Jackie Baillie, Labour MSP for Dumbarton, with Helensburgh and Lomond in her constituency, has warned that the SNP Government is creating a post code lottery when it comes to childcare.
She says that south of the border, three and four-year olds have a statutory entitlement to 15 hours’ nursery education, but a formal agreement to achieve this in Scotland by 2010 has been delayed.
A handful of Scottish local authorities meet that level but Argyll and Bute Councill is not one of them. This council’s entitlement is for 475 hours, normally 2 ½ hours per day, 5 days per week.
It is this situation that has prompted Jackie Baillie to warn that local families are losing out.
A recent survey by Save the Children and the Daycare Trust found that Scottish childcare costs are the highest in the UK and, that a third of families living on less than £12,000 a year had gone into debt due to care costs.
Mrs Baillie says: ‘Childcare is hugely important to women and families throughout this area and it is also of huge importance for the Scottish economy as it helps parents get to work. “There is a real fear that childcare is becoming a luxury because too many families simply cannot afford it. “Scotland is now significantly behind the rest of the UK. I recognise that the scale of the change needed, but with determination and cross-party support, we can make real progress for Scotland. “I am calling on the SNP Government to make childcare an absolute priority for 2012.’
NOTE: Here is the leaflet for parents from Argyll and Bute Council’s 2011-13 Community Services: Early Years provision: Argyll and Bute Council Parent leaflet
I’m not surprised by this whatsoever. During the school closures, something that had come up repeatedly was that the HT at Luss had frequently asked to provide Pre-5 Education within the school (currently children and parents have to travel to Arrochar).
Not only is there demand for this in the village, but would actually take the occupancy of the school over the measure that the Council was using to justify the closure of the school.
However, it will come as no surprise that the Council completely dodged the subject everytime it arose making it clear they have no intention of extending services at Luss at all.
I hope Jackie Baillie has more luck than us.
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CSB’s tale of A&B paying little attention to pre-5 provision is echoed by the Council’s approach to the pre-5 provision in Kilcreggan primary school which would have been closed if the Kilcreggan / Rosneath / Garelochhead amalgamation had gone through.
Pre-5 education is provided in Kilcreggan in a Council run unit situated within the current primary school grounds. In Rosneath/Clynder it is provided by a private company. The Council’s proposal would have resulted in closure of the Kilcreggan facility and suggested that pre-school provision will be made available through a commissioned provider based in Garelochhead Primary School. I say ‘suggests’ because there was a lack of clarity over the projected provision of pre-school. A simple head count at the time made it abundantly clear that Garelochhead couldn’t accommodate the 20 Kilcreggan pre-5 children. The Garelochhead playgroup runs morning and afternoon sessions, the morning one for 4 year olds and the afternoon one for 3 year olds. Each session can accommodate 20 children and as at November 2010 there were 19 children in the afternoon session and the morning session was full to capacity. Our concern about the Council’s inability to accommodate the 20 Kilcreggan pre-5 children prompted us to contact the Council and on 22 November 2010 we sent the following query.
“Having looked at the operating capacities for Kilcreggan, Garelochhead and Kidlywinks it is very unclear where pre-5 provision is going to be made for the 20 children currently educated at Kilcreggan given that both Garelochhead and Kidlywinks are both currently operating at near capacity. The proposal states that my child currently at Kilcreggan will be accommodated at Garelochhead but does not explain where the extra places in this unit are coming from.”
The response we received to this was ‘It is possible to run two sessions at Garelochhead – a morning and afternoon session. This may be met through extension of the playgroup provision or local authority provision.’
This is far from what you would call a definitive answer, especially as it clearly demonstrated that the Council didn’t even realise the Garelochhead playgroup already ran an afternoon session. We took it upon ourselves to contact the Garelochhead playgroup to ascertain if the Council had contacted them to see if they could extend their provision. They informed us that nobody had been in contact and that they currently didn’t have the space to do that.
This made it apparent that some Peninsula parents might need to look as far away as Rhu and Helensburgh for pre-5 provision (we priced this at between £570 and £1,010 per annum for parents depending on whether they ended up in Garelochhead, Rhu or Helensburgh with the entire time out of the house being over 5 hours due to public transport times for those parents without access to a car).
When one of the Peninsula parents telephoned the Council to highlight how difficult it would be for parents to afford to keep their children in pre-5 they were told ‘If you can’t afford it you don’t have to take them. It isn’t compulsory.’
I found it ironic that the Council’s proposal cited ‘logistic problems in particular with regard to travel’ as an obstacle to cohesion of the Teachers’ Learning Council yet they considered extensive travel on public transport as no barrier for pre-school children.
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I noticed the other night Jackie Baillie!s boss, Johann Lamont said she wanted to devolve power to local communities.
How can you complain about a Postcode lottery if you devolve decision-making? It’ surely then a matter of local choice
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An unanswerable logic.
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