Question reference: S5W-31801
- Asked by: Michelle Ballantyne, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 14 September 2020
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Current status: Answered by Maree Todd on 24 September 2020
Question
To ask the Scottish Government which local authorities' (a) own population data and (b) 2014 National Records of Scotland population figures it used when calculating the funding required for the proposed 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare.
Answer
The multi-year revenue and capital funding package to deliver the expansion of early learning and childcare was agreed by Scottish Ministers and COSLA Leaders on 27 April 2018. The details of the agreement were laid in SPICe at the time (Bib number 59732).
The revenue funding was based on local authorities’ estimates of the cost of the expansion adjusted to reflect inflation and the National Records of Scotland (NRS) population projections (2014). Therefore all the population projections used for determining the funding required to deliver the expansion were based on the 2014 NRS population projections. These population projections represented the best information available at local authority level at the time the estimates for the funding required to deliver the expansion were produced.