SCMA has received lots of contact from members around the country since the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government was published earlier this week.
Interest has focused mainly on the Scottish Government’s commitment to enable childcare workers delivering funded ELC in private and third sector services, including childminders, to be paid at least £12 per hour from April 2024.
We have received many questions about how this will work in practice with childminders having different numbers of funded children in their settings on different days and at different times (including times when they may have no funded children in their settings); as well as how this commitment relates to existing sustainable rates paid by local authorities for delivering funded ELC.
We have raised this with the Scottish Government and can only reiterate information included within the Programme for Government at this time (outlined below). This lays out the current real Living Wage commitment and the Scottish Government’s new commitment.
The detail of how this will be delivered across different childcare providers is still to be developed and agreed. The Scottish Government has also committed to involving SCMA in these discussions, so that this can be implemented in a fair and sustainable way for childminders.
As more details become available, SCMA will update you, but please bear with us and understand that at the moment, there is no further detail beyond this at this time.
Scottish Government extracts:
Existing real Living Wage commitment
Private, voluntary and childminding providers who are contracted to deliver funded ELC will receive a sustainable rate that enables payment of at least the real Living Wage to all their childcare workers delivering the funded hours.
This applies to all ELC staff providing direct care to children who are receiving funded hours, regardless of age and qualification and of the setting in which they are employed.
In line with the requirements for Scottish Living Wage accreditation, apprentices do not have to receive the real Living Wage – this is in recognition that, particularly in the earlier stages, apprentices may spend more time training than working. However, it is good practice to ensure pay rises over the course of the apprenticeship.
The funding for payment of the real Living Wage is only in relation to the hours spent delivering the funded ELC entitlement. It is therefore a business decision for funded providers as to whether they provide the additional resource to uplift the salaries for all workers in their settings to the real Living Wage.
Implementation of new commitment
The Scottish Government is committed to providing the funding to enable childcare workers delivering funded ELC in private and third sector services to be paid at least £12 per hour from April 2024. That includes childminders.
Funding to support the delivery of this commitment will be confirmed at the Scottish Budget 2024-25.
It is estimated that the increase to £12 per hour, from the current real Living Wage of £10.90 per hour, could result in an increase of around £2,000 in the gross annual salary of a full-time childcare worker who is working a 35 hour week.
We also understand that in the context of the costs crisis many childminders are facing a number of challenges. We will work with local authorities and the childminding sector over the coming months to ensure that we can implement this commitment in a fair and sustainable way.
We are working with COSLA and local authorities to support the implementation of this commitment and will set out further details in the coming months (building on the current guidance that supports implementation of the real Living Wage commitment).
We expect that payment to support delivery of this commitment will be provided through the sustainable rate setting process, as is currently the case for the ELC real Living Wage commitment.
Employers should move as quickly as possible to implement the new commitment – and some are already paying it. However, we recognise that ELC providers in the private and third sector may not be in a position to increase wages for workers delivering funded ELC to £12 per hour until their sustainable rate for 2024-25 has been confirmed and paid by their local authority. We would expect payment of £12 per hour to be backdated to April 2024 where this is the case.