The Care Inspectorate today published “Childcare Statistics 2010” which presents new statistics on the provision and use of day care of children and childminding services registered with the Care Inspectorate as at 31 December 2010.

The main findings are:

  • Around 218,300 children (23.9% of the total population aged 0-15yrs old in Scotland) attended a registered childcare or childminding service in the last full week of November 2010.
  • This was a drop from 221,500 children (24.3% of the 0-15 yr old population) in November 2009 and from 224,000 children (24.5% of the 0-15 yr old population) in November 2008.
  • This drop was due to decreases in attendances at creches, holiday play schemes, out of school clubs and playgroups.  These decreases have outweighed an increase in attendances at nurseries.
  • The drop in attendances for creches, holiday play schemes, out of school clubs and playgroups has followed a fall in the numbers of these services that have been operating between December 2008 and December 2010.
  • The number of registered nurseries has stayed relatively constant since December 2008, however there has been a slight increase in the average number of children attending per nursery over this time period.
  • The number of children attending a childminder has risen slightly from around 27,100 in November 2008 (an average of 4.9 children per childminder) to 28,000 in November 2010 (an average of 5.1 children per childminder).

Notes:

  • This is the first set of detailed childcare statistics published by the Care Inspectorate using data from the information held on each registered service as well as information submitted by services in their annual-returns.
  • This follows the review of the Scottish Government Education Directorate statistical publications that took place during 2010.  As a result of this review, the Scottish Government proposed that it would no longer conduct its own childcare and childminders surveys.  Since then the Care Inspectorate has been working closely with the Scottish Government to enable childcare statistics to be published in 2011 based on the Care Inspectorate annual returns data source.