Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare: final report

1. Introduction

Background

This report brings together data from across the six phases of the Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare (SSELC) to answer some key questions about the impact of the expansion of funded early learning and childcare (ELC) in Scotland. The SSELC is an integral part of the wider Evaluation Strategy, developed to assess the impact of the expansion of funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours on outcomes for children, parents and carers^[5], and families.

The ELC Expansion Programme

Underpinned by the principles of quality, flexibility, accessibility and affordability, the expansion of government-funded ELC has been central to Scottish Government policy and investment over the last decade. Expansion was first realised through the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 which increased the amount of government-funded ELC from 475 hours to 600 hours per year. In 2017, the Scottish Government’s Blueprint for 2020 committed to further expansion by August 2020. Local authorities were phasing in expanded hours prior to 2020 and this continued between 2020 and 2021. While the full statutory implementation of these plans was initially delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, by August 2021 the statutory amount of funded ELC that three- and four-year-olds were entitled to had risen to 1140 hours a year.

The expansion means that all eligible families can access up to 30 hours of funded ELC per week per child in term time (an increase from around 16 hours per week), or around 22 hours per week if spread across the calendar year. Two-year-olds are currently eligible for funded ELC if they, or their parent, are care-experienced or if the child’s household is in receipt of one or more qualifying benefits. Local authorities can also provide discretionary access to funded ELC to any other child, as they see fit.^[6]

The Strategic Childcare Plan for 2022-2026 set out the Scottish Government’s vision for ELC and school age childcare, including planned actions to ‘fully realise the benefits of the 1140 expansion’. These benefits, or high-level aims, are intended to be three-fold:

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

2. Family wellbeing improves

3. Parents’ opportunities to take up or sustain work, study or training increase

Evaluating the expansion of funded ELC

To understand the extent to which the benefits of ELC expansion have been realised, the Strategic Childcare Plan also highlighted the importance of evaluating its impact on children, parents and families. The primary focus of the ELC Expansion Evaluation Strategy is on measuring the above ‘high-level’ outcomes for these groups. In the evaluation logic model, it also identified ways for evaluating a number of intermediate outcomes which the expansion programme needs to realise in order to achieve the high-level ones. The evaluation work set out in the strategy therefore consists of three main inter-related parts:

1. evaluating the ‘intermediate outcomes’ of accessibility, flexibility, affordability, quality and take up of funded ELC

2. evaluating the contribution of the expansion programme to outcomes for children, parents and carers and families, and

3. assessing the longer-term economic costs and benefits of the expansion programme.

The SSELC is a core source of data for the second part of this work, but will also feed into the economic analysis of the ELC expansion.

The main objective of the evaluation strategy is to determine how the expansion of funded ELC affects outcomes for children, parents, and families overall. The following evaluation questions are being used to assess the three high-level outcomes and a sixth intermediate outcome – parental confidence and capacity. These are the questions which this report considers, using data from the SSELC.

Child outcomes

• What impact has the expansion of funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours per year had on children's cognitive and language development?
• What impact has the expansion of funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours per year had on children's social, behavioural and emotional development?
• What impact has the expansion of funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours per year had on the poverty-related development gap, in particular cognitive and language skills?
• What impact has the expansion of funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours per year had on children's physical health and wellbeing and on health inequalities?

Parent outcomes

• What impact has the expansion of funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours per year had on parents' ability to work, train, or study and why?
• What impact has the expansion of funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours per year had on parental health and wellbeing?
• What impact has the expansion of funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours per year had on parental confidence and capacity in engaging with their child's learning, enhancing the home learning environment, and promoting their own wellbeing and confidence?

Family outcomes

• What impact has the expansion of funded ELC from 600 to 1140 hours per year had on family wellbeing, in the context of ELC provision?

Other research feeding into the evaluation

In addition to the SSELC, the evaluation uses data, research and analysis from a range of other sources, including survey and qualitative research.^[7] These include:

• Survey research exploring parents’ views and use of ELC undertaken in 2017, 2022 and 2025
• Qualitative research with parents on factors influencing their decision to use funded ELC
• Qualitative research with childminders and parents who use childminders on the impact of childminding services on child, parent and carer, and family outcomes.

An interim evaluation report, published in August 2024, provided an overview of progress towards achieving the expansion’s intermediate outcomes of providing accessible, flexible, affordable and high quality ELC, and maximising take up of expanded ELC.

The 2018-2025 National Outcomes Evaluation Report, published alongside this report, summarises analysis and findings from across all the data sources, research and analysis that form part of the outcomes evaluation (including the SSELC).

About the SSELC

Overview of the study

The SSELC was designed to provide key evidence on whether the ELC expansion has achieved its aims. It did this by measuring, and comparing, outcomes for children and parents receiving the previous entitlement of 600 hours, with those receiving the current entitlement of 1140 hours. The SSELC cannot say anything about children who do not use funded ELC, although uptake of funded ELC has been near universal since before the expansion.^[8]

Specifically, the SSELC sought to assess the extent to which the expansion from 600 hours to 1140 hours:

• improved outcomes for children between the ages of two and five, particularly those at risk of disadvantage.
• closed the gap in child development outcomes between children who are most and least disadvantaged between the ages of two and five.
• improved outcomes for parents, particularly parents of children at risk of disadvantage.
• increased family wellbeing, particularly for families in disadvantaged circumstances.^[9]

In Chapter 2 we consider the contribution SSELC has been able to make to this assessment.

