By Democrat reporter
Scottish Labour has said the SNP must act to maintain standards in childcare as the proportion of services rated highly plummets.
In 2014 almost half of children’s daycare services were rated very good or excellent across all measures, but by 2023 this had plummeted by 16 percentage points to less than a third.
The most recent report by the Care Inspectorate warned that around one in eight children’s daycare of children services were adequate or poorer in at least one assessed key question at 31 December 2023.
The same report showed that number of daycare services rated as weak or unsatisfactory across every key quality measure rose by more than 50 per cent between 2021 and 2023.
Scottish Labour warned that “children are being failed” as a result of falling standards in Scottish childcare and called on the SNP government to halt this decline.
Scottish Labour spokesperson for Children and Young people Martin Whitfield, right, said “Every parent wants to trust that their child is in the safest possible hands, but under the SNP standards are slipping.
“Scottish children are being failed as a result of the SNP’s worrying neglect of our once-exceptional childcare system.
“The SNP must wake up to this growing problem and take urgent action to halt this decline before any more families are let down.”
NB: Proportion of daycare of children services offering funded places holding evaluations of very good or excellent in all assessed themes or key questions on 31 December, 2014 to 2023.
|
Year |
% of services found to be very good or excellent in all evaluations |
|
2014 |
49.1% |
|
2015 |
48.1% |
|
2016 |
45.8% |
|
2018 |
40.5% |
|
2019 |
38.1% |
|
2020 |
36.9% |
|
2021 |
34.9% |
|
2022 |
34.6% |
|
2023 |
32.9% |
Note: Any services that have not yet been inspected are not included in the above table. Source: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/questions-and-answers/question?ref=S6W-37806
23 daycare facilities were assessed as weak or unsatisfactory across every key quality measure – up from 15 in 2021.
- Around one in eight (11.7%) daycare of children services were adequate or poorer in at least one assessed key question at 31 December 2023.
- https://www.careinspectorate.com/images/2023_Early_learning_and_Childcare_Statistics.pdf