Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare: phase 4 report

Footnotes

1. Throughout this report the term "parents" should be understood to refer to carers also.

2. More information on the eligibility criteria for funding is available at: Funded early learning and childcare - mygov.scot

3. Broadly, family wellbeing in the context of ELC is considered to be a combination of children and parents' health and wellbeing, and the ability of parents to undertake suitable parenting and activities that may contribute to the long-term prosperity of the family unit.

4. Funded early learning and childcare - mygov.scot

5. Childminders were not included in the sample.

6. Note that inspectors were acting as observers and not in their regulatory capacity. They used a different tool in their observations than would be used for a formal quality grading.

7. Questionnaires were available in Polish, Urdu, Punjabi and Arabic, as well as English.

8. Further information on these instruments is provided in Appendix C.

9. The sample included 315 settings, 14 of which withdrew before fieldwork began. Four of these were replaced to ensure reasonable coverage across all participating local authority areas.

10. Response rates for the questionnaires are not easy to calculate because of incomplete information on the sampling frame (see Appendix B for more details). Figures shown are a best estimate given the information available.

11. A subsample of 150 settings was drawn for invitation to participate in the setting observations. Settings which were unable to participate in these observations were replaced with alternative settings from the main sample.

12. All settings in the original sample of 315, plus the four replacements, were eligible to complete the setting heads' questionnaire, even if they did not have any eligible two-year-olds at the time.

13. A statistically significant finding is one that would be very unlikely to be observed in a sample of data simply by chance if there is no real underlying change or difference in the wider population. The magnitude of the difference is only an estimate, but is very likely to be greater than zero.

14. See, for example: Coronavirus (COVID-19): impact on children, young people and families - evidence summary October 2020 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot); or Covid-19: impact on child poverty and on young people's education, health and wellbeing - House of Lords Library (parliament.uk)

15. Scottish Health Survey - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

16. Equivalised household income adjusts household income according to the typical income requirements for the number of people in the household. The modified OECD adjustment has been used in this case, whereby household income is divided by a household size factor, which is the sum of 0.67 for the first adult in the household, 0.33 for each subsequent adult or child aged 14 or above, and 0.20 for each child aged 13 or below. Cut points for the equivalised income deciles have been taken from a national survey of people in households in Scotland, the Scottish Health Survey 2022. The lowest equivalised income decile includes, for example, families of one adult and one child under 14 with an income of below £11,745, and families of two adults and two children under 14 with an income of below £18,900 per year. Note that wage inflation between 2022 and 2023 means that the true figure for the proportion of the sample in the lowest equivalised income decile is probably higher than the 49% reported here.

17. Parent reports suggested a very similar figure of 22.7 hours. The difference is partly due to which children had completed parent questionnaires, as well as differences in how respondents interpreted "usual" attendance.

18. And parent data shows that very few children received formal ELC from another setting in addition.

19. 99% of children did not split funding between more than one setting, hence the mean of 21.6 hours is effectively the mean for the sampled setting. However, this figure from the parent data is slightly lower than that obtained from keyworker data. The difference is partly due to which children had completed parent questionnaires, and partly due to how respondents interpreted the questions.

20. The questionnaire did not specify the mode of transport.

21. Further information on these instruments is provided in Appendix C

22. Both the NHS and World Health Organisation promote the benefits of breast feeding: Benefits of breastfeeding - NHS (www.nhs.uk); Infant and young child feeding (who.int)

23. Children aged two typically need around 11 to 14 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. Regularly getting less than this is known to be associated with worse developmental outcomes, see for example Systematic review of the relationships between sleep duration and health indicators in the early years (0–4 years) | BMC Public Health (springer.com)

24. See, for example: Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels 2017-18 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

25. For the first four domains and the total difficulties scale, a higher score is indicative of more problematic behaviour. For the prosocial behaviour domain, a lower score indicates less prosocial behaviour.

26. Some of those in education were also in employment or looking for work.

27. Annualised hours employment contracts specify the number of hours to be worked in a year. Most of these are likely to be worked to a schedule, which may vary across the year, but some may be used flexibly as agreed between the employee and employer.

28. Zero hours contracts are a type of contract with no minimum working hours guaranteed. The employer does not have to provide work every month, and work can be accepted or refused by the employee.

29. Quartiles were determined based on frequencies at Phase 1, to allow comparisons between the two phases.

30. Matheny, A. P., Jr., Wachs, T.d., Ludwig, J.L., and Phillips, K. (1995). "Bringing Order Out of Chaos: Psychometric Characteristics of the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale." Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 16, pp. 429-444.

31. Oates J, Gervai J: Mothers Object Relations Scale: Assessing mothers' models of their infants. Open Univ. 1984. See also MORS Tools | Mothers Object Relations Scales (MORS) (morscales.org)

32. A small number of questionnaires were completed by the heads of settings with no eligible two-year-olds at the time of the survey.

33. Care Inspectorate, A quality framework for daycare of children, childminding and school-aged childcare (2022).

34. Freeflow play allows children to move freely indoors and outdoors as they please.

35. See the Scottish Health Survey 2022 report, which uses the full version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) to monitor levels of wellbeing across the population: The Scottish Health Survey 2022 – volume 1: main report - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

36. Not including childminders

37. All eligible two-year-olds, not just those aged two years to two years six months

38. Includes reserve sample issued in Orkney, Shetland and Dundee to ensure adequate coverage across all LAs. Also includes 14 settings which withdrew before questionnaires were despatched.

39. Note that inspectors were acting as observers and not in their regulatory capacity, and used a different tool in their observations than would be used for a formal quality grading.

40. Further information on these instruments is provided in Appendix C.

41. A very rough estimate used for sampling suggested 1196 children in the sampled settings were eligible.

42. Scottish Government (2012) The Scottish Child Health Programme: Guidance on the 27-30 month child health review, Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

43. Bedford, H., Walton, S., Ahn, J. (2013). Measures of Child Development: A review, London: Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UCL Institute of Child Health.

44. See Ages and Stages Questionnaire (agesandstages.com)

45. See Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (sdqinfo.org)

46. Goodman R (1997) The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A Research Note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 581-586.

47. See Melhuish, E. & Gardiner, J. (2018) Study of Early Education and Development (SEED): SEED-Age_4_RESEARCH_REPORT.pdf">Impact study on early education use and child outcomes up to age four years (publishing.service.gov.uk)

48. Stephen, C. and Wilkinson, J.E. (1995) "Assessing the Quality of Provision in Community Nurseries", Early Child Development and Care. 108: 83-98.

49. Care Inspectorate staff attended training with academic colleagues on how to use the ITERS-3 and completed their first observation in pairs to ensure consistency of scoring.

50. Care Inspectorate, A quality framework for daycare of children, childminding and school-aged childcare (2022).