I'm glad that I was able to get to you in person,raspyllwadau. I'm pleased that everyone's present to turn their mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting. The first item of business is to take evidence in the draft freedom of information Scotland Act 2002, of records time for compliance regulations 2016. I welcome to the meeting Jo Fitzpatrick, minister of parliamentary business, then Rydw i'n mynd i ddefnyddioír cyfleidiau, Rheolwyr, Fyltwyr munud yn y gallu llwydon. Felly lleolwyr yn ran i'n cael ei myd i ddefnyddioír cyflote a'r ddechrau a ddyn nhw yn ei dda chi. Rydw i'n ddweud sylwedd eich ymddydd cael eu gwaith diwrnod o anghofu eich bodai vulgu o'r cael ei ddefnyddioír cyflote a'r duolwyr i fod yn cael eu gwaith o'i gael y rhaid o'r dowun oes bethau o ran gwellion o'r hiwn agdach. that has been raised on the last-year consultation on extending coverage of freedom of information of Scotland Act 2002. During the consultation process, the grant aided independence special schools proposed, for inclusion in the scope of the FOI, to highlight the practical difficulties in responding to requests within the standard 20 working days due to school holidays. The act allows for variation in response timescales in particular circumstances, and I am very esgolol ar y siganc Dyma yn trefadol â Robert Galaxy. Felly, gennym ar gyfl忍ol blaen Republic na bryd o'r beth wishes ym Gwylfaenidol, ac mae'r gwleidol yn ddatblyg â'r ddawn. Gąbesbrydau o'i ddweudol wedi'u ddweud Phantom a'r FFRO yn rhanol i'r tyfnod gyda'r ddatblygai hefyd, ac mae'r dweud o bethwsgol gennym o'r gwreinidol a'r dweud o'r dweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, ac yn gweithio'r dweud to FY requests during holiday periods. There is precedent for those proposals in other legislations such as the pupil's educational records Scotland regulations 2003, which requires the release of information within timescales calculated by school days rather than by working days. I welcome the broad support for those proposals, including from Capability Scotland, the Royal Blind School, the Capital Education and Care Centre and also from the Scottish Information Commissioner. In particular, I note the commissioner's observations that the regulations are, in practice, a backstop for the schools involved. However, I also note the concerns expressed in some responses, including that of the campaign for freedom of information in Scotland, that the proposed regulations creates a two-tier system. The campaign emphasised the need for a process of qualification and independent verification for agreeing when schools are recognised as being closed, and that such a process could be overseen by the Scottish Information Commissioner. That is, in effect, what will happen, and I hope that that allays the concerns of the campaign and of others. It is the independent Scottish Information Commissioner who oversees and enforces Scotland's freedom of information laws. In addition, in consultation with the commissioner, I proposed to revise the section 60 code of practice to emphasise the statutory duty to respond to requests promptly, and that, if staff, with their appropriate skills, knowledge and authority are available, it would be good practice to respond to any request, even if these regulations apply. I believe that the proposed regulations in tandem with the revision strengthening the code of practice are sensible and take into account the specific circumstances of these schools, now subject to freedom of information law. As with the order extending coverage to the regulations, it is our intention to review the impact later this year. The review will help to inform our on-going aim of keeping Scotland's freedom of information legislation effective and fit for purpose, and I hope that the committee will support the motion when it comes. Thank you very much, Liz. Liz, you have a question for me. This is a point of clarification, minister. Obviously, it is a pragmatic problem that has arisen. Has it come about because there is a substantial increase in the number of FOI requests to that type of schools? Is that one of the— No, this is a new coverage. So, coverage FOI was extended to include these schools in the orders that we placed last year, and it came into effect in September of this year. So, this is about extending coverage to extend the rights of freedom of information, to cover the schools here. So, prior to the changes that we brought forward, those schools were not covered. It is a pragmatic exercise to accept that, in extending the coverage to include those schools, there are particular and very specific difficulties in complying with the 20 days during school holidays. Okay, thank you for that. Secondly, you mentioned a possibility of a two-tier system. You do not foresee any challenge to that. No, I think that this is very specific circumstances for these very specific institutions. They are generally very small institutions, which do actually close down in the main school holidays. We have based the definition on already—in use, as I said, there is already a definition of what a school day is. I cannot think of any other organisation that is the same as those schools. We have freedom of information covers a whole host of organisations, and I cannot see any other organisation that we currently cover which could claim the same exemption. It is a very specific point that we are having to address. Thank you for that. Seeing it from other schools' perspectives, they closed down too during holidays, and that is where I had a slight concern over a legal challenge, because it was seen as different rules for one. The big difference between these schools and local authority schools is that the local authority schools are not the responsible body. It is the local authority that is the responsible body, and that is the big difference. With these schools, it will be the royal blind school that will be the responsible body, for instance, and if there is nobody there, I think that that would be a particular difficulty. You say that it is a pragmatic response to a problem, but you have confirmed that we do not know whether the problem exists yet or not? It was something that came up in the consultation. The schools that we were proposing to extend coverage to raised the issue of how they could respond in the classic idea of 20 working days when they were in fact closed for school holidays. I must make the point again that these schools are different from local authority schools, in that they are generally very small institutions that are closed. Clearly, the code that we have added in, which I hope you all received a copy of the draft wording of that, which I thought might be helpful, makes it clear that, if there are people in the school, it should be responded to. That regulation does not remove the requirement for all public authorities to respond promptly. I note that the children and young people's commissioners opposed to that proposal. The children and young people commissioners made some comments, which I think that we have taken on board in the code. I think that the point that I would make is that this is about extending coverage to the schools prior to the change in FYI. Those schools were not covered, so they only started being covered this September. There is a difficulty. First of all, you are identifying a solution to a problem that we have no evidence of. It is going to be a major problem for schools. They have said that they think that it might be a problem. Equally, if you said that there is a problem for schools because schools closed during the summer, the logic of that position would apply to all freedom of information requests around schools. While the local authority is working and functioning, the evidence that you would need to get for a specific FYI around what has happened in a particular school would have to come from the school, which in itself might not be in a position to provide that information. I wonder if you had considered the other option, which was to say that it should be 20 days, but you would allow the information commissioner to be able to look at the guidance on the reasons why they could not comply within the 20 days and recognise that we were actually closed over the summer, so that was a problem. Would that have addressed perhaps the problem that people perceive that there is a dilution of the Freedom of Information Act for a very specific group, while, in fact, if there is a big problem, it should be recognised for schools right across the board, rather than specifically for those in the independent sector? I think that we need to go back to the point that the responsible body, that there is a major difference here, the responsible body in local authorities is the local authority who generally have, we all have, FYI units who manage their casework. The 20 days still stands, so that is still there, so it is 20 working days. The terminology of what a school day is, is already laid out in legislation, it is already understood in the law, so I think that there is a big difference there in terms of the 20 days. It still applies. Clearly, if the school is not open, then there is that challenge. I guess that the code also makes it clear that, if there are staff who are capable of answering the FOI, it might be that some of the schools might have somebody in for a period of time, then the regulations should not apply and it would be then for the information commissioner to police that. Given the fact that you are saying that some of the schools may be open, some people might have somebody, some of the schools will have a broader board that would be able to access information, would it not be more logical to start the other way round to say, how do you produce procedures that can be flexible, given the nature of these schools, as opposed to shifting immediately to a pragmatic solution that exempts one part of the education system but does not recognise the challenges elsewhere? Nobody is being exempted here, so if the school is open, then the exemption does not start counting, so it is a working day as normal. If the school is open, it is a working day as normal. I think that what we have done is something that takes account of the facts, so it is not just about that this is a perceived problem. If the schools are closed for 40 days, I think that we have looked at them, the average might be 30 days around the summer of the longest period. It would be very difficult for them to respond within 20 days if they are actually the chances are that they would not even open the FOI letter that would not necessarily be seen. That is something that came up in the consultation as we were proposing to extend FOI. Remember, I think that this is about extending FOI to cover the schools that previously were not covered. When we brought forward the order to do that, I thought that it was correct that parents and other interested parties had the right to that same FOI coverage elsewhere. In doing so, clearly, as the responsible Government, we consult about how that should be taken forward. I was pleased that organisations such as Capability Scotland, the Royal Blind School and others have said that this address is a problem that they identified. The other point is that we have said that we will look at the whole aspect of this a year on and confirm that it is working as we expect. Our experience of other extension of FOI has been that it has not ended up being as onerous as people had at first been concerned about. We extended to cover leisure trusts, for instance. There were concerns