ositive early childhood development in their programmes of work. Policies such as the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) Education 2030 (2015), the World Bank’s Learning for All (2011) and policy drivers such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) paper, How’s Life? (2015) also, visibly place children’s rights and nurturing approaches within the health and wellbeing agenda as high importance. How’s Life? states that ‘giving children a good start in life is important for wellbeing here and now, but it also improves a child’s chances later’ (2015, p. 7). Rizvi and Lingard (2010) suggest that policies are created and written to guarantee consistency in their delivery and whilst these policies demonstrate a desire for equity, equality and social justice within education whilst showing strong links to nurture and health and wellbeing, they lack consideration into execution and moderation at national and local level. Rizvi and Lingard (2010) also suggest that whilst policies are written with intended consequences in mind, unintended consequences may also come to light bringing silent tensions with them. Policies should then be critically analysed to determine how they are represented with education and how they impact on strategic leadership. Although the World Bank has set clear long-term strategies in place, backed up by data and additional International Development Association (IDA) credits have been pledged to those countries falling behind the targets set by the World Bank, there needs to be clear accountability measures in place at both national and local level.

The World Health Organisation’s Nurturing Care for Early Childhood Development: A Framework for linking SURVIVE and THRIVE to TRANSFORM health and human potential (2018) reports that all children require nurturing care to help them reach their full potential and have set out 17 global targets to be achieved by 2030. Whilst these goals are ambitious and aspirational in nature, again it can be said that the implementation and success of the policy, will only be effective through possible adaptation, careful implementation, delivery and monitoring at national and local levels. The policy also states that governments should ensure equitable coverage of interventions should be put in place, mainly for those children and young people in excluded or marginalised groups. The Scottish government seek to close the poverty related equity gap with the introduction of the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) by providing funding to schools focussing on children and young people who are eligible for such interventions and those in receipt of Free Meal Entitlement (FME). With accountability for Pupil Equity Fund spending resting on individual schools, the question of whether the Scottish Government can effectively measure the impact of positive interventions and confidently discuss the success of such funding is raised. Since the funding has only been in place since 2017 sustained impact across improvements in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing may not be able to be fully demonstrated in such a short timeframe.

Global ideas around nurture and the health and wellbeing agenda directly influence Scotland’s national policy landscape as the context dimension of current educational policy drivers focusses around the achievement of equity and equality for all children and young people. Written in response to the OECD report Synergies for Better Learning: An International Perspective on Evaluation and Assessment (2013), it could be said that the Nation