Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare: Phase 5 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. Childminders were not included in the sample

5. 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.

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

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

8. The sample included 499 settings, 39 of which were withdrawn by the their local authority before fieldwork began. A further 8 settings withdrew after questionnaires were sent out but before the start of fieldwork.

9. Local authority settings were more likely to respond than funder provider ones. Local authority settings made up 70% of the sample, but 78% of the responding settings. Overall, 234 of 322 LA settings responded (73%), compared with 66 of 138 funder providers (48%).

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. Observations were achieved in exactly 50% of settings providing at least one keyworker or parent questionnaire (30% of the original sample).

12.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.

13. 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)

13. Although there was an increase in average adult mental wellbeing between 2022 and 2023. See The Scottish Health Survey 2023 - volume 1: main report - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

14. Parent figures include birth, adoptive and foster parents and their partners, as well as grandparents if they have taken on the main caring role for the child.

15. 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.

16. Settings in deprived areas were deliberately oversampled in order to maximise the potential of the sample for analysing data on the poverty-related outcomes gap.

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

18. 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)

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

20. 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.

21. The short form of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale has been used to measure mental wellbeing. More details are provided in the appendix.

22. 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. Further details are provided in the appendix.

23. 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). Further details are provided in the appendix.

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

25. Not including childminders

26. Includes reserve sample issued across all participating LAs. Also includes 17 settings from North Ayrshire which withdrew in the period between sampling and questionnaires being dispatched.

27. 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.

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

29. A very rough estimate used for sampling suggested 4,400 children in the sampled settings were eligible.

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

31. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

37. 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.

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