that this would be a real challenge for those organisations. However, in practice, working in partnership with the Information Commissioner to make sure that those organisations had the skills and were prepared in reality was not such a onerous extension of FOI. This is about extending FOI, and that is what this is about. Mr FitzPatrick, you have made much of and rightly of the local authority being the responsible body, but the Government proposed to change the law in respect of education to make schools the responsible body. Are there any implications of that change? Right now, obviously, I will have to deal with what is there just now. I do not see any implications that we have changed the local authorities being the responsible bodies. Will there be some assessment of that when the law is changed? One of the things that I hope colleagues will have seen is that, over the past few years, we have been working very hard to make sure that our freedom of information laws keep up to date. I think that that is absolutely appropriate that we should do that. My starting point is about how we can make sure that people who require information can access that information in as easy and understandable a way forward. Maybe I could put it the other way around. Will the committee have the assurance that, if that law change takes place, the freedom of information implications for schools will be considered carefully at the time that the committee is considering that legislation next year? Clearly, if there was a change to who responsible bodies were in any aspect, then we would need to look at how that implies on people's rights, and it is something that the information commissioner has raised as well. Okay, thanks very much, minister. Can I just ask that if there are any changes, and if you add the review after a year, you will be making sure that the committee is fully informed of it? Yeah, I think that it is reasonable that we should keep the committee informed of the outcome of our review. Okay, thanks very much. We will then move on to item 2 unless Andy has got any further questions. Which is the formal debate on motion S5M-1751 in the name of the minister. I remind everyone that officials are not permitted to contribute to the formal debates, and I ask the minister to move the motion. Formally moved. Thank you very much. Does Andy have any contribution to make? No. I will then put the question to the committee that motion S5M-01751 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Thank you. The committee must report to Parliament on this instrument. Are members content for me as convener to sign off our report? Thank you. We then move on to agenda item 3. The next item on the agenda is to consider two negative instruments as noted on the agenda. These are negative instruments, as I said, and will come into force unless Parliament agrees to a motion to annul it. No motion to annul has been lodged. Do members have any comments on the children's service planning specified date? Scotland Order 2016. Do members have any comments on the education student loan Scotland amendment? Just to note that there was quite significant correspondence from the Delegated Powers Committee who seemed to be quite concerned about this issue, about whether this would actually address the problem. I don't know whether it is something we want to do something about now, but I think that they did right, as in some detail, about their concerns. I wonder if there has been any advice taken about the implications of what they are saying. First of all, there was no quality impact assessment, and they still do not think that raising age to 60 will address the problem that is identified or being discriminated at 55. I believe that 60 is the standard age across the UK. We can consider this again at the meeting on 26 October if anybody feels that it is necessary to do so. Yes or no? Would you like us to write to the Scottish Government and consider the responses of that meeting? I am just generally interested in the fact that the other committee takes much time to correspond with them, but some of them clearly thought that it was quite serious. I wonder whether it would just be for the record anyway to get a response to what they are saying. I have personally no problems with this, but it does say in the Delegated Powers Committee that the committee has outstanding concerns about the basis for the Scottish Government's decisions, so I think that it would be worth just probing a little bit further. We will write to the Scottish Government and we will ask them for their view on it. Thank you very much. We will then move on to item 4, the overview of early years. At this stage, could I ask the panel to once things have changed? That was clever. Good morning. I would like to welcome to the committee on this business in early years, the panel consisting of Councillor Stephanie Primrose, Claire Shofield, director of membership, policy and communications, National Day and Nursery Association, Maggie Simpson, chief executive of Scottish Mild, the Child Minding Association, and of course, Councillor Primrose is the education children and young people spokesperson from COSLA. We are going to go straight to questions and I will start the questions by asking yourself, Councillor Primrose, about the figures that came out from the Scottish Government about the local authority spending and the amount of money that they are saying was allocated, the amount of money that they are saying that was spent on the children and young people in the early years. I know that COSLA made some comments saying that this is a sort of broad brush approach. Do COSLA monitor the spending at local authorities on the early years and if they do, do they have figures that would suggest otherwise from what the Government does? The issue about LFR really came to our attention a couple of months ago and at that point our team moved in to try and find out just exactly what was going on here. We do have concerns about the data that was used. I put my hand up here, I am not an expert on LFRs by any means, but we felt that one particular LFR was not representative of the overall expenditure coming from local authorities. We have at least three LFRs that would look to account for the expenditure. Even the six local authorities that were identified as having the largest underspend, if you like, have all come back and said that the data that was collected was not sufficient to give an overall picture of what exactly was going on. The feeling is that, if the money is there, it is accounted for and it will be spent. I am going back to my own authority, and I am very much aware of the fact that I am here on COSLA business. We have a significant amount of capital builds going on, and I am sure that every local authority is the same. We have designs in the planning stage, we have designs in the design stage, so we are not going to be able to spend that money until we have actually got boots on the ground, if you like. We are absolutely confident that the money that we have been given will be spent wisely. My own local authority will actually spend more than it has on our early years. I go back to the question. If COSLA is saying that this is not an accurate picture of what they are spending, how do COSLA monitor that? I do COSLA monitor that because I do not see how they can say that it is not accurate if they have not done any work to prove that it is accurate. It certainly has been work done up to date within this particular context of the LFR, so that has been monitored and it will continue to be monitored to ensure that we can actually account for the LFR. I am from COSLA that will be refuting these figures. Yes, absolutely. I do want to say one thing. COSLA is very supportive of the work that has been done in the early years. I certainly said to the minister that I do not want to dwell on the LFR issue. I certainly think that there is a very positive area and COSLA engages very, very well with the Scottish Government on this. We really want to just move ahead and move into the next stage of delivering the live in 140 hours. We can surely understand the concerns of parents who are looking for places to see that in my local authority, for example, there is a considerable underspin, and they would need a clear explanation, and surely it is incumbent on either the local authority or COSLA to have that explanation out there so that the parents are not concerned that there is a way to put that out. I certainly put the press statement out more as a way of almost parking that to look forward. I will look forward and look back, but we will put out a statement on our position if you would see reassurance on that. We can certainly do that. I would like to come on to another area on the educational benefit of 30 hours compared to 16 hours. Does anybody like to comment? Yes, thank you. I think that this is a bit of the problem. There is certainly clear evidence to show that children really do benefit from high quality early learning and childcare. However, the quantity, the amount that they benefit is not really—there is no evidence to show that actually by the time they have been there for, say, 1140 hours that they would actually benefit twice as much as they would do if they are not. I suppose, from our point of view, it is very much about the balance of the day. You have very young children. You are not really talking about a—it is not like going to school where you are going to be learning from one end to the other. There are lots of different skills that we want those children to acquire. That really depends then on the pace of the day. Making sure, as I say, that children actually can get out and about just as much as the skills that they are going to be learning while they are with a particular practitioner. I support that. I think that it comes back to the quality issue. With the expansion to 1140, we absolutely have to make sure that we have the right level of quality. I think that the academic experts on this would say that if you expand and it is not good enough quality, you will have a problem in terms of the benefit of children becoming a disbenefit. We need to make sure that we get the investment and the quality. The workforce is absolutely critical to that. Before I pass on to my colleagues, I have a question for the councillor. I just want to add to that as well. We are very supportive of the 1140 hours that nobody here would ever underestimate the necessity to have early interventions as early as possible, but we do have to build up to that. We have a significant amount of work to do. I would like to pick up the points that Claire made. We absolutely must start moving on the workforce issues. I saw a statistic—in fact, I think that it was the minister who told me this—a look at 18,000 people. We absolutely must get into planning for this workforce. I have raised that with the minister, so I think that that is absolutely critical. Of course, we need high quality. Those are our young people. I would absolutely agree with that, but we do need to get a move on with that now. I wonder whether there is any work being done on looking at how it is one thing to provide a nursery place. On the one hand, it is about childcare to support the families to go to work on it. On the other hand, it is about education and supporting our young people to learn as early as possible. Has there been work being done on the importance of closing the attainment gap at that very early stage? What are the implications for that in the way in which you would then deliver