More Hours. Less Choice. Why Scotland’s Childcare System Risks Driving Innovation Away

Scotland is on the cusp of another major expansion in funded childcare. Having already rolled out 1140 hours for three and four-year-olds, discussions are now underway about extending funded childcare to children as young as nine months. On the surface, this appears to be a positive step forward for families, increasing access to childcare and supporting parents to participate in employment. However, beneath the headlines lies a much more uncomfortable question: what is the value of expanding childcare entitlement if the range of childcare options available to families continues to shrink?

My perspective comes not only from running outdoor childcare settings, but from years spent working across Scotland’s education system. I have taught in schools serving communities with vastly different needs, worked in support for learning, supported children with complex additional support needs and witnessed first-hand the growing pressures facing both families and practitioners. Alongside my husband, I went on to establish West Fife’s first outdoor nursery because I became increasingly convinced that many children needed something different from what traditional systems were able to offer.

Over the past few years, hundreds of children have attended our outdoor settings. We have worked with children who struggled to engage in conventional environments, children who were anxious, overwhelmed or dysregulated, and children who simply learned best through movement, relationships, play and connection with nature. Time and again, we have seen children flourish when given access to an environment that better matches their individual needs. Those experiences have reinforced a belief that has shaped my career: children are not all the same, and the environments in which they learn should not be either.

Scotland speaks passionately about inclusion, equity and Getting it Right for Every Child. We regularly hear commitments to person-centred services, prevention, early intervention and reducing inequalities. The Verity House Agreement between the Scottish Government and local government reinforces these principles, committing both parties to collaborative working, innovation, prevention and improving outcomes for people and communities. Yet the reality being experienced by many families and providers feels increasingly disconnected from these ambitions.

When parents seek a childcare or educational environment that better meets the needs of their child, they are increasingly encountering barriers rather than support. When providers seek to innovate, expand or offer alternative approaches, they are often faced with funding structures and commissioning arrangements that discourage growth. When children require something different from what is available locally, the response can feel less focused on finding the right solution for that child and more focused on protecting existing systems.

This creates what might be described as Scotland’s equality paradox. We champion inclusion and choice in principle while limiting both in practice. We talk about person centred services while expecting families to fit within institution centred systems. We celebrate diversity in almost every aspect of society, yet appear increasingly uncomfortable with diversity in educational and childcare provision.

The consequences of this approach are significant. Access to alternative forms of childcare and education is becoming increasingly dependent on where a family happens to live. Some local authorities embrace partnership working with private and third sector providers and recognise the value of diverse provision. Others appear to view independent provision as competition rather than collaboration. The result is a postcode lottery in which a child living in one area may have access to outdoor nurseries, forest schools, flexible placements and specialist provision, while a child living only a few miles away may have no such opportunities.

Equality is not achieved by ensuring every child receives the same experience, but by ensuring every child can access the environment in which they can thrive. A genuinely inclusive system recognises that children have different needs and that meeting those needs will sometimes require different approaches, different environments and different providers. If we truly believe in equity, we must move beyond the idea that fairness means offering every child the same thing and instead focus on ensuring every child can access what is right for them.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of the current direction of travel is the growing sense that decisions are increasingly being made around what works for systems rather than what works for children. Public services exist to serve communities and local authorities exist to serve the people who fund them through taxation. Yet many families are being given the message, whether explicitly or implicitly, that the provision available through their local authority should be sufficient regardless of whether it meets the needs of their child. This represents a significant departure from the principles of person-centred public services and raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: are services being designed around the needs of children, or around the needs of the institutions delivering them?

There is also a funding contradiction that deserves greater scrutiny. Private and third-sector providers are frequently funded at significantly lower rates than local authority settings while being expected to meet the same regulatory requirements, deliver the same curriculum outcomes and support the same increasingly complex range of needs. Many providers are achieving high quality outcomes with substantially less funding per child than equivalent council operated settings. At the same time, local authorities often act as both commissioner and competitor, creating an uneven playing field that makes genuine partnership difficult to achieve. Scotland frequently talks about the importance of a mixed economy of provision, yet the funding mechanisms often fail to reflect that commitment.

Alongside these structural challenges sits a workforce crisis that cannot be ignored. Today’s early years practitioners are expected to understand child development, attachment theory, trauma informed practice, autism, additional support needs, speech and language development, safeguarding, curriculum design, observation, assessment and family support. They are increasingly supporting children with levels of complexity that would once have been considered specialist work. Yet salaries across much of the sector fail to reflect the expertise, responsibility and emotional labour required. We cannot continue demanding graduate level knowledge and professional judgement while offering salaries that struggle to attract and retain graduate level professionals. The result is entirely predictable: recruitment challenges, staff shortages, burnout, high turnover and increasing pressure on the practitioners who remain.

This challenge is compounded by the growing complexity of children’s needs. Scotland’s early years workforce was not originally designed to support the volume of developmental, behavioural, emotional and additional support needs now presenting in many settings. Practitioners are doing remarkable work under increasingly difficult circumstances, but goodwill alone cannot compensate for years of underinvestment in workforce development. If we are serious about improving outcomes for children, we must also be serious about investing in the people who support them.

