Childcare expansion plans in Scotland up to 20% below target, report shows

Childcare expansion plans in Scotland are missing forecasts by up to 20%, figures reveal. The buried'' report, dated June 2019, became available in response to a Scottish Liberal Democrat parliamentary question answered on August 7.

It shows that early learning expansion is 5,135 childcare places and 416 staff behind schedule.

Expected total capacity was 24,970 children, but the actual figure is 19,835 - 20.6% below forecast.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: It is easy to see why the Scottish Government would be keen to bury this dire report without so much as a press release.

While the childcare minister, Maree Todd, has been brazenly telling everyone that the expansion is on track, these figures show in black and white that simply isn't the case.

There is precisely one year to go until parents are expecting to take up the expanded entitlement. They will already be making plans.

This report indicates that the Scottish Government is set to leave families in the lurch unless it seriously steps up its efforts.''

The doubling of the statutory entitlement to funded early learning and childcare - from 600 hours to 1,140 hours - is due in August 2020.

It would cover all three- and four-year-olds and around a quarter of two-year-olds.

The report also reveals staff recruitment is 16.1% below forecast, with the predicted number of additional full-time workers to be 2,589, but the actual figure is 2,173.

Only approximately 10%'' of the additional infrastructure capacity required for the expansion is complete, with 44 more projectsin construction'' and 738 projects in development''.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: We remain confident that all local authorities and their partners will be ready to deliver when the 1,140 hours' entitlement comes into force next August.

Indeed, thousands of children across Scotland are already receiving this new entitlement a year early and we know that more staff have been recruited since April.

We are of course still 12 months away from full implementation and local authority plans are quite properly continuing to evolve in response to specific local needs.'