The aim of this page is to provide relevant information on the Scottish Government’s Legislation, policies and frameworks applicable to all.

Child Poverty Strategy for Scotland

The Child Poverty Strategy for Scotland (Scottish Government, 2011a) promotes a child-centred, multi-agency approach to tackling economic disadvantage based on the principles of:

• early intervention and prevention so that families do not fall into poverty;

• prioritising the skills, knowledge and views of individuals requiring support;

• promoting the rights of a child to be involved and heard in decisions that affect their lives; It draws together policies to promote co-operation between the Scottish Government and agencies such as the NHS and local authorities. Sime (2013, p. 863) explains that the strategy is to be achieved through initiatives such as:

• Achieving our Potential: A Framework for Tackling Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland (Scottish Government, 2008a), which requires local authorities to target anti-poverty strategies in service delivery, including strategies to improve children’s life chances.

• Equally Well (Scottish Government, 2008c), which promotes universal health services as well as early and targeted interventions. Thus the Child Poverty Strategy indirectly aims to close the attainment gap through quality early years provision. The revised child poverty strategy (Scottish Government, 2014) sees education as a way out of poverty. The proposal is that all the policies and Policy and intervention responses to the poverty attainment gap in Scotland 17 programmes aimed at tackling child poverty should think about how to close the attainment gap between rich and poor in schools, as a key priority for improving children’s life chances. If the revised strategy is to make a difference to the life of children from the most disadvantaged households, then greater commitment and emphasis needs to be placed on using evidence of what works, for whom, and in what context to inform activities aimed at closing the attainment gap.

Children and Young People’s Bill

The proposed Children and Young People’s Bill (2013)12 is in 13 parts and covers a wide range of children’s policy. It directly prompts local authorities to focus on the early years and highlights the need for interdisciplinary work across agencies to alleviate the impact of poverty on children’s life chances. Investment in early years education is seen as a way to reduce the need for interventions that address academic failure in later years and the Bill increases the entitlement of every child to nursery education from 450 hours to 600 hours, although it makes no correspondingly hard-andfast recommendations about quality of provision, which is also crucial. It takes into account the link between different agencies and programmes that affect children in Scotland, linking, for example, education and childcare together so that they may provide opportunities to alleviate disadvantage and break cycles of deprivation by allowing parents/carers to go out to work.

Parental Involvement Act

The Parental Involvement Act (2006) (Scottish Executive, 2006) gives parents the right to be more involved in their children’s learning and makes local authorities responsible for promoting parental involvement in learning at home, in home–school partnerships, and in promoting parental representation in schools.

 

Getting it Right for Every Child

GIRFEC is a national policy designed to ensure that all children and young people receive the help they need to be successful in life, including at school. It encourages collaborative inter-professional approaches to working with children and families and requires teachers to consider the barriers that pedagogies, curriculum design, learning environments or school systems may present to learning for individuals or groups, and to respond to these in dynamic and creative ways. GIRFEC is designed to focus attention on how schools might better meet the needs of all students, including educationally and economically disadvantaged students. Its SHANARRI Well-Being Indicators (Safe, Healthy, Active, Nurtured, Achieving, Respected, Responsible and Included) have encouraged a focus on disadvantaged groups.