Cape Town - Hundreds of pre-school teachers took to Cape Town’s streets to demand the government’s support to improve children’s education.
About 600 teachers, all Western Cape members of the national South African Congress Early Childhood Development (SACECD), walked to Parliament on Friday to hand over a memorandum outlining their concerns and demands.
SACECD represents 1 500 pre-school centres in the province, which prepares 250 000 children for primary school. Its memorandum raises “numerous concerns and complaints from its members” and was addressed to the departments of social development, health and education.
Randall van den Heever, a director at the national department of basic education, accepted the document and said the department would respond to it in 14 days.
Augusta Brandt, the congress’s provincial chairwoman said early childhood development (ECD) centres were a “public good” but the government was not assisting them.
Their challenges include ensuring that teachers have access to relevant qualifications at an affordable cost.
Most ECD centres in low-income areas operate independently and parents of children at these centres are often unable to pay school fees. This meant teachers were often unable to afford upgrading their qualifications.
The memorandum recommends that the government should “reinstate NGOs to deliver qualification training” for ECD teachers. “Recognition of prior learning and skills to access further qualifications”, is another recommendation.
The congress wants the government’s assistance to subsidise fees for children and make more sites available in areas where needed. It also wants “funding for toy libraries”.
The SACECD said: “The decision by the department of education to reallocate all Grade R classes from ECD independent sites to primary schools without consultation and devoid of consideration of the quality work being done, led to ECD practitioners losing employment status.”
Fazlyn Ajam, who runs an ECD centre in Heideveld, said local government officials also needed to make it easier for teachers to register preschools.
“You have to apply with the City of Cape Town when you want to open a creche. The criteria for zoning is ridiculous,” said Ajam.
Melissa Jacobs, who works at an ECD centre in Hanover Park, said
most qualified teachers left the ECD sector to teach at primary schools because salaries were low at pre-schools.
Weekend Argus