Professor John Robertson OBA

The Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare: Phase 6 report, published today is a very sober, careful, modest piece of work giving no quick sign of success or failure.

I’ve had to read in carefully to extract the good news.

What is it all about?

This report outlines findings from the 6th phase of the Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare (SSELC), focusing on 3-year-olds who were accessing up to 1140 hours of funded ELC. The SSELC forms a major part of the strategy for the evaluation of the expansion of funded ELC in Scotland

The good news:

Parental engagement with their child’s ELC setting was high, with most parents having visited their child’s room at the setting (95% for Eligible 2s and 90% for Comparator 3s) or talked to a member of staff about their child’s progress (97% and 94%, respectively).

Up to 97% engagement by parents – great!

The advantages most commonly cited by parents of having a child in ELC were that it had given their child opportunities to interact and socialise with other children (94% for Eligible 2s at age three and 97% for Comparator 3s) and improved their child’s independence and confidence (92% for Eligible 2s and 89% for Comparator 3s). Comparator 3s’ parents were most likely to report that having their child in ELC had enabled them to work, study or train (74% compared with 60% of Eligible 2s’ parents). Those living in the most deprived areas were most likely to report that being in ELC had improved their child’s behaviour (72% for Eligible 2s living in deprived areas, compared with 60% in other areas; and 64% for Comparator 3s in deprived areas, compared with 48% in other areas).

Up to 97% getting opportunities to interact and socialise? 74% able to work, study, train? Greater benefits for those in deprived areas?

Even better!

There was a decline in parents who rated their health as bad or very bad (from 11% at Phase 4 to 3% at Phase 6).

That’s a very big improvement, 72%!

There’s more in the report worthy of mention but I’ll need to leave that to you as there are other topics I want to report.

Source: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-study-early-learning-childcare-phase-6/pages/2/