the support that is there? Certainly, if you look at some of the research that has been done through GAS, you will find some very significant information there that really points to the importance of the care and support theme that the practitioners are inspected against. What they were saying was that the only thing that was really making a significant difference to children's literacy by the time they started school was the quality of care and support. There are various themes that practitioners are inspected against, but that care and support theme sounds terribly obvious when you think about the needs of very young children, which is making sure that their communication skills are good, that their ability to interact with both their peers and other people is really good. You will not be surprised to hear that child binding is top of the list in terms of the way that they grade on that care and support theme because they have the smaller ratios that they can work. Where you have the community child binding services that are very much concentrating on early intervention, the results from that, both from their inspection and, as I say, backed up by three GAS, shows that that care and support theme is critical. I suppose that the question that I am asking is if two children arrive in school, one in nursery, one is more disadvantaged than the other, and that will reflect in their literacy and numeracy, should within the system be resources directed specifically towards closing the attainment gap. That is that disadvantaged children will benefit more at age three from a nursery education in a child from a less disadvantaged background. Do you accept that? It is back to high quality. As Maggie said, the quality of those adult child interactions is about having good ratios with skilled practitioners because communication skills are absolutely fundamental. There is definitely an argument to say that we need to ensure more investment around the more disadvantaged children so that we can give them the better quality and the better level of input that will help to narrow that gap. Does that mean that in disadvantaged areas, for example, you would expect—I cannot ask a cause like that—that there would be a direction of resources and more resources to childcare centres in disadvantaged areas than elsewhere? I imagine that some of that will be picked up with the attainment challenge funds. A lot of our early years of service are within the context of primary schools, so I imagine that there will be co-work there as well. I think that points have already been made about young people and that the quality of care is absolutely pivotal for this. You know, as well as I do, that the earlier we can get interventions in, the more successful they are. Local authorities do that. That is something that we work on. We try to put as much money as we possibly can into disadvantaged areas. Like the Scottish Government and local government, we have a very great desire to work very closely with the Scottish Government and really nail this attainment gap. In order to do that, we need to start as early as we can. I know as well that we are talking about two to three and four-year-olds, but we also have to have the context too, that even a bi-two-year-old, we need to have interventions put in place even before that, so we need to have health visitors again. We need to make sure that we have the recruitment levels right there. Yes, I think that local authorities do put in a significant amount of money into that area. The new Education Scotland act gives a specific responsibility in terms of school functions to address socioeconomic disadvantage, and therefore that is critical importance in early years. Do you have evidence, or could you provide us some evidence, of the kinds of things that have been done in early years to address the attainment gap, as opposed to the generalised need of all children at the age of two and three years of age? Absolutely. We can do that without any issue. I do not want to go on about my own authority, but in my own authority, we have family centres in some of our most deprived areas, so children from as young as six weeks can access it not so much then, but their parents can access that. There is support for the child, but there is also support for the parents as well. It is certainly my own local authority. I think that we have six or seven of those, so yes, we can certainly provide more detail on that. My last point then is, have you done any work on testing? If we assume that 1100 hours is a great thing, is it better than, in terms of outcomes, that you might have a lesser generalised overall provision, but you could redirect resources? Has there been any work done in terms of testing the ideas of the different options? If we simply say, well, that's a given, it's going to be 1100 hours, and we will then make spending priorities around the back of that. I was going to say ironically that it is that ability to look across the whole of early learning and childcare, rather than the specifics of the 1140 hours. Certainly, the investment that has gone on in many local authorities in their community child minding services, there is evidence there to show that that does improve and raise the attainment of those children. The evidence is there independently through research that we commissioned through Dr Christine Steven at Stirling University. That shows you, as I say, that if the conditions are right, those children will thrive and you can certainly assist them with that transition, both into more group care or then on into school at a later date. It's how that actually then joins up, so that rather than thinking of the early intervention for specific children aside from the 1140 hours, that that's seen as one service, and in many areas that's exactly what's happening. I think that's what we need to see happening across more local authority areas, because at the moment many of them are not using their child minding services in that way. Can I just come in as well? I've just been advised that pilots are taking place within local authorities to look at different models, and I think about that as well. We have that going on in my authority too. We have one early years establishment that's opening up at eight and closing at six and things like that, so there are pilots going on at the moment. Again, we can furnish you with more information about that after this. I wonder if I could ask a question of Claire Schofield. We've had substantial feedback from parents regarding the attainment gap that, when it comes to nursery provision, some children are receiving two hours of that provision, some children are getting 18 months and another set of children are getting 15 months, and therefore there's a bit of an equity in the system. Is that a genuine concern for you and what do you think providers are saying about that? As we move to 1140, there are a number of different challenges, and obviously the number of hours and the flexibility are a challenge. If you add into that and the question about the birthday discrimination issues, it's been described as to how long you're going to get, that's yet another challenge to meet. We need to take a phased approach in terms of how many different things can you address at once and at what timescale would you do it. For us, the fact that children would be increasingly having more of their hours in a whole range of different settings, that quality, that investment needs to be everywhere. If we talk about disadvantaged two-year-olds and what we want to see in terms of the quality provision for them, we want that to be happening in the private sector as well as in local authority settings, as well as in childminding. I think the overriding concern for us is that we're going to see a move of the workforce from the private sector into the local authority, and if we don't do something to support that or to stop that and support workforce quality everywhere, then there will be a real risk there. So, yes, ideally we'd like to see everybody getting the same amount of provision before they get to school, but I think we also need to think how many different issues can you tackle at any one time, and so thinking about the priority on quality and the importance of narrowing gaps, I would say it's one that is important. We do get feedback about it. People do feel concerned that they're offering a different level of provision to different children based on their birthday. However, I think it's one that would be a better looked at at a later stage rather than the first priority. Thank you for that. Just to pick up on the points and also a point that was raised by Maggie Simpson where you have to look at this in the round that there is a holistic approach for early years, one of the things that interests me last week was the Scottish Government's thinking about consulting on something that was called the child account, which would be, as I understand it, an entitlement to a certain amount of money that would follow that child, and that would provide greater flexibility over the institutions that would provide the whole range of childcare from early ages right through before they go perhaps even beyond primary school. Is that something that is attractive, do you feel, for the parents that are trying to access childcare? Certainly from our perspective we have a lot of feedback that would be attractive for childcare providers and also for parents because it changes the starting point of how do you design a service to meet your individual needs, and it actually puts more power in the hands of the parent to design what best needs the needs of their children. Now I think with that we need to make sure if you had that move that you had rules about how and where that account could be used, so we're still directing it at high quality provision. It couldn't be a completely free account, but you'd have to tie conditions into it, but certainly in terms of driving the flexibility and choice elements of the strategy then I think that that would be a really positive step. As I understand it again, I think that the choice element is extremely important, that's what parents are asking for, but at the moment that choice is compromised by the fact that some of the provision is inflexible in some cases because of the nature of the way that public and private don't always work together. I just wondered if you felt that the possibility of a child account might get over some of that barrier, and of course that would get rid of the diversity of discrimination at the same time, but you see the way forward as having that greater flexibility for parents to decide. I feel that in that case you have the classic situation of a child that would have to move because they cannot access their hours in the private setting they're in, so that can create all sorts of difficulties for a family trying to balance the work of life of other children, which are quite obvious. Certainly that approach would really enable parents to design what they need to meet their needs and the needs of the child without being forced into transitions they don't want to make. Is that attractive to COSLA too, Councillor Primers? We are still prepared to look at things. At this point in time, COSLA does not have a position on that particular part of the child's account. I think that we are still trying to look at the blueprint and try to get the foundations built, but it's something that we would consider, but we don't ask to have a firm stance on it at the moment. I would need to go back to leaders on that. I