Scottish Government high level action plan in response to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

12: Childcare

Thematic Tags

Childcare; Children’s Rights; Poverty; Disability

Concluding Observation 43a

The C ommittee recommends that the State Party, along with the devolved governments […] Adopt or strengthen measures to ensure the availability, accessibility and affordability of childcare through increased public funding and targeted financial support, such as childcare allowances.

Context

We are committed to building a more accessible and affordable system of school age childcare in Scotland and to supporting parents and carers of primary school age children to access the childcare they need to be able to enter or sustain employment. We recognise the importance of this in relation to our mission to tackle poverty and have targeted our early delivery of funded or subsidised school age childcare services to families most at risk of living in poverty.

We provide 1,140 hours per year of funded early learning and childcare (ELC) to all three and four year olds and eligible two year olds regardless of parents’ working status. Families receive up to 30 hours per week of funded childcare during term time, or 22 hours year-round. If families were to pay for this themselves, it would cost them around £6,000 per child per year. Since 2021, around £1 billion has been invested yearly in ELC. As of September 2024, 88% of eligible children aged two-five were reported to be accessing the full entitlement of 1,140 hours. An interim report for the ELC expansion to 1,140 hours was published in August 2024, which considered progress against the intermediate outcomes of flexibility, quality, accessibility and affordability. Across our school age childcare programme, we are currently supporting over 5,000 children from low income families to access services.

Key Actions

We will update the strategic early learning and school age childcare plan for Scotland 2022-2026 in 2026 reflecting progress on commitments and identifying next steps.

We expect to publish a full report on the ELC 1,140 expansion evaluation for the period 2018-25 in early 2026. This report will draw together findings from across all the strands of the evaluation.

We will publish an early years speech and language action plan for Scotland in December 2025. The plan seeks to address the growing level of concerns being reported about children’s speech and language development since the COVID-19 pandemic. It will set out the practical steps that public services will take to build the confidence and capacity of families and staff to support children’s early speech and language development.

In 2025-26 we have increased our ‘extra time’ programme investment to £5.5 million and will expand delivery of before and after school, and holiday clubs, through 53 football clubs and trusts in partnership with the Scottish Football Association. This will provide places for up to 5,000 children and their families and is targeted at those families most at risk of living in poverty. Impact reports were published in November 2024 and June 2025.

We continue to invest in our access to childcare fund projects in 2025 to maintain access to subsidised and funded school age childcare services for families who are benefiting from them. With almost £1.5 million of investment to March 2027, the fund is supporting over 600 children through seven projects to deliver funded or subsidised school age childcare and wider family support for families on low income, exploring new models of childcare.

We have committed up to £16 million over 2024-26 to deliver 23 childcare early adopter community projects providing early learning and school age childcare services for priority families benefitting around 1,000 children in six local authorities: Dundee City, Clackmannanshire, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, Fife, and Shetland. We will publish an evaluation covering impacts and spend in the second half of 2026.

We are providing an additional £1 million in 2025-26 to enhance the delivery of holiday play schemes and activities for disabled children across all 32 local authorities.

We have established and delivered a £3 million bright start breakfasts fund expanding delivery of breakfasts clubs through the creation of 9,000 places, for up to 20,000 children. This is supporting the delivery of clubs for the 2025-26 academic year.