Scottish Government

CHAPTER 2: THE CONSULTATION PROCESS

TIMING OF CONSULTATION

The written consultation became "live" on 10 August 2006 with a formal closing date of 22 December 2006 although responses received up to 5 January 2007 have been included in the analysis. The scale of the consultation was wide in terms of distribution to stakeholders and relatively large in terms of the volume of responses received. Staff in the Early Education and Childcare Division of the Scottish Executive's Education Department supported the exercise.

NATURE OF CONSULTATION

The main consultation document comprised fifty four pages along with several Annexes. Twenty-one consultation questions were raised throughout the report and were grouped under the five main themes to emerge from the Review of the Early Years and Childcare Workforce: Roles and Responsibilities; Qualifications and Training; Career Pathways; Recruitment and Retention; and Workforce Planning.

A further six page consultation document was issued and aimed at childminders and childcare workers. The document contained response forms which posed four questions for childminders and five questions for individual childcare workers.

Around three thousand five hundred hard copies of the consultation papers were distributed largely to representative bodies to distribute to their members.

As described in Chapter One, four face-to-face workshops and one video-linked workshop were also undertaken and attracted two hundred and ten participants. The workshops aimed to contribute to a body of expert knowledge on some of the issues emerging from the national Review of the early years and childcare workforce. They focused on the practical and day-to-day realities that workers face when trying to access qualifications. Their format was consistent and commenced with two presentations made by the SSSC and by the Scottish Executive respectively. Smaller groups were formed and their facilitators followed a set structure posing two key questions with supporting prompt topics and questions. The key questions are shown in Annex 2.

NATURE OF RESPONSES

The structure of the consultation documents provided a steer in promoting some consistency in form of response. Most respondents used the consultation question framework to structure their response either electronically or in hard copy. Most provided some response on every topic raised by the questions in their respective consultation document. Annex 3 contains a summary of the volume of responses received to each question in the main written consultation.

THE RESPONDENTS

The list of organisations and individuals that responded is documented at Annex 1. Overall, one hundred and fifteen responses were received to the main consultation. Respondents could be grouped into broad categories as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Respondents to the Main Consultation by Category

No one particular respondent category dominated the responses. Representative organisations comprised the largest group of respondents accounting for one quarter of responses. This category covered diverse interests including a wide range of voluntary, public and private sector associations, forums, institutes and networks.

Most local authorities took up the opportunity to respond to the consultation. In addition, childcare partnerships submitted around one in six of all responses to the main document. Overall, nineteen childcare providers took part in the main written consultation. Many of the respondents who submitted responses on an individual basis appeared to have experience of working in the sector. Training providers constituted the smallest category of respondent submitting 10% of all responses to the main consultation.

The consultation questions aimed at childcare workers attracted the highest number of respondents. Overall, two hundred and one workers submitted responses to these questions. In addition, fifty-eight childminders responded to the questions posed for them in the shorter consultation document. Six respondents addressed both the questions for childcare workers and those for childminders. ⁴

Table 2 summarises the total number of respondents to the written and non-written consultations which took place.

Table 2: Summary of Numbers of Respondents to the Written and Non-Written Consultations

It should be noted that the analysis of responses which follows does not attempt any weighting of responses to reflect, say, numbers of respondents from different sectors, or type of respondent. Any quantification of views is for indicative purposes only and is based on the population of respondents as set out in Tables 1 and 2 and not the Scottish population as a whole.

Naming Respondents

The convention adopted for this consultation has been to preserve anonymity of individual respondents and organisations, by attributing their comments and quotes to the grouped respondent category to which they fit. In this way, individual requests for anonymity are met, but a further depth is added to the analysis by providing some contextual information about the respondent type. The terms used to describe the different category of respondent are as follows:

Rep (Representative Organisation)

LA (Local Authority)

CP (Childcare Partnership)

CProv (Childcare Provider)

Indiv (Individual)

TP (Training Provider)

Gaps in Respondent Type

No specific gaps in respondent were identified. The consultation attracted responses from a wide spectrum of respondents representing a variety of perspectives. Remote, rural and urban locations were also represented amongst respondents. Key equality bodies were amongst the respondents, ensuring that significant equality issues were highlighted as appropriate.

APPROACH TO ANALYSIS

Three electronic frameworks for identifying and recording relevant comments from respondents to the main consultation, to the childcare workers' consultation questions, and to the childminders' consultation questions respectively were developed, and a number of ground-rules established to ensure responses were prepared for analysis in a consistent and sensible fashion.

Analytical Framework

Electronic Excel databases were used to store and assist analysis of the written consultation responses. These databases enabled the storage of both free text and numerical data in a systematic manner whilst providing the flexibility for framework amendments as the work progressed.

The fields used to record the material were based on the questions set out in the consultation documents. Once responses had been examined, a small number of additional fields were added to accommodate sub-themes in questions. The result was a comprehensive list of fields which formed the headings for the consultation databases of responses.

Ground-Rules

Separate Responses from the Same Individual/Organisation

On occasions, one respondent may send in more than one response. This can occur, for example, when they have further thoughts on the issue and wish to make more comment. In other instances, the respondent may have simply forgotten to enclose some evidence in their first reply and they contact the consultation team again with more information. On occasions, a respondent may send the same response in both electronic and hard forms.

Both the Scottish Executive consultation team and the research team were alert to the possibilities of such double entries. Any identical responses were picked up by hand searching or electronic screening and removed from the exercise.

Quantitative Material

Although much of the analysis was based on descriptive free text, some scope existed for quantitative analysis and this was exploited. Such data usually involved approximate counts of the numbers of respondents who commented on particular topics and, within these groups, the numbers of respondents holding particular views. However, because of the open nature of the consultation, which did not require people to provide a response on every issue, the approach of many consultees in providing more general comments rather than responding specifically to each question posed, and the way that respondents could "opt in" to their chosen response topics, quantification of responses was not appropriate in all instances and should be treated as simply indicative and illustrative rather than absolute. In addition, it should be noted that any statistics quoted here cannot be extrapolated to a wider population outwith the consultation population.

Analysis of the Workshop Discussions

Each workshop was supported by facilitators and scribes, who all recorded details of the key issues and discussions which took place. Their notes from each event were submitted to the researchers who subjected each script to content analysis. An electronic database was used to store the results of the content analysis. Findings from the content analysis are presented as appropriate in this consultation report.

FACTUAL ACCURACY

The views presented in this analysis have not been vetted in any way for factual accuracy. The opinions and comments submitted to the consultation may be based on fact or may, indeed, be based on what respondents perceive to be accurate from their perspective, but which others may interpret differently. It is important for the analysis to represent views from all perspectives. The report may, therefore, contain analysis of responses which may be factually inaccurate, but are objective in terms of their reflection of strongly held perceptions.