certainly think that it's a problem at the moment for us because you've got round about a third of local authorities who aren't using their child-minding services at all. In terms of choice, that's not even there. Yet ironically, some of those local authorities are using their child-minding services for vulnerable children. You have that strange experience where the child is placed with the child-minder for the very point that they've got the small ratio, they've got the high-quality care and support, and then as soon as they get to that two-year-old, they're moved. That makes no sense to me, and I don't think it's the intention within the local authority that that should happen. At the moment, that is what's happening, and there clearly needs to be some changes to that if that attainment gap is going to be met. The recognition that child-minders are going to have to play a substantial role. Can I ask, but just on that, because I was going to bring that point up, from yourself, Councillor Primrose, why do you think that some councils are using child-minders as other councils do you want? I think a lot of it depends on locality to be honest with you. I think perhaps, and this is just, I thought really, that in rural areas there's probably more authorities using more local child-minders, but what I would like to say, as it is a point that Claire has made, is that we do need to build inflexibility. At the point that was made, local authorities cannot take on 1140 errors on their own, and we do need to build inflexibility. I see child-minders, private nurses and our own services being absolutely on a level playing field here. We can't live this by ourselves and, of course, we'd be bontubing in our partners. Okay, but something you seem to not completely agree with, Councillor Primrose? The places where they are being used are actually all over the place. It is places actually, like Aberdeen and Westlothian, are using their child-minding services as well. I have to say, I think a lot of that is because these areas haven't lost touch with their child-minding services. They've been using them for other services like their community child-minding. The local authority has a clear understanding about the quality of the service and how to make judgments about that. Whereas in some other local authority areas, where they don't have such a clear understanding, they're not really able to interpret the information that they're getting through things like the other, through the care inspectorate, about the quality of the service because they're not familiar with it. They've just been slower to move across and have that understanding. However, we are doing work with Care Inspectorate and Education Scotland and the local authority to try and start to pull that together, but I would like, not surprisingly, to see a bit of pace on it now. Thank you very much, convener. First of all, I just wanted to declare an interest as a councillor still in Aberdeen City Council. Obviously, I refer members to my register of interests. It was just a supplementary question to the first line of questioning and a question directly to Councillor Primrose. Naturally, there was concern looking at the potential for underspend, as the convener had highlighted. I know, speaking to other local authorities, they absolutely want to spend wisely and they don't feel like any underspend. There's a challenge on how COSLA monitors the spend, but since this is funding coming from the Scottish Government, in your view, what more do you think the Scottish Government could do working partnership with COSLA to ensure that resources are being allocated correctly? That's an interesting question. I think that we do need to come up with figures, and you have agreed that, that we will do that. Again, I spoke to me a bit about it. We do need to get the blueprint. I know that it's heading out to consultation next week while, so I think that I might take the point from Maggie Spell. We need to get a move on on that. We need to really up the pace of that. If the Scottish Government can get the blueprint and then we can get that done, that will assist COSLA—well, not just COSLA, but all our local authorities—to identify in where we need to get buildings up and things like that. I think that blueprint is nice. I think that COSLA is a wee bit concerned that we've got a lot of things going on at the moment, but we don't have the foundations there. I think that that would assist COSLA greatly in having the blueprint and telling us exactly what this 114 teres looks like. Coming from my causal point of view, this is about two, three and four-year-olds. I think as well that COSLA would like the Scottish Government to think about—I know that it's not an ideal situation—but a learner journey. For example, if you have a three-year-old in a child mind or an early years centre, a six-year-old will come at a different time. I think that we'd like to see it as a whole process about an actual learner's journey. If that would be at all possible, I don't have raised it, but I didn't get very far, I have to say. I hear a great deal about the need to have flexibility and choice for parents. Kerry, to you, what does that mean? Secondly, how well are we delivering that at this point? It's an interesting question, because there were real concerns about the patchwork. Would the child be dotted from one place to another? How would that affect the outcomes of that child? We've looked at that again, but I think there's a big difference between the choice. If you say, I'm going to map something together that goes to meet the needs of my child when we were talking about the pace of the day, it might be that part of the day was in a group setting and then part of the day was with the child binding service. That's what happens now. Then actually you've got something that is feasible and workable, that will actually work both for the family, but will absolutely work for the child too. It's making sure that that is the way around that it's done and the way that it's decided, rather than saying, well, you know, the needs of the working family, there wouldn't be disregarding the needs of their child, but there were real concerns about that. I don't see there's a problem with building that flexibility and choice in. You just need to kind of, as I say, look across the whole of early learning and childcare and not just those 1140 hours. You seem to be saying it's all about hours. Well, it's not all about hours. It's making sure, as I say, that you consider the needs of the child first and what that child is going to be enjoying and what that child is going to benefit from. That can have that mixture of provision. You do have to keep the needs of the child central. I think there are questions about the time of day, in terms of what time of day provision is happening. That is very much where partnership between different providers comes in. You have childminders working with centres and have really strong transitions. There's that relationship between the practitioners and they're sharing that information with each other and with parents. In terms of being driven totally by the needs of flexibility for work, clearly the policy has come the other way around. We are told by the minister that the priority is very much around quality outcomes and improving attainment. That's the first priority. We have to keep that in mind when services are designed. Potentially there is a limit on how flexible you should be and how many different transitions a child should have during the day, because you will potentially get a negative effect. There should be partnership in joint working, but there has to be a sensible approach on how far you would go and what provision is appropriate at what time of day to meet the needs of a child. I agree with what is being said. The point that Claire made in particular is that we need to bear in mind that this is about GERFEC. What is right for one child may not necessarily be right for another child. What is right in one local authority may not be the greatest idea in another local authority. It comes back to that idea about flexibility. There's some need for some sort of common standard here. I'm looking at the landscape of who's delivering.  How easy is it to make all these different pieces fit together to suit the needs of individual children? It's not. I suppose that's the problem in a sense at the moment. You're moving at a pace towards providing those 1140 hours. The difficulty, of course, is how do you then put that flexibility in with it at the same time? I would have to say that at the moment you have that type of provision. It's just not under the umbrella of the funded hours. You'll have lots of children who will be going to their child minder in the morning, who will then be taken to their nursery placement, the child minder will come and collect them, and the parent will collect them from the child minder. You've actually got that there. It's not within that blueprint of what the expectation is within the funded hours. I don't think there's a problem in terms of delivery. I think there's a problem in terms of how local authorities now look at that in terms of their planning process to put that all in there. So do you feel local authorities should be the ones that are driving less? Clearly somebody has to. It has to be the local authority. They're the people that will be commissioning those services. So we've got somebody now who's, as an early learning and childcare officer, who's going around talking to individual local authorities to actually give them a better understanding about the child binding services that they've got in their area, and actually how they can map those into the provision that they're actually looking to deliver. Just add to Satan's story in terms of it. It's already happening, but also the access to a level 40 may open up new demand from parents who aren't already putting together those sorts of packages because they're not paying for the services themselves. So new demand from parents who may be using informal care from friends and family but now actually would take the opportunity to move into using a child minder and a nursery or something like that. So yes, it is already happening, but we will have to see what the trials bring out and what the first initial stages of rollout are like, but I would say we could expect it to happen more, and so that creates more demand and, again, more need to make sure that all provision, wherever it is, is resourced to enable it to happen. I do want to come back to this resistance from some local authorities in using child minders. Again, there are a couple of questions around that. Is there a correlation between the local authorities who are not using child mind and services and those that have the underspend, first of all? I also have another question about the flexibility across the border of local authorities. For example, if we take my previous situation when I had young children living in Aberdeenshire, but actually working in Aberdeen city, is that going to be looked at where there may be arrangements between the flexibility from being in one local authority area as a constituent and council taxpayer, but requiring child minding services that are more in keeping with where you work? Has that been looked at at all? I actually do not have the answer to that one, whether it links the underspend to not using those services, but I can find out. I can do that sort of linking because we were commissioned certainly to produce that report on an ongoing basis about how child