Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare - Phase 6

This study helps to understand the impact that expanding funded early learning and childcare has had on both children’s and parents’ outcomes.

About the study

Since August 2021, the Scottish Government has increased the number of hours that children in Scotland can attend funded ‘Early Learning and Childcare’ from 600 to 1140 hours. This is the care and education that children receive before starting school. Funded early learning and childcare is available for all 3- and 4-year-olds and some 2-year-olds are also eligible. The Scottish Government are funding this study to help understand the impact that expanding funded early learning and childcare has had on both children’s and parents’ outcomes.

This research is being carried out by the Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen) who are an independent not-for-profit social research organisation. ScotCen carried out the earlier phases of this study in 2018 and 2019, prior to the expansion of funded early learning and childcare. These earlier findings can be found online on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/collections/early-learning-and-childcare-expansion-evaluation/

Why take part?

By taking part in this study, you are helping to provide the Scottish Government with a better understanding of the impact that increasing access to funded early learning and childcare has had on eligible children and their parents and families. It helps to understand how increased hours of early learning and childcare can impact children’s development and their parent’s ability to pursue more hours of work, training or study if they wish to.

Participating in the survey is voluntary. If you decide not to take part, it will not affect the relationship you and your child have with the nursery. We very much hope that you will decide to be involved. The success of the study depends upon the goodwill and co-operation of those asked to take part. The more people who do, the more useful the results will be, but the decision is entirely up to you. If you don’t want to take part, please let the nursery know and they will ask you to complete a slip confirming your wishes.

What’s involved?

You will be asked to complete a short questionnaire about your child, you, and your family. It should take around 15 to 20 minutes to complete. A staff member at your child’s nursery will give you this. As well as questions about your child, you will also be asked some questions about you and your home life, including things like your own health and mental wellbeing, any work you might do and how you feel about parenting. You can complete it at your child’s nursery or take it home. You’ll be given a freepost envelope to put your completed questionnaire in. You can then either pop it in the post directly to us or hand it to nursery staff who will send it on to us without opening the envelope.

A staff member at your child’s nursery will be asked to complete a short questionnaire about how your child is doing. This will cover things like the sorts of activities your child can do and his/her relationships with other children. While they may ask your child to do something like jump or stack blocks, this is not a formal assessment or test, and your child may not even notice that the questionnaire is being completed. A staff member will not complete this questionnaire unless you agree to it. If you don’t want a nursery staff member to do this, please let a member of the nursery staff know and they will ask you to complete a slip to confirm your wishes.

Why have I been selected to take part?

In participating local authorities, a selection of nurseries and other early learning and childcare providers with children aged 3 years to 3 years 6 months in attendance have been asked to take part. Children who took part when they were 2 years old in October/November 2023 are also being asked to take part again. In these nurseries a selection of parents/carers are being asked to complete a short questionnaire.

The selection of both nurseries and children within them was completely random – apart from those children who were included at Phase 4 when they were 2 years old. It is important that it is done this way as it ensures we have a sample of children representative of all those across Scotland receiving funded early learning and childcare. Your child has either been selected at random to be included or was included in the study last year at Phase 4.

What will happen to any information I give?

The information from you and the staff at your child’s nursery will be treated in strict confidence in accordance with data protection legislation. All information will be confidential and secure, and no one will be able to recognise any child, family or nursery from the data. If you agree to nursery staff completing a questionnaire, we will combine your answers with theirs. Combining all the information in this way will help us to evaluate changes in funded early learning and childcare.

If you take part in the study, we may link your survey answers to administrative data on your child’s health and education; this process is called data linkage. This could include information on things like your child’s early development and future educational attainment. This data is held centrally by Public Health Scotland and the Scottish Government. By linking to this information, we don’t need to ask you questions about these issues – which will save you time – but we will still have a good picture of your child’s health and development, which makes the research more useful. If data is linked, then this will be done securely by Public Health Scotland, and they will only use your personal details for this purpose.

Privacy notice

To understand more about what happens to the data you’ve provided, click here to read the privacy notice for the study in full: www.natcen.ac.uk/SSELC/privacy-notice

Need more support?

Being a parent isn’t always easy! If you’re looking for information or advice, you may find one of the following sources useful:

Parent club offers a wide range of advice, from information about being pregnant, to parenting teenagers. Their family support directory provides contact details for organisations offering support with all aspects of family life, including parenting support, peer support, counselling and bereavement support.
https://www.parentclub.scot/family-support-directory

NHS inform provides a co-ordinated, single source of quality assured health and care information for the people of Scotland
www.nhsinform.scot (phone: 0800 22 44 88).

The NHS 111 service provides urgent care advice and mental health support day or night
www.nhs24.scot

Mind to Mind - If you're feeling anxious, stressed, or low - find out how you can improve your mental wellbeing by hearing what others have found helpful by visiting Mind to Mind:
www.nhsinform.scot/mind-to-mind

Contact Scotland - Provides support, advice and a listening service for parents of children with disabilities.
https://contact.org.uk/scotland/ (phone: 0808 808 3555)

Enquire - Provides advice on all aspects of education for children and young people with additional support needs.
https://enquire.org.uk/contact/ (phone: 0345 123 2303)

One Parent Families Scotland - Free information for lone parents on a variety of issues including: benefits, maintenance, tax credits, work, education, legal rights, childcare and holidays.
https://opfs.org.uk/ (phone: 0808 801 0323)

Contact us

If you have any questions or would like more information about taking part in this study, please email us at elc@scotcen.org.uk or call us on 0800 652 0601.

You can also contact the Scottish Government by email at catriona.rooke@gov.scot.