Early learning and childcare providers: delivery support plan

Supporting Providers With Workforce Recruitment and Training Challenges

The single most important driver of the quality of a child's ELC experience is a high quality workforce. There are few more important jobs than caring for, and educating, our youngest children. We are proud to have an ELC sector full of individuals who are hugely committed to nurturing our youngest children and helping them to reach their full potential.

To ensure that we have enough funded places to deliver the expanded entitlement by 2020, we need more people to join our ELC workforce. So far this growth has been concentrated in local authority settings.

We realise that whilst the overall growth in the ELC workforce has created a range of new and exciting opportunities in the sector it has also created challenges for some providers.

The ELC Partnership Forum meeting on 12 December focused on workforce. At this session providers raised challenges regarding the loss of staff from private and third sector providers to local authority settings, and the impacts this has on a setting. These impacts are not just financial, and include capacity concerns (with more time focused on recruitment activity), continuity of care, and potentially quality of provision, given that many of the staff leaving are the most experienced.

There is a gap between average earnings in local authority settings and settings in the private and third sectors. For example, the Financial Review of Early Learning and Childcare in Scotland found that, in 2016, around 80% of practitioners and 50% of supervisors in private and third sector settings delivering the funded entitlement were paid an hourly rate below the real living wage. Public sector staff working in ELC settings already receive at least the real Living Wage.

How will we support providers with workforce recruitment and training challenges?

• We are working with COSLA to enable providers in the private and third sectors to post job opportunities for free on My Jobs Scotland (MJS) in the period up to 2020.

• In recognition of the growing popularity of the Modern Apprenticeship (MA) route, Skills Development Scotland (SDS) have committed, through their Skills Investment Plan for the ELC expansion, to increasing ELC MAs by 10% each year to 2020, subject to employer demand. This includes an initial assumption of 1,700 MA starts in the 2018-19 academic year. However, SDS have advised that they expect to see a further rise in demand for apprenticeships in the course of 2018-19 and beyond. Information on ELC Modern Apprenticeships can be found at https://www.apprenticeships.scot/for-employers/modern-apprenticeships/.

• To create new opportunities for people to join the ELC workforce, and to encourage a broader age profile, we have increased the financial contributions for ELC related Modern Apprenticeships for those aged 25 and over. From April 2018 the contribution increased from £700 to £1,700.

• We are currently working with delivery partners to identify further opportunities to incentivise more older workers to take-up training opportunities in ELC, and in particular the over 25s Modern Apprenticeship route. Our ongoing national recruitment campaign is targeting older career changers and parental returners as one of the key audiences, in recognition of the valuable role which older workers with experience in other fields could play in the ELC workforce.

• The National Standard will introduce a requirement that all childminders delivering the funded entitlement have either obtained, or are working towards, the benchmark qualification for ELC practitioners. Box 3 sets out the support that will be available to help childminders to meet this requirement.

• The promotion of Fair Work practices is central to the Funding Follows the Child approach. Ensuring that staff are fairly remunerated – through, for example, supporting payment of the real Living Wage – is a key aspect of demonstrating commitment to fair work practices. To support this the Scottish Government will provide local authorities with sufficient funding to allow them to set rates with providers in the private and third sectors that enable providers to pay all childcare workers delivering the funded entitlement the real Living Wage from August 2020. We will provide targeted advice and support to providers on implementing Fair Work practices. This includes working with the Poverty Alliance, and the wider sector, to develop sessions for providers to support them in meeting the 'real' Living Wage commitment. As part of these sessions we will look to involve providers who are already paying the real Living Wage.

Box 3: Support for Childminders with Training and Qualification Requirements

The National Standard, which will be introduced from August 2020, will require childminders delivering the funded entitlement to either have obtained the benchmark qualification for ELC practitioners or, if they are still within their first 5 years of delivering the funded hours, be working towards achieving this qualification.

To support childminders to meet this requirement we are working with training providers and colleges to explore how relevant prior experience, training and qualifications can be recognised and accredited towards a mandatory qualification.

As a first step, the Care Inspectorate's 'Your Childminding Journey – a Learning and Development Resource' (a learning and development resource for childminders) is being further developed. These developments will help childminders gather evidence of prior learning, understand what evidence might be relevant to present to colleges and training providers and identify any gaps in their knowledge and areas for further study before deciding on a route to qualification.

We will work with Scottish Vocational Qualifications (SVQ) training providers to ensure that adequate infrastructure is in place that allows childminders to access training in a flexible way that does not require them to take time away from delivering their services to parents. The SVQ Social Services (Children and Young People) is already offered by several colleges in a flexible way that meets the needs of childminders.

The Scottish Childminding Association (SCMA) have also developed a workplace award that offers 12 credits at SCQF level 7. This qualification has been mapped by the SQA (Scottish Qualifications Authority) to the SVQ practitioner level qualification which means that childminders who complete units, or the whole workplace award, will generate evidence that can be used as recognition of prior learning and give them some credits towards the full benchmark qualification.

Provided the applicant's individual income does not exceed £25,000 per annum, fee grants for part time courses are available from the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS). Another source of part-funding is the Skills Development Scotland Individual Training Account.

We will explore whether other dedicated funding needs to be made available to help childminders to fund their qualifications during this transition period.