The recently published Care Inspectorate Statistics show that once again, the number of out of school care services has increased: the number of main service out of school care services is 748, an increase of 10 on the previous year.

266 services are providing out of school care as an additional service to their main one, this is comprised of 240 nurseries, 9 children and family centres, 9 holiday playschemes, 4 creches and 4 playgroups.

Adding the main service OSC with the additional service OSC gives a total of 1014 OSC services in Scotland.

The total capacity of registered places in main service OSC is 33,440 an increase of 3.5% on the previous year, and the average capacity in a service is 45 places- this is also an increase by 1 place on the previous year. The number of children registered with main service OSC has also increased by 1,050 to 53,600.

The voluntary sector remains the largest provider of main service OSC at 49%, this is followed by the private sector (38%) and then the public sector (13%).

There are 661 breakfast clubs which are all additional services, the majority of these are provided by the out of school care sector.

Despite the growth in services and breakfast clubs the overall numbers of holiday services is now at a low of 472. This is comprised of 39 main service holiday playschemes, and the remainder are provided as an additional service delivered by 325 OSC, 87 nurseries, 9 creches, 8 Children and Family Centres, and 4 playgroups.

The table below shows the number of main service OSC and holiday playschemes per local authority:

• Local authority
• Holiday playschemes
• Out of School Care

• Aberdeen City
• 3
• 41

• Aberdeenshire
• 5
• 41

• Angus
• 3
• 15

• Argyll & Bute
• 0
• 6

• Clackmannanshire
• 0
• 5

• Dumfries & Galloway
• 0
• 4

• Dundee City
• 2
• 21

• East Ayrshire
• 1
• 10

• East Dunbartonshire
• 2
• 28

• East Lothian
• 1
• 21

• East Renfrewshire
• 3
• 24

• Edinburgh, City of
• 3
• 90

• Falkirk
• 0
• 23

• Fife
• 1
• 66

• Glasgow City
• 2
• 95

• Highland
• 3
• 19

• Inverclyde
• 1
• 6

• Midlothian
• 0
• 16

• Moray
• 1
• 1

• Nah-Eileanan Siar
• 0
• 0

• North Ayrshire
• 1
• 12

• North Lanarkshire
• 0
• 34

• Orkney Islands
• 1
• 1

• Perth & Kinross
• 2
• 19

• Renfrewshire
• 1
• 36

• Scottish Borders
• 0
• 14

• Shetland Islands
• 1
• 2

• South Ayrshire
• 0
• 13

• South Lanarkshire
• 2
• 37

• Stirling
• 0
• 11

• West Dunbartonshire
• 0
• 14

• West Lothian
• 0
• 23

• Scotland
• 39
• 748

Care Inspectorate Early Learning and Childcare Statistics 2018: download the full report