Mentions:
1: Gilruth, Jenny (SNP - Mid Fife and Glenrothes) The Scottish Government provides grant funding of £200,000 a year to Dyslexia Scotland to deliver work - Speech Link
2: FitzPatrick, Joe (SNP - Dundee City West) Unlike Mr Marra, I not only welcome the £15 million funding, but I voted for it. - Speech Link
3: Gilruth, Jenny (SNP - Mid Fife and Glenrothes) Funding from that will go to councils across Scotland, including North Lanarkshire Council, and it will - Speech Link
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department plans to take to ensure wraparound childcare is sufficiently funded in areas with high SEND staffing requirements.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department knows that parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) need childcare provision that meets their and their children’s needs. This government is determined to help these parents and has funded the national wraparound programme to support working families and improve the availability of before and after school childcare, to ensure that parents have the flexibility they need to care for their children.
Wraparound programme funding includes resource for additional staffing to support inclusive provision, including for pupils with particular needs. Local authority allocations are varied to take account of regional differences in the number of pupils with SEND.
The Childcare Act 2006 places a legal duty on local authorities to ensure there are enough childcare places within its locality for working parents or parents who are studying or training for employment, for children aged 0 to 14, or up to age 18 for disabled children. All local authorities should be able to demonstrate how they have discharged this duty and should include specific reference to how they are ensuring there is sufficient childcare to meet the needs of children with SEND, as per the statutory guidance. This should be available from the local authority.
The wraparound programme is helping local authorities discharge this duty, by distributing funding to ensure that local areas can increase the supply of wraparound places. Local authorities across England can decide how best to use the funding to set up or expand wraparound childcare in their area to meet the needs of their local community, including children with SEND.
The government is also committed to making quick progress to deliver on our commitment to offer breakfast clubs in every primary school. Departmental officials are working closely with schools and sector experts to develop a programme that meets the needs of all children, including those with SEND.
In order to test and learn about how best to support schools in implementing new free universal breakfast clubs, we have selected 750 early adopter schools to deliver from April 2025, ahead of the national roll out to all schools with primary aged children. This includes 50 special schools and alternative provision settings. These settings will receive a higher funding rate, in addition to the fixed termly payments and set up cost funding, in recognition of the need for higher staff to pupil ratios.
Asked by: McCall, Roz (Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party - Mid Scotland and Fife)
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to address any staffing shortages in the early years sector that may be impacting the delivery of 1,140 hours of funded childcare.
Answered by None
The single most important driver of quality in a child’s Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) experience and improved outcomes is a dedicated, highly skilled, and well-qualified workforce. The ELC profession is therefore critical to the successful delivery of our 1,140 hours offer. We will continue to support a sustainable, diverse and thriving workforce.
Although staffing of funded ELC services is the responsibility of local authorities and their funded partners, in order to support a sustainable ELC workforce, the Scottish Government has provided local authorities with an additional £9.7 million in 2025-26 to increase the pay of ELC workers in the private and third sectors delivering funded hours, so that they are paid at least the Real Living Wage from April. Building on last year’s recurring investment of £16 million, this funding for the further increase to at least £12.60 per hour demonstrates the Scottish Government’s commitment to the Fair Work agenda.
Joint Scottish Government and COSLA guidance, published on 20 February, confirms that the additional funding will be passed to all funded ELC providers (including childminders) in 2025-26 through a minimum 3.75% increase in sustainable rates. This means an average increase of over £1,000 per year in gross salary for the eligible staff who are working full time.
Beyond pay, the Scottish Government is taking forward a range of actions to support the ELC profession. These include investment in continuous professional learning (CPL) resources and a dedicated CPL portal for the childcare profession, providing funding to Skills Development Scotland to support Modern Apprenticeships in childcare, providing funding for 100 childcare professionals to study for Masters qualifications each year and working with Skills Development Scotland to pilot a new programme to improve staff access to paid time off the floor.
Mar. 13 2025
Source Page: I. Sufficiency of childcare places in local authorities. 3p. II. Letter dated 11/03/2025 from Baroness Smith of Malvern to Baroness Coffey regarding a question raised during an oral statement on breakfast clubs early adopters: local authorities underserved with childcare places. 1p.Found: Sufficiency of childcare places in local authorities Giving young children the best start in life is
Found: MA/JMSS/0421/22 6 We do, however, recognise that the ability to access the funding towards childcare
Found: MA/JMSS/0421/22 6 We do, however, recognise that the ability to access the funding towards childcare
Mentions:
1: Haughey, Clare (SNP - Rutherglen) The Scottish Government has committed to expanding childcare for younger children, but the childcare - Speech Link
2: Stevenson, Collette (SNP - East Kilbride) and the provision of 1,140 hours of early learning and childcare. - Speech Link
3: McCall, Roz (Con - Mid Scotland and Fife) funding cuts to colleges. - Speech Link
Mentions:
1: None Follow up inquiry into childcare provision in Wales'. - Speech Link
2: None Follow up inquiry into childcare provision in Wales'. - Speech Link
3: Joel James (Welsh Conservative Party - None)
This report emphasises the need for more funding into the childcare sector. - Speech Link
4: Dawn Bowden (Welsh Labour - None) streams and systems for funding childcare. - Speech Link
Asked by: Charlotte Cane (Liberal Democrat - Ely and East Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure the availability of high-quality childcare.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
It is the department’s ambition that parents have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and childcare.
Next year alone, we plan to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements, which is a more than 30% increase compared to 2024/25, as we roll out the expansion of the entitlements, so eligible working parents of children aged from nine months can access 30 hours of funded childcare.
From the start of September 2024, eligible working parents have been entitled to 15 hours a week of early education and care from the term after their child turns nine months. So far, over 320,000 additional parents are now accessing a place. Going further, from September 2025, eligible working parents will be able to access 30 hours of early education and childcare a week, over 38 weeks of the year, from the term after their child turns nine months until they start school.
In September 2024, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education announced that state-funded primary phase schools could apply for up to £150,000 of £15 million capital funding to create or expand on-site nurseries. Schools could apply between 17 October and 19 December 2024 and will be notified of the outcome in this year. This new funding will complement ongoing work to expand provision across the country, including the £100 million capital funding allocated to local authorities in 2023/24 to increase capacity of early years and wraparound provision in local areas.
Parents may also be eligible for childcare support through Tax-Free Childcare or Universal Credit Childcare.
The department is determined to create change in the approach to early years, focusing on high-quality early education, celebrating and supporting early years careers, and embedding the sector into the wider education system. We are delivering programmes to support the sector to attract talented staff and childminders by creating conditions for improved recruitment, alongside programmes to better utilise the skills of the existing workforce.
The department also wants to ensure that parents are aware of and accessing all government-funded childcare support they are eligible for. We are raising awareness of the government-funded childcare support available via the Childcare Choices website to stimulate increased take-up by eligible families, because this could make a significant financial difference to families.
Mentions:
1: Somerville, Shirley-Anne (SNP - Dunfermline) for early learning and childcare. - Speech Link
2: Smith, Liz (Con - Mid Scotland and Fife) of affordable housing and an expanding of free childcare—the list goes on. - Speech Link
3: Somerville, Shirley-Anne (SNP - Dunfermline) a childcare setting, such as a nursery, but childcare can be and is being provided in a number of different - Speech Link
4: Somerville, Shirley-Anne (SNP - Dunfermline) We have mentioned early learning and childcare. - Speech Link