How do I know if an ELC setting is high quality?

The purpose of an inspection is to find out how well children are being cared for and make sure they’re getting lots of opportunities to learn through play. 

To create the report, inspectors from the Care Inspectorate and/or His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) will visit the ELC setting. The Care Inspectorate conduct inspections at all ELC settings, including childminders and school age childcare settings, while HMIE will look at settings providing funded ELC (excluding childminders and school age childcare).

During the visit, inspectors observe children as they play, talk to staff and ask some children what they like about their setting and what they would like changed, as well as asking parents for their opinion. They might also look at what the children have created, and read reports on their progress.

Inspectors use a framework called the Quality Improvement Framework for the Early Learning and Childcare Sectors (QIF) to carry out inspections (see below).

Inspection reports of ELC providers are available on the websites of both the Care Inspectorate and HMIE. If it’s a nursery that’s attached to a school, you might need to search under the school name, as HMIE usually inspect them both together.

The same six-point scale is used in both HMIE and the Care Inspectorate reports:

 Level 6 is Excellent and is rated as outstanding or sector leading.
 Level 5 is Very Good and is rated as having major strengths
 Level 4 is Good and has major strengths with areas for improvement.
 Level 3 is Satisfactory/Adequate with its strengths just outweighing its weaknesses.
 Level 2 is Weak and has important weaknesses.
 Level 1 is Unsatisfactory with major weaknesses.

The Quality Improvement Framework the Early Learning and Childcare sectors protects your child’s rights and supports their wellbeing, no matter what childcare setting they attend. It helps ELC settings reflect on and improve the care they provide. 

The framework ensures that care, play, and learning are all valued equally and is designed to make sure that every child in Scotland is: 

• safe and protected from harm
• cared for and supported to thrive
• offered high-quality learning and development opportunities.

You can find out more about the QIF on the HMIE website.

The QIF looks at various different things to assess how good a setting is – these are called quality indicators. These indicators help ELC settings identify areas where they’re doing well and where they need to make improvements across things like staff skills, learning, safeguarding and inclusion. 

The quality indicators are grouped under four headings:

• leadership
• children thrive and develop in quality spaces
• children play and learn
• children are supported to achieve.

If you’d like to learn more or get involved in your child’s ELC setting, don’t hesitate to ask your provider how they use the framework to improve what they do.

Inspectors evaluate key safety practices during every inspection. These include things like recruiting staff safely and making sure the environment is secure for babies, children and young people. If anything needs to be improved, it will be mentioned in the inspection report under the relevant quality indicator.

The Care Inspectorate carries out inspections on care services to make sure they're meeting the right standards. You can also browse its full list of care services, where the latest report for each care service is available. This includes reports on:

• childminders
• daycare or children
• school age childcare.

HMIE is a government body which also inspects ELC providers and looks at the quality of children’s learning and achievement.

If you’re worried about how care and support is being provided in a service, you can contact the Care Inspectorate's complaints team. You are encouraged to complain confidentially, which means you can share information that may help with an assessment or investigation, but your details will not be shared with the service without your consent. Anonymous complaints can limit any assessment or investigation as information cannot be verified, and feedback cannot be provided to the complainant.

If you’re unhappy about a decision the local authority has made in regards to your child’s ELC, whether that is a placement decision or a discretionary decision you can find the complaint process on your local authority website. All local authorities have a duty to fully investigate complaints. If you are not happy with the way the local authority deals with your complaint they will signpost you to the next stage of the process.