minding services are actually being used. I have not linked it to whether they are actually the ones with the underspend at the moment. As I say, the irony is that it is not even just about whether not being used for the funded hours, it is the fact that being used for community child minding services and not being used for the funded hours is probably more of a concern to me at the moment. It is not deliberate, in fact, from some of those local authorities. They have not had that discussion and said, no, I am not using my child minding services, they just have not put it into the framework yet. I think that that is part of the work that we have been commissioned to do, is to actually bring that to some of those local authorities to say, these are the services that are actually available, this is the quality of those services, this is how it can fit in. Apart from, there are not too many that are saying not yet or no not at all, they just have not got to that stage yet. I have to say, though, in the other side of that, that even those local authorities that are using their child minding services are not giving it an equal choice. So what they are doing, and I suppose that if I was sitting there balancing the budgets, I would maybe be doing much the same thing, which is that they are filling up their own places first. So it is only if there is not a vacancy in some places that they are saying, okay, there is an option here to use a child minding service. And I think those are the sorts of things, as I say, that need to change just as much as anything else, because otherwise, as I say, you really aren't going to be meeting the needs of those children as well as you might be able to. So it should be driven more by parental choice first of all? It is driven partly by parental choice, but very much about the needs of those children. So as I say, where you have got a placement already made with a community child minding service, specifically because that recommendation, in some cases, from the health visitor, has been that that child needs that small ratio, that mixture. In fact, I think some of the evidence is here in your SPICE review that actually tells you that those children really benefit not just from being with a small ratio, but also being with a mixed age group, being mixed with children of different capabilities so that they are not sitting there thinking, I am a disadvantaged child, but actually far from it, they are just a two-year-old in a setting that is perfectly capable of providing for their needs and integrating them well. I think that Claire mentioned that about those transitions into other services that happens really well where it works well, so that there is a good link between the child minder and the nursery so that they have a better understanding about what that child's needs are and move them on. Yes, that is a challenge. I suppose that my second question is really more for Stephanie Primrose about the cross-border arrangements between local authorities in this regard. There are actually cross-border instances of this, and I will certainly get those examples to you, but that does actually take place as we speak, so I do not have a precise local authority to do that, but I will get that to you. Yes, that is absolutely right. Where it works well, it is the usual old story. Where it works well, it works really well, and where it does not, there seems to be no logic to it at the moments, but that is easy for me to say. Okay. Thank you, Jolyon Daniel. I just have a supplementary on the points around flexibility. I think sitting here as a parent to preschool children, hearing that talk about flexibility, about making different elements or different sorts of childcare work together within a single day, is probably not the way most parents think about flexibility. You know, what they are thinking about flexibility is around their working day, and actually having a child move between providers in a single day is far from what they want to talk. They would want provision flexibly from a single provider, certainly within a single day, probably even throughout the week. Is that not the real challenge? I would probably just put that to you there. I mean, that model is what the private and third sector nursery model is, you know, providing full day service for a parent that works traditional hours. Now, I think, so, if that's a parental choice and that's where parents want to go, then that's a good option for them. But I think also, as we move to 1140, we will get more, and we're not a nine-to-five Monday to Friday world anymore, so they're parents who work all sorts of different hours, who will have other needs. I think the initiative certainly needs to look where that works, where parents work non-traditional hours and needs care at different times. Is that the case though? Surely, actually, as a working parent, what you need to know is that this is managed for you, so you need to know that you can drop that child off and that you can pick them up, but what happens in between is up to that range of providers to manage for you, so you'll drop off at your child binder. You don't need to worry about whether that child binder is going to get your child to nursery and bring them back again, because you've already made that arrangement with them. So it's not that they have to stay with the child binder all day long. From your point of view, as a working parent, you need to know that that's managed in the best interests of your time. I would challenge that. Could I ask both the committee and the panel to speak through the convener, because what happens is that we're getting a lot of different conversations going on at the same time? Daniel. I think that the reality of childcare is this, is that in a sense that the moment that a child is being looked at after outside the home context, that is disruption. I think that any working parent would recognise that, so that if you can minimise the number of changes within, certainly within a day, and I would say within a week, that is from just anecdotally, I think that's what parents are after. Yes, I recognise that that's what a lot of parents need to make it work, but I don't think, my sense is, I don't think that's the ideal far from it. The more any preschool child, sorry, I'll just finish on this point, is exhausted, frankly, by multiple things happening in the day. Who's exhausted, the parent of the child? The child. Well, I would argue that's not necessarily the case. If, as I say, you've got to work it round the right way, you've got to look at the needs of the child, and if that is that you put together two services that you're actually taking them to nursery, or you're taking them to childminder, nursery childminder, so long as that is actually working for the child, then actually that can work better, because then actually having one service that may not meet the needs of that child if that's a prolonged day, it depends how that's actually organised. So as a parent, what you need to know is that that's going to work for your child rather than it's one specific model. Ross, you've got a small supplementary. A small supplementary on the bag of Daniel's question. Out of interest, and just to throw it out there just to hear your own feedback, in evidence, since it's an evidence session, educationalists in the north-east are telling me that there's also a balance to be struck and to try and find ways where children aren't just in institutions, in nursery all the time, but even looking at things like stay and play, things where parents are able to interact and play with them, helps with identifying early signs of mental health, the rest of it, creative plays are a really beneficial thing. How do we try and get that sort of balance right as well? In terms of sort of what's within, we're back to that kind of, do we just chunk this into the 611, 1140 hours, or do we look at early learning and childcare? And I think you're absolutely right, is that those, you would always want to see good toddler groups, you'd always want to see stay and play sessions, and those types of provision happening alongside of. In terms of how you actually evidence the outcomes for children, what was sort of in the statutory guidance was having a look at registered services, because from your point of view, they're therefore, they're accountable, because you're either being inspected by Education Scotland or you're being inspected by the Care Inspectorate, so there's an outcome there that is actually evidence in a different way. Now that doesn't preclude those other services happening as well at all. What it does is it says, what you're looking at is all of those services happening within local authority areas and actually designed to a certain extent by community planning partnerships that will have a look at the sort of broader needs rather than just that specific part of the legislation within the Children and Young People Act. So I absolutely see a place for those, it's just in terms of the actual funded hours you're still looking at registered services, I think that the two are complementary. Thank you, Fulton, very, very, very well. Thanks, convener. It's a small supplementary on Daniel's point, it's a personal point of view. I would tend to agree with that, that I think that a child being in one place during the day is both better for the child and the parent, but again, I accept that's a personal opinion. But what I would say is the issue in the crux of the matter then, as we've already spoke about, not about where that place is and making sure that all parents and children have access to everything. The big thing coming out from me is that the different local authorities are saying that different services are available and that parents should be able to choose whether they use a nursery, a childminder or a combination of both, if that's what meets their needs, and it's sort of just come back to that. Sorry, maybe I'm then just sort of not communicating that well because I do think, I mean, if you look at a childminding service now and the way that that currently works, one of the real benefits that happens with that childminding service is that, yes, that's within their local community, and they're with a sort of mixture of age grade, but they also will use that local authority nursery service because that's where that child is going to, for particularly, meet with their peers, those children that they're going to go on to school with, and you wouldn't want to disrupt that. So as the parent, you might therefore choose to use that childminding service exclusively for the whole day because your concern is that the child is being chopped from one to the other. But that really isn't going to meet the needs of that child in terms of their ongoing need as they meet with their peer group and go on to school. So what's always worked well at the moment is not chopping and changing, but actually having putting together something that's really going to meet that child's needs using those variety of services. So you'll quite often find again that childminders will take that child to the local toddler group for exactly that same reason that they'll then be part of that community. So they're building out the whole community-based set of services that includes the local authority nursery, that may include other services as well.  