At the same time, our expectations of young children appear increasingly disconnected from what we know about child development. Across much of the world, children are given more time to play, explore and develop socially before formal academic expectations begin. Countries often held up as examples of educational success place a strong emphasis on wellbeing, relationships, outdoor experiences and child-led learning during the early years. Research consistently demonstrates that emotional regulation, social competence, resilience and wellbeing form the foundations upon which later academic achievement is built. Yet the pressures on children, practitioners and settings continue to grow, often pushing formal expectations further down into the early years.

The irony is that while we continue to debate curriculum, attainment and educational outcomes, we often overlook a more fundamental issue. Children cannot learn effectively when they are distressed, dysregulated or overwhelmed, and practitioners cannot provide high-quality experiences when they are exhausted, under-resourced and under constant pressure. The lack of diverse learning environments is having a detrimental effect on both groups. Many children require movement, nature, smaller groups, sensory freedom and flexible approaches in order to regulate and engage. Outdoor learning environments exist because these needs are real and because no single model of provision can meet the needs of every child.

The reality behind these policy discussions can be seen in the experiences of the children themselves. Over the years, we have worked with children who arrived unable to cope in traditional environments, children who were overwhelmed by noise, struggled with transitions, found it difficult to communicate their needs or were already beginning to disengage from learning altogether. In many cases, these children were not failing; they were simply in environments that did not meet their needs.

One child who joined our setting had reached a point where attending a traditional environment was causing significant distress. Daily transitions had become a source of anxiety, emotional regulation was becoming increasingly difficult and adults were beginning to question where the child might fit within the education system. Within an outdoor environment, where movement was encouraged rather than restricted, where relationships came before outcomes and where learning could take place through meaningful experiences rather than prolonged periods of sitting and listening, the change was remarkable. Confidence grew, relationships strengthened, communication improved and learning followed naturally.

Stories like this are not unusual. They serve as a reminder that when we talk about childcare and education, we are not discussing buildings, budgets or systems. We are talking about children. We are talking about whether they feel safe, whether they feel understood and whether they are able to engage with the world around them. When a child thrives in one environment after struggling in another, the lesson should not be that one model is superior to another. The lesson should be that children are different, and truly inclusive systems provide a range of environments in which those differences can be accommodated.

The expansion of funded childcare should be celebrated, but funding more hours is not the same as improving outcomes. A truly inclusive childcare system would embrace diversity of provision rather than fear it. It would recognise that local authority settings, private providers, outdoor nurseries, childminders and third-sector organisations all have an important role to play. It would allow funding to follow need rather than institutions, encourage partnership rather than competition and reward innovation rather than discourage it.

The challenge facing Scotland is not a lack of policy ambition. National policy is full of commitments to inclusion, prevention, person-centred services, parental choice and Getting it Right for Every Child. The problem is the growing gap between those aspirations and the reality experienced by families and providers on the ground.

Across Scotland, local authority decisions are increasingly shaping whether families can access alternative forms of childcare and education. In some areas, councils actively embrace partnership and innovation. In others, barriers are emerging that restrict access to diverse provision, discourage alternative approaches and limit parental choice. The result is an increasingly fragmented system in which opportunities depend not on children’s needs but on where they happen to live.

The Scottish Government cannot continue to celebrate choice, flexibility and inclusion at a national level while remaining silent when local implementation undermines those principles. If national commitments are to mean anything, they must be reflected consistently across every local authority in Scotland. The problem is not the absence of national policy. The problem is the absence of accountability when local decisions contradict it.

For the first time since opening our first outdoor nursery, I find myself questioning whether our next expansion should be in Scotland at all. This is not because demand is lacking. Every week we hear from families searching for something different, parents desperate for more flexible approaches and communities crying out for alternatives that place wellbeing, relationships and child development at their heart. The question is whether local authority systems across Scotland still welcome innovation, partnership and diversity of provision, or whether protecting existing structures has become a higher priority.

Increasingly, it is other nations and regions that are actively seeking alternative educational models, recognising that diverse provision strengthens rather than threatens public services. While Scotland debates whether families should be able to access different forms of provision, others are embracing innovation, flexibility and genuine parental choice.

If organisations that have spent years developing innovative Scottish approaches to childcare and education begin looking elsewhere to grow, Scotland risks losing more than businesses. It risks losing expertise, investment, jobs, innovation and some of the very provision that families are telling us they need. At a time when governments around the world are actively exploring alternative educational models, Scotland should be asking why some of its most innovative providers are considering whether their future growth may be better supported elsewhere.

The question for policymakers is not whether alternative provision should exist. The question is whether Scotland is willing to create the conditions that allow it to flourish.

Scotland has long presented itself as a nation committed to getting it right for every child. Achieving that ambition requires more than expanding funded hours. It requires creating a system that values diversity, embraces flexibility and recognises that no single model of provision can meet the needs of every child. Equality is not achieved by ensuring every child receives the same experience, but by ensuring every child can access the environment in which they can thrive.

Until we are willing to place the needs of children and families above the needs of systems and institutions, we will continue to fall short of the inclusive and child-centred future we claim to be building. The measure of success is not how efficiently we deliver services, but whether every child can access an environment in which they feel safe, valued, understood and able to thrive.