About 1.3 million children in the country aged 3 to 5 years are not attending any form of early learning while only 45% of those who do are developmentally on track.
The portfolio committee on basic education heard this yesterday during a briefing on the migration of early childhood development (ECD) from the Department of Social Development to the Department of Basic Education (DBE).
The migration process was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his 2019 State of the Nation Address, in which he said: “Over the next five years, we will focus our attention on expanding access to early childhood development and improving early-grade reading, where we are already beginning to see progress.”
The committee was not happy with the progress update, as it raised questions about whether it was implementable.
Committee chairperson Bongiwe Mbinqo-Gigaba said the intentions of the migration were honourable. However, serious questions remained about the readiness and preparedness for the move.
“We need to be honest. When the migration was conceived, did you consider if it would be implementable? We need to be honest where there are shortcomings.
“What are the plans for learners with special needs in ECD? These plans are clearly noteworthy with great intentions, but we are concerned about the planning phase prior to migration,” said Mbinqo-Gigaba.
The committee was informed by the DBE that the current funding for ECD was inadequate.
“The overall ECD budget for the 2023/24 financial year was R3912 billion; this entailed R205 million in the national Budget vote, R1184 billion in the conditional grant, and R2523 billion through the Equitable Share.”
The DBE said that the ECD allocation was insufficient to cover all children currently in ECD programmes and eligible to benefit from the ECD subsidy.
“A substantial increase in the ECD allocation is required to cover all children eligible to receive the subsidy, as access is continuously expanded.”
The committee heard that the mass registration drive would target 20000 unregistered ECD programmes and provide them with conditional registration for one year.
During this year, the DBE and municipalities would support ECD programmes to become compliant through the provision of pre-registration support packs, after which they will be required to apply for full registration.
A legal researcher at the Equal Education Law Centre, Tatiana Kazim, said that while they noted the commitment of the DBE to ensure universal access to quality early learning opportunities, more needed to be done to adequately protect young children’s rights and secure their futures.
“The DBE’s registration drive may assist unregistered ECD programmes to get one step closer to unlocking the government subsidy.
“However, as the DBE itself notes, this will not guarantee funding. An increase in the number of eligible children requires a concomitant increase in the budget for the subsidy. This is not on the cards according to the most recent Budget,” said Kazim.
She said it was important to note that the subsidy was frozen at just R17 a child a day since 2019.
“The lack of adequate state funding and support has serious consequences for young children.
“Of the fortunate minority of children who do access an ECD programme, more than half nonetheless fail to thrive by age five.
“One in every four children is stunted, 80% of Grade 4 learners cannot read and understand what they read,” she said.
"We cannot keep expecting the ECD workforce to nurture our youngest children without proper state funding or support.
“Perhaps more importantly, the registration drive will offer little assistance to the 1.3 million children aged three to five who are not accessing an ECD programme at all.
“It is concerning that only a small portion of the ECD conditional grant—less than R157 million—is going towards establishing new, lost-cost ECD programmes for under-resourced communities.”
Tracey Chambers, Grow ECD co-founder, said the recent Budget speech announced an increase of only R1.59 billion for the ECD grant, which was less than the projected R1.9 billion for 2024 that was promised in last year's budget.
As a result, the ECD sector was in even greater need of funding and access to alternative sources of capital.
“Almost 60% of ECD programmes are not registered with the Department of Basic Education and so cannot access the government’s ECD subsidy.
“Although these programmes desperately need funding for pre-registration support and improvements to their infrastructure so that they can qualify to register, only 10% of the ECD grant over the next three years will be dedicated to helping ECD programmes register,” said Chambers.