parents and families to understand the needs for provision for this age cohort, developing a robust system of school aged care in conjunction with parents, families and communities and developing a delivery framework for school aged care. Interestingly, this system will also seek to target families in poverty and will be trialled through targeted early adopter families in Scotland.

Developing the Workforce

Much like the Irish government, the Scottish government seeks to professionalise and develop the sectoral workforce, ensuring it is sustainable and diverse. This is needed to support the aforementioned strategic priorities. As such, this makes up the third strategic priority in Best Start. To support the sector, a number of initiatives will be retained, expanded or introduced, such as Commercial Rate relief for eligible services, business supports are available for the sector and rates per child for funded care are increased. Improvement of rates will also serve to reflect the costs of provision, as well as ensure that staff are paid the Scottish Living Wage. Diversity of choice for parents and families will be ensured by delivering further on the Scottish Childminding Action Plan. Furthermore, work will continue on developing a highly qualified, sustainable workforce.

Outcomes and Measurements Framework

Finally, the fourth priority will ensure that ambitions are underpinned by fair funding, outcome frameworks, robust data and organisations that work together for good outcomes for the sector. To do so, the Scottish government will work collaboratively with partners in the sector to develop an outcomes and measurements framework for funding early learning and care. This will aim to ensure that provision is guided by a solid evidence base, that the sector is transparent and accountable and that the money is well spent. Moreover, the system of inspections of early learning and school age care services will be streamlined and simplified, recognising the challenges that the current system holds for providers due to overlapping inspection briefs between different organisations and agencies.

Overall, Best Start is a progressive, ambitious and significant plan. The laudable ambitions contained within outline bold plans to expand already popular funded early learning and care schemes. This will ensure that children of all ages below school age can access universal, high quality early learning and care. The introduction of quality indicators for these schemes, as well as a streamlining of the inspection process, along with fostering a highly skilled and sustainable workforce will help to ensure this “high quality” piece and provide the justification and means for further expansions in the future. Interestingly, the Scottish Government lays out the four delivery principles of quality, flexibility, affordability and accessibility – principles which currently guide Early Years policy in Ireland.

You can read the full Best Start Strategic Plan on the Scottish Government website.

If you would like to get more information on the Best Start Strategic Plan 2022 – 2026, or perhaps discuss Ireland’s First 5 Strategy, you can contact our Policy, Advocacy and Campaigning team at policy@earlychildhoodireland.ie.