Early Learning and Childcare Expansion to 1140 hours: Interim Evaluation Report

1. Introduction

1.1. The expansion of early learning and childcare to 1140 hours

From August 2021 the funded entitlement to early learning and childcare (ELC) in Scotland increased from 600 to 1140 hours per year for all three and four year olds, and eligible two year olds. This means families can access up to 30 hours of funded ELC each week in term time, or around 22 hours a week spread across the calendar year.

This increase followed a number of smaller expansions in the past two decades. Parents in Scotland have been offered funded ELC for their three and four year olds since 2002: initially 412.5 hours per year which was then increased to 475 hours in 2007. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 formalised the term 'early learning and childcare' to capture the learning journey that takes place from birth, highlighting that care and education are closely linked. The Act also increased the statutory entitlement to funded ELC from 475 to 600 hours per year for all eligible children and expanded the definition of an eligible child to include some two year olds. Eligibility criteria have continued to evolve since then and now include two year olds that have experience of care themselves, have a parent with care experience or have a parent who is in receipt of one or more qualifying benefits. The expansion to 1140 hours ('the ELC expansion') almost doubled the number of hours of funded ELC parents are entitled to.

Local authorities are responsible for delivery of ELC to the local communities in their area. Scottish Government provided over £60 million funding in 2017-18 to begin phasing in investment in the workforce and infrastructure from 2017-18 onwards, to ensure that the required capacity for the expansion was in place. While the statutory entitlement to 1140 hours came into force from August 2021, expanded provision was phased in over four years. The approach to phasing was designed to ensure that those children who stood to benefit the most from the ELC expansion benefitted first. Local authorities had flexibility to determine the most appropriate way to phase in the entitlement. Full statutory implementation of the expansion was delayed from August 2020 to 2021 to allow local authorities to deal with the urgent necessities of the Covid-19 pandemic. During this period, Scottish Government supported local authorities to work towards delivery of 1140 hours where they were not already doing so. A majority of local authorities did choose to implement expanded hours during 2020-21. See the ELC Expansion Evaluation Strategy for more background to the expansion.

The primary aim of the ELC expansion is to secure improved outcomes for children in Scotland, helping to provide them with skills and confidence to carry into school education and contributing to closing the poverty-related outcomes gap. It also aims to give parents greater opportunities to access employment, training and learning, and to reduce household costs. Through these aims, the ELC expansion also represents an important contribution to Scotland's national mission to tackle child poverty, as set out in the Scottish Government's Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan for 2018-22 and Delivery Plan for 2022-26. In addition, an important element of the ELC offer is to support the wider family, maximising the contribution to Keeping the Promise and delivering holistic family support.

Outcomes and logic model

The ELC expansion aims to contribute to three high-level outcomes:

1. Children's development improves and the poverty-related outcomes gap narrows

2. Parents' opportunities to take up or sustain work, study or training increase

3. Family wellbeing improves

In October 2022 Scottish Government published an Evaluation Strategy, which set out how we will evaluate the impact of the ELC expansion on outcomes for children, parents and families.

To contribute to these high-level outcomes, the logic model for the ELC Expansion set out in the Evaluation Strategy highlights that six 'intermediate outcomes' must also be achieved. These six intermediate outcomes for the expansion were defined in the Evaluation Strategy as follows.

• Accessibility: ELC capacity should be sufficient and as conveniently geographically located as possible - particularly in areas of higher deprivation and in rural communities - to support families and enable parents to work, train and study, while also appropriately meeting the needs of children who require additional support.
• Flexibility: The expansion should support parents in work, training or study, as well as those with caring responsibilities. Patterns of provision should be better aligned with working patterns whilst being delivered in a way that ensures a high quality experience for the child.
• Affordability: The expansion should increase access to affordable ELC, including to help reduce barriers in the labour market participation that parents face and to reduce household costs.
• Quality: The expansion should ensure a high quality experience for all children which complements other early years and educational activity to close the outcomes gap and recognises the value of ELC practitioners.
• Take up: Take up of expanded ELC should be maximised, particularly among those who will benefit most, so that it meets the needs of children and families.
• Parental confidence and capacity: The expansion should support parents in engaging with their child's learning, enhancing the home learning environment and promoting their own wellbeing and confidence.

1.2. The ELC expansion Evaluation Strategy

The Evaluation Strategy underlined that the primary focus for the evaluation is on measuring outcomes for children, parents and families. The evaluation work it set out consists of the three main inter-related strands below:

• evaluating the accessibility, flexibility, affordability, quality and take up of funded ELC
• evaluating the contribution of the expansion programme to outcomes for children, parents and families, and
• assessing the longer-term economic costs and benefits of the expansion programme.

