Scottish Government

Further Professionalising the Workforce - Leadership and Career Development

I intend to give the sector the status it deserves through the creation of a genuine career structure, which will enable workers to progress within their chosen field, and to move more readily to related areas of employment where they wish to do so. I want to ensure that every early years or childcare worker who aspires to a management or leadership role and has the necessary skills and aptitude, can identify opportunities for such progression. Enabling workers in the sector to progress into managerial posts and leadership roles will both increase the status of the sector and help retain the motivated, high quality workforce we need to deliver this vital service.

I do not believe it is possible, and I do not intend to move to a situation where pay and conditions are determined nationally. We have a mixed economy of provision in the local authority, voluntary and private sectors. This offers flexibility and choice in provision, and is able to adapt to meet local needs and circumstances. The services that children and families need can be very different in different communities: they may need services at different times of the day; services might involve intensive family support with early years and childcare staff working in family homes and other settings; in rural areas staff might be working in small settings with very different management arrangements to a large centre in a town or city. The services families need can also change over time. In such a diverse sector, local authorities and other partners need to be able to design services which meet local people's needs. For local authority staff, the Single Status Agreement framework provides the flexibility to reflect both similarities and differences in the roles of staff within the sector. I believe national pay and conditions would be a barrier rather than a support to the sort of flexibility that we aim to deliver for families and we must put their interests first.

Although I do not believe national pay and conditions are the way forward, the Review does create a strong framework for a more cohesive early years and childcare workforce across the whole of Scotland. In particular, it provides a common description of the roles of leaders, practitioners and support workers within the sector, which can be applied nationally and in a range of different settings. I believe this will support our desire for consistently high quality of provision across Scotland and that my proposals will provide better professional status and choice for staff in this vitally important sector, leading to clearer career progression routes and better recognition and reward.

Stirling Council

Arnprior and Croftamie are rural nurseries situated in the west of the Stirling Council area, serving the rural communities of Arnprior and Croftamie. Both offer flexible extended day and extended year provision for children from 2-5 years of age. The Head of Nursery, who is in a peripatetic post as manager of both settings, is an Early Childhood Educator who has recently completed some modules of study towards the BA Early Childhood Studies, and who is now working towards SVQ4. Croftamie Nursery has a Depute Head of Nursery, and the holder of this post is an Early Childhood Educator who has recently completed the BA Early Childhood Studies. The Senior Early Childhood Educator at Arnprior is also working towards SVQ4, and two of the Early Childhood Educators are working towards the BA in Early Childhood Studies.

Edinburgh City Council

Edinburgh City Council has a nursery provision that offers integrated preschool and childcare services to families with children aged 0-5 years. This service is staffed by qualified nursery nurses and a teacher who specifically leads the 3-5 curriculum. The management structure of the centre consists of the centre manager who originally trained as a nursery nurse but who has subsequently achieved her MSC in Early Education. She works with two deputes, one of whom currently holds a nursery nurse qualification but plans to undertake a management qualification to meet the SSSC requirements. The second depute, who is currently employed on a temporary basis, was originally qualified as a nursery nurse but has recently achieved her professional social work degree. The manager is in discussion with the local authority's professional development team about the routes to further qualification for the Nursery Nurses employed within the Centre.

Central to my thinking is a longer-term commitment that all leaders of centres will be qualified at degree or equivalent level. For some, this will be achieved through academic qualifications, whilst for others it will be through a work-based route and continuous professional development. My decision is informed by research which has shown the particular relationship between the quality of outcomes for children and the qualifications of the manager or leader of a centre, and will address the issues around leadership identified in some parts of the sector by HMIE. This will not be achieved overnight, but I wish to signal my intention to move towards this position and I want to see tangible progress towards this quickly.

In some parts of Scotland, particularly rural areas, it is common for a manager or teacher to have responsibility for a number of small centres. While these proposals will ensure that all leaders are qualified to degree or equivalent level, they are not intended to alter these arrangements.

Teachers are part of the early years and childcare workforce and are the leaders in many early years and childcare centres, and some people have questioned why the Review did not include teachers. Teachers have, and will continue to have, a distinctive and important role to play in pre-school provision alongside other professionals. However, I wanted this Review to consider the issues relating to non-teaching staff in early years and childcare settings, as we already carried out a review of teachers, A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century, in 2000. Not every early years setting currently has a teacher and this is not going to change. Indeed, the balance is likely to shift towards more non-teaching staff managing centres in the future. It is therefore important for there to be clear routes for people entering the sector by a variety of routes to be able to develop their expertise and professionalism to progress to management and leadership positions.

