Experts and practitioners involved in early childhood development (ECD) have raised serious concerns about the government’s lack of early childhood interventions in the years preceding Grade R.
Their main gripe is that, despite compelling international evidence that the provision of ECD education plays a significant role in preparing children for schooling in their formative stages, the government continues to focus the available ECD resources on Grade R, the year prior to Grade 1. ECD refers to the educational phase of children from birth to the age of nine.
Critics of the current state of affairs say, because of the neglect of ECD, most children enter Grade 1 without having been sufficiently exposed to a structured learning environment. This means that foundation-phase teachers face a particulary challenging task to first prepare children for the academic challenges of formal schooling during the first few months before they can start with their teaching. The problem of underprepared Grade 1s has also been highlighted by the fact that the highest repetition rate has traditionally been in the first year of formal schooling.
Eric Atmore, director of the Centre for Early Childhood Development and national director of the National Early Childhood Development Alliance, argues that the recent poor performance of Grade 3 pupils in numeracy and literacy suggests these learners were not exposed to a learning situation in their early years. And yet ‘intervention is needed even before children reach Grade R”, he said.
Elsie Calitz of the Association for the Education and Care of Young Children says many of the problems in the education system emanates from the lack of proper preparation in pre-schools.
‘We do not lose the battle for maths and science in matric; we lose it in preschool.” She added: ‘With few exceptions, there is very little meaningful involvement by the Department of Education in ECD”. Calitz trains preschool and foundation-phase teachers through the association.
But Marie-Louise Samuels, director of ECD in the Department of Education, feels the blame is misplaced. She said the department provides resources to Grade R as part of its mandate to do so and that the provision of ECD involves the departments of health and social services as partners. ‘Our responsibility is to provide education to children in Grade R and upwards. Therefore, the Department of Education cannot be singled out for blame alone, as the provision of ECD education involves other players,” said Samuels.
But Pam Picken, director of KwaZulu-Natal-based Training and Resources in Early Education (Tree), said this is where the problem lies. ‘The thing is nobody [between the three departments] really focuses on ensuring that we meet the needs of our children.” Unless there is a focused way of intervention, ‘our children are at risk and need proper and caring environment,” said Picken.
In some areas community initiated ECDs collapse because of lack of financial support because parents send their children to Grade R where they are assured of free schooling and food. These outfits are forced to charge nominal fees to survive, but when parents take their children elsewhere, they are forced to close shop.
She said these are the grassroots initiatives that must be supported because they ‘are best placed to address a wide range of social problems such as HIV/Aids” that most communities battle with.
She said community-based ECDs also help ease the burden on grandmothers and children who have to look after their siblings orphaned by the Aids pandemic. Some of these grannies are too old to perform these tasks or they may simply want to focus on other household tasks. She said in situations where children raise their siblings, most of them are forced to leave schooling.
A national survey conducted by the Centre for Early Childhood Development in 2001 revealed that 90% of early learning in 23 482 sites was provided by community-based ECD groups. This means 1 030 473 young children benefitted from the programme but that 83% of children (5,3-million) still do not benefit from ‘a structured early learning programme in a positive learning environment”.
[Therefore] ‘the national ECD policy is flawed. The system does little to increase access or to improve quality of early childhood development programmes, the resources provided are minuscule and the implementation plans, where they exist in the provinces, are severely flawed,” said Atmore.
Taking community care to the next level
Losing a job is a traumatising experience as it often signals the beginning of misery and hardship, writes Thabo Mohlala. But when Kedibone Betha got retrenched from her technician’s job at an electrical company in 2004, she did not want to swell the ranks of the unemployed and decided to establish an early childhood development (ECD) centre. The idea did not only emanate from her love for children but also the desire to help her community to deal with the problem of infants left at home without adult supervision.
‘After I was laid off, I decided I was not going to wallow in self-pity but kept myself busy by minding children in my neighbourhood. I always had soft spot for children; they really bring out the best in me,” says Betha.
Known as Mmuso wa Bona (children’s kingdom) the facility is situated just a stone’s throw from the banks of the Jukskei River in Diepsloot, an informal settlement north west of Johannesburg. When the centre opened its doors late last year, there were only four children, but the numbers swelled rapidly and it now boasts total enrolment of 153 children, aged six months and upwards. It provides a much-needed facility to parents who are working or who are looking for employment and have nowhere to leave their children.
Betha’s love for children was nurtured when she used to volunteer her services to a local church’s Sunday school. Convinced that the idea of an ECD would work, Betha approached the local pastor, Thabo Mavuso, who agreed to accommodate them temporarily in the marquee which the church also uses to holds its services.
Says pastor Mavuso: ‘This facility represents community initiatives that we are presently undertaking in this area and also encourage. We welcome them in our midst because we value their contribution to the community.”
But as soon as they started to admit children, reality hit home. They had to contend with a range of teething and operational challenges, chief of which was, and still is, funding. Betha says although most parents in the area are not working, they are forced to charge a nominal fee.
‘We charge R80 a month for children from six months to two years old and R50 for those aged two years upwards. This essentially goes towards food. We provide two meals a day: breakfast and lunch,” says Betha. She says this makes it difficult for them to buy the necessary equipment such as toys needed for a ‘structured learning environment”.
The growth of the facility brought with it added responsibilities and challenges and ‘we were compelled to employ two ladies to assist us”, says Betha. One cooks meals while the other looks after the youngest children. ‘We pay R500 for the cook and R800 for the ‘nurse”. She says the latter is paid more because she performs a number of tasks such as bathing, feeding, changing and washing nappies for the youngest ones.
Another major headache for Betha is that they have no formal training in childcare. ‘We never received any formal training in childcare. It was only towards the end of last year that we went for training in HIV/Aids and a crash course on how to teach young children,” Betha says.
The other priority is to secure a suitable and serviced site where they can build their own decent structure. The site where the centre is located does not have running water and is also dangerously close to the flood plain, therefore creating serious safety problems for the children. She says poverty and HIV/Aids are pervasive in the area with most children infected or orphaned. ‘This stretches us even further as we have to ensure that these children get social grants. And to get their paper work sorted out can be such an arduous process,” says Betha.
Betha is disappointed by the lack of involvement of parents from the community. ‘I tried to invite them to come over personally and just see what transpires at the facility. I feel as parents they are important stakeholders in the education of their children.” She believes this could be linked to the fact that majority of parents who bring their children there are illiterate.
But this year she will leave no stone unturned to get the centre registered. ‘My objective is to see this facility growing to its potential.
‘I want to continue to provide this service because it is more needed in this environment and I believe we can achieve more if we can get the necessary support,” says Betha.
According to legislation, ECD centres have to be registered with their provincial department of education. If a centre is on a provincial department’s records, it could benefit from interventions to improve the service they render to the community.