The future of early childhood development (ECD) is one focus of a recent independent analysis of the 2003 national education budget. Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) researcher Russell Wildeman draws attention to the phasing out of the ECD grant this year.
The scale of ECD’s focus is vast. ‘Approximately 40% of young children in South Africa grow up in conditions of abject poverty and neglect,†according to the Department of Education’s 2001 White Paper on ECD. ‘Children raised in such poor families are most at risk of infant death, low birth-weight, stunted growth, poor adjustment to school, increased repetition and school dropout.â€
The Treasury then made special ECD funding available in the form of conditional grants – that is, funding that provinces could not absorb into their education budgets for use as they pleased, but had to earmark for ECD only.
But the ECD grant will be phased out in 2003/04, Wildeman notes. This means that provinces will become the main providers of ECD services via normal budgetary means.
The department has requested a one year extension of this grant, an expression of ‘concerns about the sustainability of ECD provisioning post-2003/04â€, Wildeman writes.
The department has not had a response yet to its request for an extension, says education deputy director general Duncan Hindle. ‘But the fact that this is being considered does reflect a concern that provincial education budgets may not be sufficient to fully implement the rollout of Grade R in accordance with the White Paper’s projections.â€
The underlying logic in phasing out the grant is that by now provinces should have incorporated this spending into their budgets, Wildeman says. ‘But I seriously doubt it. And some provinces will be more affected than others – the traditionally poorer ones such as the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga, for example.â€