So as I said, I don't want to throw the child from pillar to post. What you should be looking at is using those range of local services to build up something that matches around the needs of the child and also works for working families. A challenge, absolutely, but that's the challenge that's out there and I think we should go ahead and meet it. I'd like to move on to Richard. Clearly, the Government's policy in childcare is going to be transformational in one of the biggest policies that we face as a Parliament over the five-year parliamentary term. I think that Councillor Primrose mentioned that this may require an extra 18,000 people in the workforce, so this is a massive challenge. I was looking at our briefing papers and it says that the financial review that was published by the partner providers on 27 September for estimated around 80 per cent of practitioners and 50 per cent of supervisors in partner settings are paid less than the living wage. My first question is, how do we relate the pain conditions to attracting 18,000 extra people to the workforce over the next few years? If I could come in on that, convener. I absolutely set that point.  I think that the early years expansion, as I said, is a very, very positive thing. I've already raised the issue with 18,000 people. I'm very fortunate. I co-chair the development and the young workforce national advisory group with the Cabinet Secretary and we've already raised that. We need to have a serious look at this, and we need to look at how we present this as a career. I was speaking to the minister again, and he said, what are you going to do? I'm going to be a hairdresser and go into childcare. We need to reverse that. We need to make people realise that childcare is a very, very worth file and important profession to go into. We have a good bit of work to do there. We need to go on with it, as I've said. Paying conditions, I can only answer on behalf of my local authorities. Our paying conditions are in line with the Scottish living wage, so we pay £8.33 aner, which is slightly above the living wage within the providers, I believe, but, certainly, as employers, we do take that very seriously and say that we pay a slightly higher rate than that. It's a huge challenge. For the private and third sectors, as you've pointed out, that is where the biggest gap is in reaching the living wage. To get there, we need a workforce strategy hand-in-hand with 1140 hours. We need investment. I completely agree with Councillor Primeros. We need to make it much more of an aspirational career path that people see it as a profession they want to join. However, there has to be the reality to back it up. We need to make sure we get a better rate of pay outside of local authority centres so that people aspire to those roles and then can be developed and can stay in those roles. With 600 hours, we've already seen that loss of practitioners into local authority services. It just can't be sustained if we then move to 1140. It's a huge challenge. It needs investment and time is a concern because, as we've said, we need to get on with it, but it's only a very short time away to make that kind of change in the workforce. My member is, of course, self-employed. It becomes even muddier because it's not a sort of living wage aspect to it, but nevertheless, they are currently, and partly because they don't register with the SSC, they're having to do training workforce development in their own time at their own cost. If you're actually looking to make sure that those sort of quality issues are sustained as you use those people more in the future, then that type of thing has to be addressed. There has been some work now in terms of improving that learning pathway. As part of the workforce and quality group, it was making sure, as I say, that there was some much more sensible way that these people could actually progress to get those qualifications, to get the underpinning knowledge that builds on their skills and experience that they already have. I know there's no concern about the quality of the existing workforce, but if there was a big recruitment of child binding services in, you're going to have to make sure, as I say, that you get the right people, because it's a very challenging job. Not only are you providing that quality service to young children, but you've also got to be running your own business, you're going to be managing your terms of conditions, the whole bit that goes along with it, and we just need to make sure that we get the right people in, even if that takes longer. Sorry, I'll come back in. Just a couple of points I'd like to make on that. Local authorities have identified that. It's quite important to mention that local authorities do assist childminders, if you like. A lot of our CPG courses and things like that are open to childminders. Just another point about the workforce, I think we have a very good basis. If you look at how successful the STEM programme has been used, I think that local authorities and the Scottish Government have form on promoting different types of work, so I think that we definitely have the foundations there, but I agree with Clare that we do need to get on with this. What I'm trying to get my head round here is, are the right drivers at play that are leading the local authorities to take the right decisions over what kind of provision to make available in local areas. Clearly, there are a lot of variables out there. No doubt there are financial concerns, but there will be other Euro-urban concerns and so on and so forth. If there is a gap between what local authorities are paying their own staff compared to what they are negotiating with non-council providers, then clearly that is an issue that may raise some questions. According to the briefing that we have here, it says that there is considerable variation across the country from 92 per cent of registrations with local authority in West Lothian to 41 per cent in Murray, which happens to be the constituency that I represent. I thought to myself that, while Murray is quite a rural area, maybe there is a difference between West Lothian and Murray because of fruorality, then I thought that there is a lot more other areas in Scotland that are even more rural than Murray. I am trying to get my head round what leads local authorities to take decisions over the kind of provision to make in their locality. I would like to think that our decisions are led by what is right for the child. In my own local authority, we are trying to make sure that we have provision in every ward. As you know, early years do not have cash-in areas and we do not provide travel. I think that local authorities are trying to make sure that provision is where it is required. For example, I do not want to go into my own authority, but we are putting provision in rural areas. In one particular area, we are building significant additions to our early years provisions. I would like to think that local authorities are being driven by what is right for the child. As you have said, the financial constraints are a concern. I know that the budget statement will not be made until December, because the Westminster budget has not been agreed on. That is a concern.  That is the context that it is looked in. I do not think that it is looked on as great money savings and things like that. I think that there is a genuine concern that there is a genuine belief that it is a girffec in practice. I would like to think that that is my one local authority. That would be the case. I think that I asked the question at the last strategic forum that the minister chairs. Was that impact assessment that before services are opened up, what impact does that have on the existing services in the area? There has been that in some cases in some local authorities where brand new buildings have come up, which has been absolutely necessary, but the impact has been that that has put out of business some of the local child binding services because they are not being commissioned in that area. That is not the deliberate intention of the local authority. It is just, as I say at the moment, partly because of the pace of change, partly because of the lack of understanding that that is not necessarily happening as sensibly as it should. Rather than including in your workforce, you are not really doing that as well as could be. In the private section in our later survey, occupancy was at 77 per cent, so that suggests that you have got about a quarter of places potentially available. Given the level of expansion, we need to make sure that is used as well, because you are building on something that is already in place, rather than duplicating that. Very briefly, to say that there is no simple explanation that any of us are aware of as to why West Lothian is at 92 per cent at one end of the spectrum and then at the other end of the spectrum of Scotland, we have Murray in 41 per cent. I think that the trials will be very, very worthwhile. I believe that they have started, but I will stand corrected in that. When we get the results of the trials back, I think that we will be in a more informed position to be answered with some of those questions. With your indulgence, I think that a point that Claire made about the 77 per cent occupancy, we have got a bit of work to do with the vulnerable two-year-olds. I think that there is a concern among some parents and carers that because the vulnerable two-year-olds are linked to the DWP and benefits, I think that there is a suspicion there. That is something that I am picking up, that people worry that if their vulnerable two-year-old goes into child care, whether it is in a childcare set or whether it is in a child minders, they worry that their benefits might be affected if they all of a sudden take their child out. I think that we have got work to do there. I know that the former cabinet secretary has picked up on that and, again, because we have been working on that to try to identify what we can be doing to increase the uptake of the vulnerable two-year-olds. Maybe some information you can share with the committee on that, then. That would be helpful. Tavish. 