Flexibility in childcare services increased last year, with a higher proportion of providers offering longer opening hours and school holiday sessions, a new report has found.
The Care Inspectorate said there was a "considerable increase" in the opening times of many daycare services such as nurseries and playgroups.
It found more than half of all nurseries are now offering both part-day and whole-day sessions, up from 49.5% in 2015 to 54.3% the following year.
The proportion of local authority nurseries offering this choice rose from 25.9% in 2015 to 34.1% in 2016.
Meanwhile, the proportion of playgroups offering whole-day sessions increased from 7% to 12.1%.
The findings were published in the regulator's latest review of the availability and quality of early learning and childcare for children across Scotland.
The publication includes information about childminders, playgroups, out-of-school care and different kinds of nurseries, including private and local authority.
As well as a rise in nurseries offering whole-day sessions, the report found that, in general, the proportion of services offering longer opening times to cover breakfast and after school hours increased in 2016.
Almost two thirds of daycare providers offered a service before school time in 2016, up from just over half in 2015.
Just over four out of five services provided care during after-school hours, a slight increase on the previous year.
In general, the proportion of services offering care during school holidays also increased in 2016.
However, local authority nurseries and playgroups had the lowest provision, with more than 90% not operating during the holidays.
The improvements in opening hours and choice of sessions follow complaints that some parents are struggling to access the childcare they are entitled to.
In 2014, the Scottish Government increased entitlement to free childcare for three to five-year-olds from 475 to 600 hours per year, and expanded it to some two-year-olds.
The funded entitlement will increase further to 1140 hours by 2020.
Funded places are provided in council nurseries and in some private providers.
The Care Inspectorate found that 252,200 children were registered with early learning and childcare services at December 31 last year, an increase of 1.1% from the 249,400 children registered in 2015.
Karen Reid, chief executive of the regulator, said: "As funded hours for early learning and childcare increases, I hope these statistics will be useful for councils and providers in planning how early learning and childcare will expand and be available to even more children."
ends
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here