Scotland has its first children's and early years minister following the election of the Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond as First Minister.
Mr Salmond included the newly-created post in his new cabinet named last week and appointed MSP Adam Ingram as the first children and early years minister.
Over the past two years Mr Ingram has worked closely on the education committee with MSP Fiona Hyslop, who was named cabinet member for education and lifelong learning after serving as shadow minister for four years.
Speaking to Nursery World, Mr Ingram said that the government would work towards a more family-centred childcare model, focusing on early intervention.
He said, 'We hope to be making early progress on the extension of free provision. What we are proposing is a 50 per cent increase in free nursery education, which would mean an increase from 400 to 600 hours per year.
'Child poverty is probably the biggest issue we need to deal with. The main challenge is to do something about the flat-lining of the bottom 20 per cent of children who underachieve at school and leave with no qualifications.'
'We think more emphasis needs to be put on early intervention. These problems need to be addressed almost from birth. We'd like to move towards a similar system as in Scandinavian countries, where good childcare is available from the point of maternity leave. But this will not happen overnight - it took them 20 years.'
Mr Ingram also highlighted workforce development as an area earmarked for funding. 'We want to develop an early years career structure, not just for teachers but other childcare professionals as well. In Scandinavia early years teachers have a high status, while traditionally in this country early years is seen as a type of Cinderella service where people join and leave quite quickly.'
He added, 'We feel that it is very important that every child has access to a nursery teacher, particularly in areas of great deprivation.'
Paula Evans, policy and parliamentary information officer at Children in Scotland, said, 'We are really pleased. Just in creating this post the party reflects the importance it places on these issues. It's important to end that conceptual divide between early education and childcare as well.'
Irene Audain, chief executive of the Scottish Out-of-School Care Network, said, 'One of the interesting things about the construction of the new parliament is that it has to be a consensus government. We're lucky that all the major parties seem to agree on putting money into childcare. It's an opportunity for organisations like us to successfully lobby across the parties for investment.'
