Hansard

I am very pleased to move the motion in order to correct a legal anomaly that creates real problems for families across Scotland.

I begin by paying tribute to the Give Them Time campaign, whose members have organised a remarkably effective campaign to draw attention to what is an injustice and have gathered considerable evidence of its extent. Through their efforts, we debated the issue during a members’ business debate led by Fulton MacGregor, and we have questioned the Minister for Children and Young People on the matter in committee more than once. However, the time has come for Parliament to take a view on the issue and to instruct the Government to fix the matter once and for all.

For more than 30 years, since the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, parents of children who have not reached the age of five at the start date of the school year have had the right to decide whether their child is ready for primary 1 and, if they believe that they are not, to defer the child’s entry to school until the following year. If the child’s fifth birthday falls after 31 December, in January or February, they will continue to receive funded hours of early years education for the intervening year.

However, for those children whose birthday falls between August and December, although the deferral decision is one for parents, such funding is at the discretion of the local authority. Most authorities will not automatically agree such funding. The chances of them doing so, and the processes that they apply, vary widely from authority to authority. Families face rigorous demands for evidence, and decisions are taken by panels of experts, who often do not know the child well at all.

If funding is refused in those circumstances, there is a clear inequity, because families with the resources to do so can self-fund their child’s nursery hours, while those who cannot afford to do that may be faced with no choice but to send their child into primary 1, even though they, as parents, believe that that is not the best thing for their son or daughter.

Even those families who can pay may find that they have to move their child out of their nursery if a local authority does not allow self-funding within one of its early years settings—as many do not—thus disrupting the child’s early education at a critical time.

The numbers are not large: Give Them Time believes that perhaps 1,300 applications for discretionary funding are made in a year, although the impact on the families can be great indeed. The answer is straightforward. Children whose entry is deferred should simply continue to qualify for funded nursery hours at the same rate as three and four-year-olds, which is currently for 600 hours, rising to 1,140 hours next year. It is debatable what additional cost there is, given that the child will be in either nursery or primary 1, but central Government should find whatever resources are required anyway in order to avoid any pressure on cash-strapped councils.

I know that the minister has listened to the campaign and that she met its representatives only last week. She promised them that she will produce improved guidance for local authorities and improve communication to make parents aware of their rights. However, the task is not to better explain this unfair anomaly, but to get rid of it so that all pre-school children have the right to continuous early years education.

The minister told the Education and Skills Committee that her officials are gathering better-quality data on the number of deferrals and on those children’s characteristics by birthday, family income, special needs and so on. However, the task is not to count those children, but to show that they count by allowing them to defer with access to the early years education that we all agree is so important.

I know that the minister will say—as both she and the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills have said on many occasions—that a deferral decision should be made in the best interest of the child. I agree with that, but the law says that the decision is to be taken by the child’s parents, not by an anonymous council official or councillors, nursery staff or a panel of professionals. If parents have the right to decide whether or not their four-year-old is ready for school, as the law says that they do, we must respect that decision and protect those children’s rights to early years provision. The way to do that is to change the law as the Labour motion demands.

The caveats in the Government amendment are unnecessary. Of course local authorities will be consulted, as all such legislative change would require, and of course resources must be found and agreed, but our motion stipulates those requirements. The motion is clear and simple, and it is the right thing to do.

I move,

That the Parliament recognises that, under the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, parents have the legal right to defer their child’s entry to primary education if they are not five years old by the commencement of the school year; understands that those children who are born in January and February have an automatic entitlement to funded early learning and childcare during the deferred year, while those born between August and December do not have this automatic entitlement; commends the “Give Them Time” campaign for their work in highlighting this issue; calls on the Scottish Government to bring forward legislation in this parliamentary session to automatically entitle young people aged four, who are born between August and December, to funded early learning and childcare in line with statutory government provision for three- and four-year-olds when their parents use their legal right to defer entry to P1, and further calls on the Scottish Government to work with COSLA to ensure the necessary resources are available.