18,000 people by any standards of imagination is a huge number of people. Where are they coming from? That is a very good point. We recently had a long discussion on that a couple of weeks ago. I think that we have to—I am going to say this word again—we have to have a blended workforce. Somebody said to me the other day that we need to have a B and Q style taking this, so you were not just looking at young girls, 16, 17, going to college, but we do need to perhaps take in people who have raised their own families and want to come back in and make sure that we have the flexibility for part-time work as well. I take the point that we need to make this a profession that young people and older people, women and returners to work, want to come into. It is 18,000, and I read a statistic that this particular growth in the workforce is probably the largest since the Second World War. That is an incredible statistic, if it is true and all that, but we do need to start targeting. We definitely do. We need to make sure that our colleges are up to speed in the courses or there as well, but I do think that we need to expand what women perhaps think of traditional, that young girls, 16, 17, go to college to be a childcareer. We do need to target women returners. We do need to target people who are perhaps retired. We need to target men. I know the minister that is very keen on that. When you talk about childcare, most people tend to think that it is ladies, and we do need to make sure that men can realise that just as men can teach. I know that there is a significant discrepancy about female and male teachers. I think that we need to again take that whole workforce issue. If I could go one step further, I think that we need to have a very serious review of the whole workforce. I do not think that we can see early years in a style. I think that we do have to look at workforce planning. With great respect, Stephanie, you have got four and a half years. You have actually got less than that. You have probably got three and a half years. By August of 2021, every parent in this room and every parent across Scotland is going to be expecting 1140 hours because that is what the Government says is going to happen. What I am interested in is how we are going to get there. Do you think the plans, I mean I take your point about the blueprint, but this is, as you said earlier, I am going to be a local authority by local authority assessment. Maybe I can ask Maggie in clear. Do you think local authorities get that? Are they with your organisation now saying here is this big 18,000 people target broken down by local authority area? How are we going to deliver this provision in four and a half years' time? I think everybody understands the scale of the challenge. I think it is putting things into practice. I think it would be going back to the local authorities have their own centres and they need to staff those. We have seen the movement. That is our member's biggest concern in terms of their workforce, how they retain and not just be a training ground for people to come in and move on. I think also the statistic we need to look at as well is that at the moment on average 23 per cent of partner provider income comes from local authority. Now, as that percentage increases, we do need to take the opportunity to make sure that it supports a living wage because again we need a campaign. We need to open it up and get all sorts of different people thinking about this as an exciting career with a whole huge opportunity around over learning and childcare. But we also need to get those people into all sorts of different provision and enable them to stay there. So funding rates need to support it and affordability for parents needs to support it. I'm concerned that as we get close to this, frankly political panic will set in because just the different places around the country will not be getting anywhere near being ready to deliver this. Do you think at that point local authorities quite understand that we will say we've just got to get this done through traditional local authorities and mechanisms, in other words local authority nurseries, and your parts of the system will get squeezed out of that? I would really hope not. I think there's a very clear message that this is everybody's needs to work together on this. We are working closely in a number of different forums whether it's on the workforce, whether it's on the 1140-hour strategic groups across all of us, and there's a common understanding that we need to do this together. Frankly, I think the challenge is just too big. One size doesn't fit all for families and children, so we wouldn't actually be doing them a service if we said, no, it's just going to be this model and that's it. Maybe can I get you Maggie just also to pick up a point about the richest point about the difference between rural and urban, 9% of a rural area? You're absolutely right, Claire. The local authority alone won't be able to do this, but are we doing enough in, I mean, how's it going to work in rural Scotland where the challenges I think are even greater than, say, Glasgow? Well, I suppose at the moment there's some obvious routes that would actually make life a lot easier because as I say, you know, the opening there to use your child-minding services provided there and as I say, 80% of them at the right quality that you could use them tomorrow. So Shetland, you've got 21-odd child-minders there that you could be using today. I do. And at the moment you're not using your child-minding services. So what you do, sorry, where you are but not for your funded hours. So, you know, there's an obvious route for that. There's only four child-minders in the whole of Scotland that are being used for three and four-year-olds. So there's an obvious route there. Now, that's not because, as I say, local authorities would be making specific decisions not to use them. It's just that it hasn't happened yet. And I think, as I say, in terms of the kind of easy messages to get across, that there's an existing workforce at the right quality being able to provide the right service. Now, they're not going to solve all the problems and they're not going to get you to 1140 hours, sorry. But they are going to make a significant difference. And at the moment I'm very reluctant to agree to do any recruitment of child-minding services because they need to have a viable business. Now, they can't, there's no point in me going out there recruiting new child-minding services only to find they're not going to be used because that would be a waste of everybody's time and expense. But I think those reassurances can be made quite quickly so that we have that plan over the next few years to actually get that in place. Can I ask one final question if I may, Covina, to each of you. What is the one thing now that would make a difference in terms of delivering 1140 hours? What's the one thing that needs to happen, whether it's managerial, whether it's workforce or what's the one driver that really would start to push this on? I suppose that's the easiest, isn't it? You've got 32,000 places potentially within child-minding services which you could be using. I don't want to set out panic bells and things like that. I think local authorities are actually certainly on their way. Again, we look at local authorities and we've got some like 12 new bills going up. So I don't think we've got a panic. I think we do need to address issues about attempts and conditions and certainly COSLA. We'll play our part in that. But I don't get sent as a panic. You have spoken to the minister a couple of weeks ago. I think the increases will come in tranches. I don't think all of a sudden we're going to have 600 hairs and then the next day have 1140. So I think workforce plan would be an issue. But I'm not panicked about it. I don't think that in 2020 we're going to have 1140 hairs not being delivered. I'd like to make some reassurances that local government are very much on to this. We've got new bills going up and we do need to push on the workforce. But I'm not panicked to not yet... I would say that the workforce and ensuring that partner providers are funded at a rate where they can employ the workforce to meet the need. Just to come back to one more point with that, it's interesting when you look at that between the 600 and 1140 hours and to come back to the point that you made way back, which is how do you actually prioritise? Because we have existing services that are really meeting the needs of those eligible children or the vulnerable children in particular. I think it's really important that we look more carefully at that. There are going to be sort of priorities made over the next few years. I would urge that those are the ones that should be prioritised. We've got a good mixture, either with your community child binding services or some of the other services that are around, to really meet the needs of those children first, rather than worrying too much about how we actually get to the end points for all of the children all of the time. Thanks very much, Liz. I'm still interested in this aspect of the flexibility because it is obviously a real concern. You've given some very interesting answers when questioned about some spare capacity that you think might be able to use. You mentioned Clive Schofield, which perhaps another 20 per cent plus is available on child binding. What do we have to do, as Tavis Scott has rightly asked, about the terms of delivery for those extra hours? How can we ensure that parents will use that spare capacity because it's obviously an important part of it? What can we do? I would say that the child care accountant exploring that is one way forward and allowing parents to decide where they're going to use their hours. We have providers who tell us that they can only offer so many places, so they're rationed in how many families they can offer a place to, and that limits it. Again, providers in a minority now that aren't in partnership, and if they are good enough quality, they should be brought into partnership so that capacity can be used. We need to get rid of that rationing. What's the best way of doing that? The child care account is one way, or to move to a presumption that a parent can go to a local authority and say, my child is here and I want my child to stay here, and the funding follows the child. The information certainly needs to go out to parents as well, because in a sense, we've trained parents into one way of thinking, and that's not easy to change. I feel for those parents that, having been told for years that their child gets to a certain age, they go to nursery, it's two and a half hours, three hours, ten minutes, and that's it.  To change that and suddenly say, a child-minding service might meet the needs of your child differently, it's going to be really tricky to do, and the information actually isn't out there for them at the moment. It is to a certain extent coming from Scottish Government, but not really. Most people hear about nursery and all the rest of it by word of mouth, don't you?  So there's a real information work to be done to actually help parents make some sensible decisions about what's really going to meet the needs of their child. Would you have a recommendation of how we can better disseminate that information? I think the trick is, please don't give a paper guide, parents guide to, you know, I would get bored after about two seconds. There are so many ways these days in terms of actually better advertising, you know, how, what sort of services are about, to give people a real understanding about that and actually start to encourage parents to use them. Parents are the best sellers of those types of pieces of information. We need to help them along. There are plenty of ways to do that. We would still agree with that. We feel that the £600 perhaps wasn't as widely publicised as it could be, and we would certainly agree that we do need to make sure that there's a public awareness campaign in whatever form that would take. Daniel. Just really want to come back on the point about funding levels and the living wage and especially to you, Claire. I mean, I think that private providers, I believe, are provided £3.59 per hour per child. If you've got a staffing ratio of four to one, it doesn't take a lot of arithmetic to work out. There's not a lot of change out of £8.25 an hour for a staff member, especially supervisors, and you need kind of spare capacity to deal with sickness. Do you think we need to have a fundamental rethinking of the funding formulas and I think baking in the living wage as a starting point rather than a nice tab if you get there with that? Absolutely. We'd be very keen to look at that, and we're very pleased to hear the minister say that he wanted to talk with us about how we look at the living wage and how we can make that a reality. I think as well as the funding rate from the local authority, we also need to think about the parents who are not yet eligible for £1140. You can't have one member of staff paid because they're working with a three-year-old, one rate and a different rate for the one working with a two-year-old. If it's a living wage, it should