Johannesburg - Where should small children spend some of their crucial early years, and who is paying for this?
These are some of the issues over which several thousand early childhood development (ECD) practitioners protested about in central Joburg recently, marching from Newtown to the Gauteng Premier’s Office to raise their grievances and hand over a memo.
It’s one of the matters that new Premier David Makhura will now have on his desk.
“We are crying that the government must pay our teachers and not take the babies,” said Emma Mogodi, an ECD practitioner from a centre in Tshepisong West that has 31 children.
“The schools are taking them from four years upwards, but they are supposed to be at the (ECD) centres.”
The ECD practitioners are opposing the government policy of encouraging under-6s to go to grades R and RR at primary schools.
The marchers raised concerns over the children’s welfare and fears for their own livelihoods.
They spoke with concern for small children who now have to travel further to get to formal schools instead of the ECD centres near their homes; for those children’s bewilderment in schools with much bigger children; and the lack of aftercare.
“This often leaves them home alone in the afternoons and school holidays.
“The government must bring back our children,” said Thabisile Mthabela, a regional executive member of the South African Congress for Early Childhood Development, which organised the march. She called for better support from the government for the sector.
“I love the children. That’s why I’m so angry,” said Doris Majozi, who runs an ECD centre in Pimville, Soweto. There are four adults at her centre, taking care of 40 children.
She said moving the four- and five-year-old children to primary schools put them in a less caring environment and often made those children upset and angry.
“What can you teach an angry child? At the end of the day, you’ve got an angry nation,” Majozi said.
“When she wets herself at school, they tell her ‘this is not a creche’.
“The child develops a hatred for school.”
The movement of the children to the schools is much cheaper for parents, but means a real loss of income for the ECD sector.
There were repeated calls for the government to provide funding to the ECD sector.
Lindy Harris, the director of Flying Children, an NGO that trains and mentors ECD practitioners, said while the intentions might be good, the reality was that most schools weren’t able to give such small children the care they needed, and the classes were often too big.
“There’s a lot more to it than just playing. Lots.”
The Star