Roll-out of Scotland's 1,140 hours could face delays, warns spending watchdog

While the report recognises that councils are making progress in recruiting the workforce needed to deliver the extended entitlement, it finds that just half of the extra staff needed have so far been recruited.

Audit Scotland is an independent public body responsible for auditing many of the country's public organisations.

According to the Scottish Government, an additional 4,310 full-time equivalent staff have been recruited for council settings, however Audit Scotland says that forecasts suggest a total of 8,244 are needed.

Some councils have highlighted difficulties in recruiting staff to managerial and senior practitioner posts. Providers also continue to report challenges with recruitment and retention of staff.

Audit Scotland says that between April and September, councils will need to recruit 27 per cent of the additional workforce (2,231 full-time equivalent staff) needed for their settings.  

Building works

The report also reveals that around half of the work to build, extend or refurbish childcare settings is planned for completion in the final few months before roll-out so any delays will impact on delivery of the funded hours.

About 303 building projects are due to complete between June and August, 250 of which are critical to meeting demand for places in August. Of the 250 projects, there is no contingency plan for 83 of them. Contingency plans could involve using temporary buildings or existing community, school or other council buildings on a temporary basis.

As well as any delay to works, new childcare places must be registered by the Care Inspectorate before services can open to children and a large volume of registrations all at the same time may cause issues, says the report. Any temporary buildings that are used would have to alsobe registered with the Care inspectorate.

The Scottish Government is encouraging councils to submit applications as early as possible so the inspectorate can cope with the increase in demand.

Another risk to the successful delivery of the 1,140 hours, according to the report is the number of settings that are not currently meeting the national standard of a Care Inspectorate grade of good of better across all areas. As of March 2019, about 10 per cent of current providers of funded places had grades of less than good.

Recommendations

Audit Scotland makes a number of recommendations to reduce the risks around failing to deliver on time. It says the Scottish Government and councils should:

• Work together to ensure that contingency planning for any delays to infrastructure is complete, including plans for when and how best to inform parents.
• Continue to work with the Care Inspectorate to consider how best to mitigate the impact of registering temporary facilities.
• Continue to consider the impact of workforce expansion on other providers of early learning and childcare and make plans to alleviate this where possible.

Comments

The National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) said there are still a lot of challenges for private providers to deliver the extended entitlement.

Chief executive Purnima Tanuku said, ‘The report does not highlight the funding challenges that providers are facing - some nurseries don’t even know what their rate will be from April yet. The funding package is also supposed to include an uplift for inflation but that’s not the experience our nursery members are having at local level. 

‘Private providers are already facing a serious workforce crisis with many staff members leaving for council-run settings. This report says that only half the posts have been filled in council-run settings, so it looks likely that many more practitioners will leave for public sector pay in the short or medium-term which would further exacerbate the existing problem for private providers. This was highlighted in our workforce report last year and fed back to Scottish Government.’

She added, ‘Any new provision built must not duplicate existing high-quality provision and therefore risk putting well-established nurseries out of business. Existing private and voluntary nurseries are a part of the vital infrastructure for delivering this policy which needs to be recognised.’

Commenting on Audit Scotland’s report, Scotland’s children’s minister Maree Todd said, ‘We are on course to deliver the most generous, high-quality early learning and childcare offer in the UK, which can transform the lives of children.

‘Through our strong partnership working with local government, so much has already been achieved. There are already thousands of additional staff in post, and councils will continue to grow their teams over the coming months.

‘We have also been delivering a large-scale infrastructure programme to provide high- quality settings. Hundreds of nurseries have been built or refurbished, with work continuing across the country.

‘We are committed to delivering the roll-out from August and councils have contingency plans in place for all critical projects due to complete this summer, so we can be confident that the places will be there to deliver the expansion for Scotland’s children. The expansion also opens up more opportunities for playgroups, private and third sector nurseries, and childminders to be involved in delivering funded hours.’

• The Audit Scotland report is available here