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We continue to develop proposals to pilot approaches to providing support for parents in low income households with the upfront costs of childcare during 2017-18. I will provide an update to the Education and Skills Committee when further details are available.

Current uptake calculations are based on the number of registrations for funded early learning and childcare, as collected from settings and agreed with each local authority. We are aware that improvements are needed to the data collection for this sector, and are planning on moving to an individual child level census, using data held by local authorities. By changing to a more detailed data collection, we will be able to resolve issues such as the double counting of children with split placements and reporting of cross boundary placements as we will have the necessary detail to address this issues. Uptake figures based on this more comprehensive data should be available in summer 2019.

The Scottish Government publishes annual total marketing spend, broken down by services provided by the Marketing Services Framework.

The spend on each of its advertising campaigns in each of the last five years, including campaigns to promote the extension to free Early Learning and Childcare entitlement, can be found via the following links:

2011-12:

2012-13:

2013-14:

The MA target for 2016-17 is outlined in the Skills Development Scotland Letter of Guidance 2016-17 as 26,000 starts .

The target for 2017-18 is 27,000 and includes higher level MAs at levels 4 and 5 and Graduate Level Apprenticeships.

The ambition is for the delivery of 30,000 apprentice starts including higher Graduate Level Apprenticeships, by 2020.

In August 2016, 351 young people had started a Foundation Apprenticeship and from August 2017 the number of places available will increase to 1,900. By the end of 2019, up to 5,000 Foundation Apprenticeship places will be available for young people.

Further Apprenticeships targets will be subject to Scottish Government annual spending reviews.

The Scottish Government publishes annual total marketing spend, broken down by services provided by the Marketing Services Framework.

The spend on each of its advertising campaigns in each of the last five years is found in the following links:

2011-12:

2012-13:

2013-14:

2014-15:

Statistics published by Skills Development Scotland on 14 February 2017 showed that there had been 18,245 MA starts by the end of Quarter 3 2016-17. SDS is due to publish statistics under Official Statistics protocols with the year end (Quarter 4 2016-17) position on 6 June 2017.

2019-20.

I will set out our plans for providing 1,140 hours of free early learning and childcare, and an update on progress made so far, as part of my statement to Parliament on 23 March in response to our Blueprint 2020 consultation.

Skills Development Scotland are currently finalising the Skills Investment Plan (SIP) with partner organisations. We expect the SIP to be published within the next month.

As I announced at the Education and Skills Committee on 8 March 2017, the extended consultation on the presumption of mainstreaming guidance will begin on 19 May and finish at the end of August 2017. Once due consideration has been given to the consultation responses, revised guidance will be introduced by the end of 2017.