The Care Inspectorate is due to publish the final version of the new Quality Improvement Framework next week, designed to independently assure the quality of care, support and learning that children receive in childcare settings.
In advance of this milestone, Graeme has written the following blog as a message to SCMA members and the wider childminding workforce, to both reassure and highlight the importance of SCMA’s involvement in this key piece of work.
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As we go into autumn, we are about to enter a period of further change for the sector with the launch of the new ‘Quality Improvement Framework’ by the Care Inspectorate and Education Scotland on 18 September 2025. This will be used for your inspection and to support your ongoing self-evaluation from Monday 22 September, replacing the Care Inspectorate’s ‘Quality Framework’ and for those of you delivering funded hours Education Scotland’s ‘How Good Is Our Early Learning and Childcare’ and local authority frameworks (where these have been developed).
This is significant as it marks the introduction of something new, and importantly what our members and SCMA have been advocating for: provider-specific quality assurance and inspection.
Over the last few years SCMA has played a leading role in influencing change. In 2020 we established that the significant increase in paperwork, bureaucracy and duplicative quality assurance, which had increased during ELC expansion, was impacting childminders disproportionately. As predominantly sole providers, this had become the main reason that childminders had left, or were planning to leave, our workforce.
We then continued to add to that evidence, while developing and piloting measures to support childminders. This included our Self-Evaluation Toolkit, designed to help childminders with their evidencing requirements and an accompanying series of childminding-specific learning courses to support their Quality in Practice (which have now been rolled out to the whole childminding workforce through the Programme for Scotland’s Childminding Future).
The Scottish Government listened to SCMA and others – and in 2022 they consulted on the future of inspection in early learning and childcare and school-age childcare services in Scotland. Our #TellSCMA Childminding and You Survey 2022, in turn, captured your views to inform our response to this important consultation.
In total, 1,263 SCMA members (45% of our membership) responded, and the preference was clear – a
single inspection, supported by a
single self-evaluation framework which would be
more specific and
proportionate to childminding and with a
major reduction in paperwork.
We listened and this is what we have advocated for and used as our position to represent childminders during the last two and a half years, during which SCMA has been an active contributor in the Stakeholder Group, which was established to support the framework’s development.
This process was not without challenge and there were times when SCMA had to publicly state that we could not support what had been developed. However, we remained involved and continued to collaborate with the Care Inspectorate and Education Scotland, who listened and made some of our requested changes to the framework.
As a result, we now have a new national approach to inspection and quality assurance which is broadly in line with what members and SCMA have asked for:
- Childminders will continue to undergo a single inspection by the Care Inspectorate. This will be based upon the new, singular ‘Quality Improvement Framework’ which has been developed for national and local use to cover the care and learning quality assurance needs of the Care Inspectorate, Education Scotland and local authorities and covering providers delivering funded ELC, those not delivering funded ELC and school-age childcare.
- The singular ‘Quality Improvement Framework’ is provider-specific. It contains three distinct prover-specific strands for:
- Early Learning and Childcare/Nurseries Settings (excluding childminding and school-age childcare settings)
- Childminding Settings
- School-Age Childcare Settings
- The ‘Childminding’ strand covers ALL that is required to quality assure all aspects of childminding practice, including for childminders delivering funded ELC and school-age childcare (as agreed by the Care Inspectorate, Education Scotland, Scottish Government, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and Association of Directors of Education in Scotland).
- The new framework is more proportionate to childminding. The framework recognises that childminding is a distinct form of childcare in its own right, delivered by predominantly sole providers (or with assistants) to much smaller groups of children spanning pre-school and school-age, with greater elements of outdoor play and learning. It is also recognised that it would not be proportionate to apply all standards for much larger nursery settings (with many more children and including layout and equipment) to a childminding setting delivered in a home.
- The new framework has been designed to reduce the level of paperwork required. While this impact is still to be fully tested, self-evaluation will now only be required against the new singular framework which maintains the quality requirements but has rationalised and reduced the number of indicators to be reported against.
While the use of the new ‘Quality Improvement Framework’ and its application to inspection have still to be fully tested through use at a workforce level, we do believe it represents a significant step forward, is in line with what our members requested, and is based on what we have advocated for on your behalf, and that of childminding as a whole.
We also believe that this will contribute to wider activity aimed at improving retention within the childminding workforce.
Graeme
Graeme McAlister
SCMA Chief Executive