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4.29 According to the Scottish Government12 the key facts about the childcare workforce in Scotland, as of January 2007, are that:

• there are nearly 32,648 staff working in pre-school and childcare centres in Scotland, of which 27,984 work directly with children

• eighty per cent of staff working directly with children have at least one childcare qualification (unchanged from September 2005). Seventy six per cent of staff have a qualification at SVQ level 2 equivalent or above (a rise of eight percentage points since 2005), and 65 per cent have a qualification at SVQ level 3 equivalent or above (a rise of six percentage points since 2005)

• twenty seven per cent of staff working directly with children are working towards childcare qualifications. Twenty per cent are working towards qualifications at SVQ level 3 equivalent or above.

4.30 As we saw in Chapter 2, research such as the Millennium Cohort Study has identified the importance of staff qualifications in childcare: qualifications of staff are an important predictor of provision quality. The Scottish Government has been working with the Scottish Social Services Council to ensure that the early years and childcare workforce are appropriately qualified and, from 2006, qualified to work in the sector. The Scottish Government has invested nearly £37 million into workforce development between 2000 and

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“Pre-school and childcare statistics 2007” – the Scottish Government, September 2007

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200713 to encourage early years and childcare staff to become qualified and undertake further training.

4.31 The NOQC programme has supported workforce development in order to help increase the overall skill levels of those working in the childcare sector. Under this strand of the NOQC programme, eligible costs included course fees and materials, travel and subsistence and temporary staff cover. NOQC programme guidance clearly stipulated that SVQs were not eligible for support, as funding for this was available from the Scottish Government.

4.32 A total of 85 NOQC projects (exactly half of all respondents) included an element of workforce development. By workforce development we do not necessarily mean the provision of training. Playworkers’ skills and capacity can be improved through other means, including workshops, observation, job swaps, access to new equipment, etc.

4.33 Table 4-5 shows the range of activity supported within this strand of the programme.

Table 4-5 – In what ways does your project support workforce development

Number of respondents

Proportion of respondents (%) It enhances the skills of existing childcare workers 69 81%

It funds training 37 44%

It helps increase the number of childcare workers 30 35%

It funds salaries and/or administration costs 28 33%

It funds equipment/facilities that will benefit workforce development 23 27%

Other (please describe) 8 9%

Number of respondents = 85 (respondents could select more than one option)

4.34 Workforce development does, of course, include the direct provision of training. Respondents were asked to identify the type of training delivered, and the number of people trained, as set out in Table 4 -6.

Table 4 -6 – Training outputs

Type of training No. projects delivering No. people trained

(Child protection 13 965+)

Disability – specialist training 18 919+

Other 16 761+

Play / outdoor play 10 528+

Health & safety / first aid / food hygiene 17 442+

Accredited training 12 316+

Disability awareness / inclusion 7 233+

Behaviour management 6 221+

Arts / creative 6 206+

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Type of training No. projects delivering No. people trained

Pre-registration training (induction) 3 186+

TOTAL 4,777+

Number of respondents = 64

4.35 As can be seen in Table 4 -6, in some cases a very small number of projects are delivering a significant number of training outcomes.

4.36 The most striking example is in the area of child protection, where survey findings show that thirteen projects have trained almost one thousand people: indeed, one of those projects delivered training and awareness raising on child protection to a total of 600 people. The project managed to reach this significant number of people as a result of working in partnership, through a consortium of voluntary sector delivery organisations in the Highlands. We would question the extent to which this training is truly additional, as child protection is a mandatory requirement for childcare providers and should not strictly be receiving funding from the Big Lottery Fund to do this.

4.37 Further consultation with BIG reveals that, in fact, the project in the Highlands was the only NOQC project that funded child protection: BIG holds no record of any other project delivering this mandatory training. We infer that the increasing professionalisation of the childcare workforce, supported by a number of different funding streams, has led to confusion on the part of providers about which funder supported which training activity. This is compounded by the turnover of staff within childcare organisations, leading to knowledge of each project’s history being lost when staff leave or move on. Many survey respondents may simply have forgotten which element of their project was funded by NOQC.

4.38 To gain a more accurate impression of the additional training outcomes funded by NOQC we should remove this mandatory training from our calculations, leaving a total of at least 3,812 training outputs from the 65% of projects who completed the survey. When this is aggregated to programme level, the total training outputs from NOQC is around 5,700 – still a very significant number.

4.39 An interesting finding from this part of the survey is the large number of people receiving training in play and/or outdoor play. We have been unable to unravel why this is inconsistent with our findings from the Outdoor Play priority (Table 4-3), which indicated only a small number of projects delivering such activity.

4.40 The figures in Table 4 -6 give only an indication of the minimum number of people trained. Many survey respondents indicated that they had provided training in one of these areas, but were unable to state with certainty how many people received the training. The actual figures will therefore be significantly higher. We can state with confidence that a minimum of 5,700 training outputs have been delivered as a result of NOQC that would not otherwise have happened.

Case study: ArtsPlay Hebrides. The project is targeted at pre-school children and aims to stimulate their creative abilities from an early age by involving them in workshop activities with experienced local artists. With children and artists working together in a play situation within the arts rather than within formal learning, the project aims to empower children

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with new experiences, confidence and to unlock their creativity at an early age. Childcare playworkers also benefit from collaborating with the artists: the idea is that they will be empowered with new skills and techniques that they can later try for themselves in the playgroups. The benefits of the project to childcare workers include: introduction to new approaches to arts delivery; confidence building in delivering workshops in their own environment; increased knowledge and valuing of arts in the sector. Examples of feedback from childcare workers include the

following: “We are carrying on with the activity after the workshop. The children are in the process of decorating and completing what they made in the workshop. All our children thoroughly enjoyed the messy activities with the string batter and the balloons. We thought it was a very good art session and we picked up some good ideas.” […] “We thoroughly enjoyed the session. The workshop leader was well motivated and very

enthusiastic, which set the tone for the day. It was very easy for us – we didn’t need any resources, just an empty hall and some children! It gave us different ideas to work on with the children.” […] “It is always good for us to get new ideas for craft activities. The children didn’t really understand at first what it was all about, but they got stuck in once the glue and materials were put in front of them. Praise from us as they went along encouraged them to be more adventurous and creative.”

4.41 Several of our case studies, including that highlighted above, underline the importance of building the confidence of childcare workers to deliver play and learning activities without the aid of a specialist. In the ArtsPlay project, as in the Castle Nursery Music project, NOQC funding was used initially to employ specialist arts workers to deliver arts based activities to children. In both projects, however, activities are continuing beyond the lifetime of NOQC because playworkers themselves are now able to deliver the same activities. Workforce development does not revolve solely around qualifications: staff can also learn through observation. These two projects are good examples of how childcare workers have developed their confidence and capacity to deliver imaginative activities that they would not otherwise have considered offering. Playworkers in these projects have no doubt that the quality of provision they offer has been enhanced as a result of NOQC.

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5: Increasing access to childcare for