Educators due to teach in the new reception-year classes have been promised a pittance by the department. Julia Grey reports
Picture this: an educator at a public primary school gets down to the business of teaching grade ones, while in the classroom next door, the grade R teacher guides the five- and six-year-olds through their first year of school. The grade one teacher is employed by the provincial department of education and makes around R7 000 per month. The grade R educator – paid by the school’s governing body (SGBs) with help from a government grant – could get as little as R1 000.
Not only that: these ECD practitioners will not have access to benefits like a pension, medical aid or maternity leave.
This is one of the major concerns of critics of the white paper on early childhood development (ECD), released in May this year. And this is no futuristic scenario: establishing grade R classes at public primary schools is going to increase, starting in some provinces next year.
Disturbing to many is the way policy makers congratulate themselves on the fact that “expanding the provision of the reception year in the manner proposed in the white paper will cost much less than was initially thought”. As Eric Atmore from the Centre for Early Childhood Development puts it, “it is a disservice to young children if this ‘affordability’ is obtained by paying educators in grade R about one-tenth of what other educators are being paid”.
Director of ECD in the national Department of Education, Marie Louise Samuels, agrees that this is not ideal, but is what the department can afford. She also makes the point that the subsidy is a huge improvement on what ECD practitioners currently take home: “You talk to the practitioners who earned R1 000 in our pilot project, and they will tell you how it far exceeds what others earn in the sector”.
The average monthly pay for ECD practitioners at present is R600.
Samuels adds that, “It is not our intention to say we’re only prepared to pay these people R1 000. The intention is to say we will support the SGB employing the ECD practitioner with this subsidy,” says Samuels.
In the case of the poorest schools, additional subsidies will be provided.
Mary Johnson, ECD education specialist from the South African Democratic Teachers Union, is concerned that “parents and communities will have to carry a huge burden because of a lack of funding”.
Johnson insists that “whatever the budget is, it’s inadequate to meet the needs of the six million children involved.” She adds that the lack of financing will mean “the ECD sector, which has traditionally been the Cinderella of education, is likely to remain just that.”
And the grumbles get louder when those in ECD consider the big picture of government funding: “For the price of one Corvette, the government could afford to put every five-year-old into an ECD programme tomorrow,” says Atmore.
– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, December 2001.