This interim report focuses on the intermediate outcomes in the first of these strands. The Final Evaluation Report is due to be published in late 2025. The final report will present findings from analysis of all the research and data that form part of the evaluation programme, across the three stands set out above (see Chapter 4 for more detail).

The Strategy explained that the evaluation methodology makes use of existing sources of information and reporting processes, along with commissioning of specific and targeted research. Minimising the burden of information requests made of providers and local authorities was a key consideration. The Strategy set out key measures and data sources/research that will be used to understand changes in the intermediate and high level outcomes of funded ELC.

1.3. Purpose and scope of the report

This Intermediate Evaluation Report provides an evidence-based picture of how things stood in the initial period after the full statutory implementation of the ELC expansion, and how that compares to the preceding years. The aim is to review whether the foundations are in place to achieve the desired high-level outcomes. It follows the first evaluation report of the ELC expansion programme published in 2017, prior to phasing of the expansion. That early evaluation report: a) explored the impact of the expansion to 600 hours and eligible two year olds after the 2014 Act; b) provided learning to help the implementation of the ELC expansion to 1140 hours as it was being rolled out; and c) provided a baseline for evaluating the extent to which the expansion to 1140 hours is achieving its aims.

The programme logic model outlines that, to achieve its high-level outcomes, the ELC expansion needs to realise intermediate outcomes of maximising take up of expanded ELC, especially among families who will benefit most. Additionally, expanded ELC needs to be high quality, sufficiently flexible and accessible and to increase access to affordable ELC. These intermediate outcomes rely on sufficient capacity being created across Scotland to provide 1140 hours (outputs).

The report presents analysis and reporting on the key indicators for the intermediate outcomes identified in the ELC Expansion Evaluation Strategy, and on the sector and workforce. It also draws on findings from relevant qualitative and survey research to consider progress. Where possible with the data available, the report considers trends from around 2016-17 – before phasing of expanded ELC began – until the most recent year data is available, generally 2022 or 2023. It should be noted that there is a time-lag between data being available and the production of this report, and these data are monitored on an ongoing basis.

Data sources and analysis

The main data sources used to assess changes in the ELC sector, workforce and intermediate outcomes were set out in the evaluation strategy. A summary of the key data sources is provided below. Further information is provided alongside analysis of the data, as relevant, and in Annex 1. Breakdowns by different groups are provided where notable^[1] and the data allows – different data sources vary as to what breakdowns are possible.

• The ELC Census provides annual data on children registered for funded ELC. This can be broken down by the age of child. Italso collects workforce data on teachers, graduate staff and staff working towards graduate qualifications. The Census is currently completed by the centres that provide funded ELC in Scotland. It collects aggregated data on registrations for funded ELC, not individual-level data.^[2] The most recent data is from September 2023.
• The Care Inspectorate ELC Statistics collect information on ELC services, including the number of services registered, services' capacity, the number of services providing funded places and children registered with services. Care Inspectorate also provide information on the quality of ELC services through inspection grading data. The data is published annually and can be broken by local authority, type of service (e.g. nursery etc.) and sector (e.g. public, private, voluntary). The most recent data is from December 2022.
• The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) Children's Services Workforce data provides information on the ELC workforce, including demographic characteristics such as age and gender, and qualifications. This is published annually and can also be broken down by sector. The most recent data provides a picture of workforce at the end of 2022.
• To provide information on the implementation of the expansion to 1140 hours, the Improvement Service and Scottish Futures Trust collect and analyse data on the delivery of funded ELC across Scottish local authorities. This data has been collected two to three times a year since 2018. The most recent data is from September 2023.
• Questions on the use of childcare were added to the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) in 2018. Most of these questions are asked of households with a child aged two to five years old and not yet at school. The SHS provides annual, population level data about accessibility, flexibility, affordability and satisfaction with funded ELC. The data can be broken down by area of deprivation where the sample size is large enough. This data cannot, however, be linked to individual child experiences or attendance at ELC. The most recent data is from 2022. Data from 2022 is only comparable to 2018 and 2019, not 2020 and 2021 (see Annex 1 for more information).
• A survey of parents took place in April-May 2022, at the end of the first year of full statutory implementation of the expanded entitlement. It aimed to provide more detailed information on parents' views and experiences of flexibility and accessibility of 1140 hours of ELC, including analysis by age of child; area deprivation, rurality; household type, employment status and income. This was a follow up to a parent survey that took place in 2017 (with the report published in 2018) which provided baseline data on patterns of ELC use prior to the roll out of the expansion. Both surveys explored parents' perceptions of quality, flexibility, accessibility and affordability. They also collected data on the experiences of parents of children with additional support needs (ASN).