be across the whole nursery. What would the knock-on effect be for people buying privately their hours for their baby and their toddler before they're eligible? There's a whole issue about the funding, but there's also an issue for parents on what that move would do to affordability as well. I'm going to believe that your organisation states that private providers make an average loss of £1.88 per child. Is that correct? How do you arrive at that figure? That figure comes from providers. We ask providers what the shortfall is from the local authority rate on the hours that they provide. It's the difference between the rate that they're funded and the rate that they would be able to charge a parent for that same hour. That's an average of 70-odd per cent of members saying that they have a shortfall and that's the average of the ones that do have a shortfall. There was some work done as part of the financial review by Ipsosmory to go and have a look at child-binding services and their actual costs, which are somewhat more difficult to fine-tune down to something very specific, but we worked together with them. I think what they found was that the variation was bigger than the commonality, so it depended on how they actually costed their service. Ironically, you've got some childminders again who are being commissioned by the local authority for community child-binding, and then, as Claire says, you've got the same child from the same local authority, and the rate of pay is completely different. It's really up to the child-binding service to make some decisions about whether they're prepared to go ahead and continue to provide that type of service, or, in fact, do they make decisions about what's going to actually make their business viable. Interestingly, at the moment, they don't seem to be making those decisions quite as harshly as that. If they've got a child, particularly an eligible child that's coming in and they really make some impact through their community child-binding service, there is no way that they're going to actually stop that service and say, I'm sorry, but that's not enough money. I wouldn't want to see that sort of pattern continue. It needs to be realistic to the service that they're providing. Thank you very much, Daniel. Do you get any other questions? Following on from Tavis Scott's question about workforce, I would just like to tease a little bit more from Councillor Primrose and a couple of questions about workforce and staffing. In Aberdeen, I've been told that to meet the 2020 requirement, the looking at around about an additional 267 staff in total, so that's practitioners in total, that's including your early years, as well as Aberdeen has some teachers in the nursery too, so that's the total figure. At the moment, the council has a cohort of 40 supported places in training. That is just to meet the current statutory demand, not the 2020 demand. Therefore, can you give me an idea on the authorities that you represent, where they are with that, in terms of training, if you're aware, if they've raised any concerns with them about the people who are going through the process? And two, do you think there's the possibility for local authorities to commission places? I know that the Scottish Government is lasing with colleges and universities, but do you think that local authority could commission them themselves? I'll give you one example. It's authority. I don't represent, but I'll give it anyway. Aberdeen, with the issues surrounding the gas and oil, and I know that we don't maybe perhaps have the full picture of that, that people have been taken out of the gas and oil and actually trained, you know, I think it was on the report in Scotland. So that type of thing, re-skilling people is a good idea. What I've said before, and it's a thing that I am actually concerned about, I don't think we can see all this nice relation. I think we really do need to sit down and have a proper discussion about the workforce from start to finish. You know, 40 places, you know, when you're looking at the 270 odd, we do need to look at that. And again, you know, the Scottish Government has caused us very prepared to sit down and have any discussions on that. I think, too, that, you know, we can't just see early years in childcare. We need to talk about the whole from zero to 18, really, as well. But there are good examples, so that's the one I do know about in Aberdeen, but other areas are doing that as well. Modern apprentices, that's a very, very good way of bringing people in. But again, it maybe goes back to a point that I said to Mr Scott that, you know, that is young people. So we do need to actually look at how we bring in people from, you know, that are maybe not quite at school. And again, we need to make sure colleges are up to speed on that as well. Obviously, I appreciate that you're here representing COSLA. I know that the SLGP, obviously, who represent another number of local authorities, have been quite explicit saying that they have a number of concerns around about resources in particular, and felt that there wasn't going to be great partnership working or consultation from Scottish Government. So I'd raised a number of concerns and, I think, written to the minister. I mean, did you share the same concerns that the SLGP have raised? With all due respect, I wouldn't bear a position to comment on that. I don't actually know what the SLGP have said, so if you don't mind, I would not comment on that. In relation to authorities, and you do represent the capital side, as we know, again, just to refer to Aberdey, my own authority, we're looking at additional three and a half thousand places by 2020. Now that means capital investment, that means new provision, and they're looking at about 15 new nursery provisions in itself. Obviously, there's difficulties with access to land to ensure that you actually get the provisions in the right places. Now, obviously, I'm speaking from a very local perspective being represented in the North East of Scotland, but can you give me a good sense of the challenges, or if there are similar challenges in other parts of Scotland with the authorities that you represent? There certainly are similar challenges. We were discussing this again with the minister just a few weeks ago. I think that we need to start looking at other opportunities. For example, I think that it was the minister who said that if you have a building that's not being used, you don't necessarily need to go and build a new building, but what you can do is you can adapt that. I think that Mark says something about a church hall that if the church hall was there and not being used, then why would you not convert that if the building was appropriate? So I think we do need to look at different ways of actually providing that. Just to pick up a point you've said as well, the local authorities are spending phenomenal amounts to make sure that we have the provision there. I know as well that a lot of authorities have spent money in making sure we've got a specific provision for two-year-olds, because two-year-olds do require different things to four-year-olds. These are things that are going through local authorities on a daily basis. That specific point as well, I would urge real caution at the moment. The new build is great, and there's a lot of work being done on what the building can be like. Even adapting existing buildings is a great idea, but increasingly in some cases what we're seeing is the use of premises or even individual school classrooms that aren't appropriate. You've got wrong size furniture. Everything is straightforward because local authorities have been pressurised into having to move quickly. I know that's not what they would necessarily like. Equally in some of your more rural areas you've got that move, so you're getting four-year-olds put into primary one classes in order to make space for two-year-olds at the back. Now that's not what people would want to see, but that's what's happening in practice. I think as we move forward in that next four years, those sorts of things quite rightly, I'm sure, because they will be supporting that that doesn't happen. It's a real challenge in terms of builds and making sure that something appropriate is there. To make some assurances there, are local authorities doing it here to the Care Commission standards? I think that's a very good point, because in relation to making sure that it's absolutely right, especially in relation to new-build and, naturally, some of the concern that's being expressed to me is that it gets some of the new provision in place. Essentially it should have started last year, if it's to meet the deadline by 2020. Again, convener, I think that you'll find that things have started last year. Certainly we're actually starting to open buildings now. If my authority is doing that, can you expect that a lot of the other local authorities are doing that, too? Thank you. I know that one of the issues for local authority provision is that, just a bit higher than 40 per cent, oh sorry, a majority can't actually provide lunch, so some of the capital kind of expenditure is actually pretty fundamental. You can't just open a classroom to start providing lunch. Have you done an assessment of the capital requirement to actually put that provision in place so that, essentially, you need to be able to provide lunch to get past this three-hour, ten-minute block? Absolutely. Again, Caws is aware of that, and if you weren't precise figures, I can get that to you. I don't have them with me today, but that perhaps goes back to a point that I made as well about the LFRs, that the free school meals and things like that haven't been taken into account of the LFR, and I know that we started on that. I'll get figures back to you about the actual cost of that and the free school meal entitlements. Just given the capital constraint that councils find themselves under me, do you think that there's an adequate amount of capital there to actually make those investments and build those buildings? Well, coming from local authorities, there's never enough capital, but we'll make doing mend. Again, as we go on, I think that increasingly our new bills will incorporate that, so at the moment we are pushing hard on this, so I think that capital-wise, still, from our own local authority's point of view, we're going to be spending more than they actually get, so that's an issue, but then that's up for each local authority. Do you think that you'll be able to get local authorities to where the majority of provision can provide full-day provision? I think that that'll be within a context of, again, which is the word, flexibility. I think, again, that the trials that are coming through will actually show us what type of things are actually required by parents and children. Okay, no, I'm going to move on, no. Okay, well, then I will lighten. At the moment, you're right about the costs for lunch, because, as Councillor Primrose said, those costs are not yet being transferred across in terms of the private sectors, so I don't know, Claire, I'm sure you'll say that too, but certainly with the child binding services that hasn't actually been costed in yet, so at the moment they're providing that as part of what they're getting for their fee. Okay, thank you very much. Does anybody else have any further questions? In that case, can I thank everyone for attending today? It was a very useful event, and I thank you for your time, and that brings us to the conclusion of the public part of the meeting. Thank you very much.