I was delighted to see the space allocated to early childhood development (ECD) and some of the challenges facing the sector in your January edition.
The front-page article, ‘Suffer, little children”, referred, however, to the issue of training for ECD practitioners and specifically the practitioners at the two pre-schools in the Free State visited by your journalist, Thabo Mohlala. The practitioners at these two schools are trained by an NGO called Ntataise. I was dismayed to see that the article linked this training with an audit carried out by Idasa (the Institute for Democracy in South Africa), which, according to the article, found that ‘most ECD practitioners are poorly trained”.
To the best of my knowledge, Idasa did not include pre-schools in this area of the Free State in its audit. I would therefore like to stress that Ntataise’s training is extremely effective and well received. It is acknowledged as being of an extremely high standard.
For the record, Ntataise received funding to upgrade seven pre-schools in Rammulotsi, of which Kamohelo is one. In 2004, Kamohelo had its premises improved. Furthermore, the school does have a functional management committee and a constitution.
Jane Evans and Zunelle de Ru
Ntataise