Linked to this, taking account of research evidence and in response to calls for recognition of the professionalism of many in the workforce, I intend to create a competence-based qualifications and professional development framework. The framework will provide a structured and accredited route for workers as they progress through their careers. This will apply equally across private, voluntary and public sector providers, so that parents can be sure of the quality and skills of staff whichever childcare provider they choose.

I recognise that the workforce is already in the midst of a significant move towards a professional basis through registration with the Scottish Social Services Council. I welcome the positive response of many in the sector to our registration plans, clearly identifying it as part of developing professional status. The action I have set out here is designed to build on the progress we have made through registration. We have already put in place the minimum qualification requirements for workers in the sector. Raising the level of qualification required for the leaders of the profession is the next step and we will do this by asking the SSSC to set specific registration and post registration training and learning requirements for these workers. The qualifications and professional development framework will also provide structured routes to ensure that professional development continues for all workers after registration.

I am clear that a new qualifications and professional development framework should build on existing qualifications. This will ensure that existing workers holding or working towards the qualifications they need for registration will not have to undertake a whole new qualification, but will use continuing professional development to reach the new professional status.

The qualifications and development framework will provide a real opportunity for workers in the sector to gain recognition for developing their skills and knowledge throughout their careers. There will be clear linkages between the qualifications and professional development framework and a toolkit to help workers and employers navigate their career options, working towards the level required to progress to management roles, or developing particular specialisms.

The Review set out a 10 year timescale for implementing its proposals. I want to see progress in several key areas on a much shorter timescale. My priority is to develop qualifications and professional development routes for the leaders of the sector.

I recognise that some parts of the workforce are closer to being able to achieve the new level of professional status than others. Qualification levels tend to be higher in the local authority sector than in the private and voluntary sector, and higher in the early years sector than in out of school care. I am clear that I want the whole early years and childcare sector to make the transition to a new professional workforce. However, it is also clear that we will need to adopt a phased approach.

There are good reasons for the early years workforce to form the early phase. Evidence illustrating the role that a qualified workforce, and particularly a highly qualified leader, plays in delivering quality services for children is strongest in the early years sector. This is also the sector where children can spend significant amounts of time - sometimes all day, several days a week.

The local authority early years sector currently has a higher level of qualified staff than any other sector of this workforce. I therefore expect local authorities to be at the forefront of the move towards a fully professionally-led workforce, by actively supporting their managers to achieve the new professional status once the necessary framework and qualifications are in place. I also expect them to support their wider workforce to develop their careers using the framework.

The private and voluntary sectors are also key providers of early years services. I know that these sectors both face particular challenges around the delivery of quality services at a price which remains affordable to parents. For that reason I intend to look again at the "advisory floor", established by the Scottish Executive to inform local authority decisions about the cost of providing part-time pre-school provision in private and voluntary settings to 3 and 4 year olds. It is clear that in some areas private and voluntary providers of free pre-school places are being offered a significantly lower level of funding than local authorities fund places in their own centres. This is an inequitable situation, which may contribute to unnecessary and unhelpful quality differences between providers, limit potential benefits to children, and, in the longer term, reduce parental choice.

The out of school care and play for older children workforce will form a second phase. This is a pragmatic decision which reflects the circumstances of this part of the sector. These staff are often working in very small centres delivering services for a short period each day. In addition, the sector faces particular training challenges in view of the significantly lower levels of existing qualification amongst its workforce. However, as I make clear in the following section on flexible services, it is important that the whole workforce has the same professional basis, and I am clear that we must work towards this as a longer-term goal.

Childminders deliver essential services and are an integral part of this workforce. They work in quite different circumstances to most other early years and childcare workers - usually as the sole provider and manager of a service. Childminders are registered with the Care Commission, and there is not currently a requirement for childminders to hold qualifications, although childminders are encouraged to undertake training and development. I do not have any plans to introduce a requirement for childminders to hold a particular qualification, but I do want to see childminders undertake qualifications and professional development. The qualifications and professional development framework will be designed to accommodate the specific circumstances of sole workers and there will be an expectation that childminders will undertake training and learning.