Previous SSELC reporting

The focus of this report is to present the findings from analysis of data from all six phases of the SSELC. Comparisons between pre-expansion and post-expansion data are considered to evaluate the contribution of the expansion programme to outcomes for children, parents and families.

Individual reports for each phase of the SSELC have been published and are accessible via the Scottish Government website^[10]. As well as details of the methodology for the phase, each report also sets out descriptive analysis of the key outcomes including:

• assessments of child development, using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
• child general health
• the home environment
• parental economic activity
• parental health and wellbeing
• use of ELC and other forms of childcare
• findings from the observations of settings using the Infant Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS) and the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) (Phases 1, 2, 4 and 5)

Contextual considerations

Impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis

Phases 4 to 6 of the study were conducted following the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While the long-term impacts of the pandemic are not yet fully understood, the growing evidence from a range of research studies suggests many young children and their families have been negatively affected, especially those who were already disadvantaged.^[11] For some families, the pandemic had a negative impact on parental employment and household income and increases in stress and reductions in parental wellbeing have also been found, especially for mothers. For example, the Scottish Health Survey 2023 showed that levels of wellbeing in the population had not, in 2023, returned to pre-pandemic levels.^[12] Furthermore, the cost-of-living crisis which followed the pandemic has left more families struggling with their finances.^[13] Given the impact of poverty on health and wellbeing^[14], it is likely that wellbeing has been further impacted for many families into 2023 and 2024.

During 2020 and 2021, protective public health measures curtailed many interactions young children would otherwise have had in ELC settings and wider social contexts. They and their parents will have experienced a number of restrictions in accessing informal support from friends, family and the local community, as well as more formal services for parents and young children. Studies have suggested negative short to medium-term impacts on sleep, mood, behaviour and development among a large minority of young children.^[15]

There is also evidence, however, to suggest some beneficial impacts for some children and families, for example by creating opportunities for other meaningful interactions at home with family.^[16]

ELC could be expected to play an important role in mitigating some of the negative impacts of the pandemic for children and families.^[17] However, it is also possible that there will be medium and long-term impacts of the public health measures on the outcomes the ELC expansion seeks to influence. For example, data from Public Health Scotland (PHS), based on Child Health Reviews from the Child Health Surveillance Programme^[18], indicate that there has been a rise in developmental concerns noted at Child Health Reviews at the 13-15 month and 27–30-month points from early 2021.

Unfunded ELC hours

A baseline survey of parents’ views and use of ELC in 2017^[19] found that parents of eligible three- and four-year-olds were already, on average, using 29 hours per week of childcare – including an average of 14 hours funded ELC, 7 hours paid-for ELC and 8 hours informal childcare – prior to the expansion of funded hours. Further, parents in higher income households and living in the least deprived areas were more likely than other parents to be using more hours of childcare and to use paid-for ELC. This means that for some groups of children there may have been little or no change in the overall amount of childcare received post-expansion but rather a shift from use of paid-for or informal childcare to funded ELC. We may, therefore, expect to see less change in outcomes for some of these groups of children as a result of the increase of funded ELC to 1140 hours.

The largest change in the number of ELC hours accessed is likely to come from those subgroups of children who were accessing only funded hours at baseline, i.e. 600 hours per year (or approximately 15 hours per week) or less and who now access significantly more ELC hours as a result of the expansion. Analysis of the 2017 parent survey data found that 16% of parents of all three- and four-year-olds used only funded hours prior to the expansion (e.g. 600 funded hours per year), and parents in the most deprived areas were more likely to use only funded hours (24%) than those in the least deprived areas (10%). There is, therefore, a higher likelihood of significant changes in outcomes being seen in particular subgroups, especially children from low-income households and/or who are living in the most deprived areas who take up increased funded hours.

Structure of this report

The next chapter of this report discusses the methodology of the SSELC, including the design of the study and the analysis conducted. A more thorough discussion of methodology is included in Appendix A. This is followed by a brief chapter on the use of childcare. While this is not intended to answer any of the evaluation questions, it provides useful context regarding changes in the use of unfunded ELC and informal childcare since the expansion. The evaluation questions are addressed in Chapters 4 and 5.

Chapter 4 of the report is focused on exploring the impact of the expansion on children’s health and development and considers: cognitive and language development; social, behavioural and emotional development; health and wellbeing outcomes; and the poverty-related development gap.

Chapter 5 examines the impact on parents and families more widely. Here, consideration is given to parents' ability to work, train or study; parental health and wellbeing; parental confidence and capacity in engaging with their child's learning and enhancing the home environment; confidence as a parent; support from family and friends; and parent-child relationships.

A final chapter discusses what conclusions we can draw from the analysis of the SSELC data with regards to the expansion of funded ELC.

The report is accompanied by a set of supplementary Excel tables that can be found in the Supporting documents.