The funding aims to improve both indoor and outdoor spaces in the school estate, with schools also encouraged to consider wider community needs.
First Minister Humza Yousaf set out details of the funding as he convened a national anti-poverty summit in Edinburgh on Wednesday.
The First Minister said, ‘Tackling poverty must be a shared priority for us all and this summit offers the opportunity to listen to a wide range of views to help us take the right action to drive down inequality across Scotland.
‘Helping families deal with cost of living pressures is one of our key priorities and providing further funding for affordable and accessible school age childcare will help deliver that.’
The fund will be limited to schools (both indoor and outdoor spaces) for year one, but schools will be encouraged to consider wider community needs and spaces where children want to be after school or during the holidays, particularly where links or partnerships already exist.
Local authorities will be required to show how they have worked in partnership with school age childcare and activities providers, ‘to be ambitious in their ideas’, and to define projects which will deliver benefits for children and families, particularly those from low-income areas.
Funded school age childcare is targeted at families on the lowest incomes, specifically the six priority family types identified in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan:
- Lone parent families
- minority ethnic families
- families with a disabled adult or child
- families with a mother under 25
- families with a child under one
- larger families.
Find out more about the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan here
