Early childhood development (ECD) is the term used by the South African government to encompass all services provided to children from birth to nine years old.
Children of this age group are provided for in many different settings, from playgroup to workplace, nursery to public school, and at home- and community-based sites. The settings vary but children have in common a need to learn. During that period they are at the most impressionable stage of their development and what they learn will be with them for the rest of their lives.
Some settings are more concerned with care than education, but this distinction means nothing to children. They learn what is offered to them, which is why it is so important to think about the educational quality provided.
A good care and education programme offers children, parents and the teachers who work with them the shared joy of being involved in young children’s learning. The experience can last for life because it aims to build on the interests, achievements and experiences of the individual child and his or her family.
Good programmes offer children a wide and rich educational and learning environment in which play, exploration and practical activities are the foundations of learning. The skilled teacher can help childÂren with their growth, which is vital for present and later educational achievement. Without an early start to care and education programmes of this kind, both attitudes to learning and learning itself can be put at risk.
Worrying statistics
But only a minority of South Africa’s children are enrolled in any such programmes. The education department’s Nationwide Audit of ECD Provisioning in 2000 showed there were 103Â 0473 learners enrolled at 24Â 482 ECD sites and they were cared for by 54Â 503 teachers. That is, less than one-sixth of seven million children in the nought to seven age group were in some sort of ECD provisioning.
The audit also showed that about 40% of the 24Â 482 ECD sites are in formal and informal urban areas. Approximately half of the ECD sites are in community settings, a third are home-based and less than 20% are in schools. More than 60% of the ECD sites have been operating for five years or longer and half of these sites have access to piped water, flushing toilets and mains electricity. About 10% have no access to these basic services.
The finances of these sites are not strong and viable. About 30% charge fees of less than R100 a month and at nearly half the sites fees are not paid regularly.
The average age of teachers at community-based sites is 39. Nearly all (99%) of these teachers are women and 60% of them are African. The majority of these teachers received their training from NGOs and are thus “unqualified” according to current department of education regulations. Of these teachers 20% have no training and about 10% of them are adequately qualified. There is a strong relationship between experience and qualifications, with most of those with the highest qualifications having five or more years’ experience in the ECD sector.
Teacher salaries are linked to qualifications. Almost 50% of the teachers earn less than R500 a month and most of these have had no training or have been trained by NGOs.
Regarding the impact of HIV/Aids, unemployment and poverty on ECD in particular, no real research has been done but organisations such as Cindi (Children in Distress Network) in KwaZulu-Natal have experience of the impact of HIV/Aids on children in general.
The sector faces even more challenges. ECD practitioners are still in the dark about the practicalities entailed in the Children’s Act, released in September 2009 and launched in Atteridgeville in May this year. The department of social development held information sessions before the Act was amended, but it needs to do more. A user-friendly version of the most important areas of the Act should be distributed to all ECD practitioners.
The second challenge derives from probable changes to the Setas (sector education, training and development authorities). The department of higher education and training, which assumed responsibility for Setas from the labour department in September last year, has proposed that all NGOs, trade unions, political parties and welfare organisations will act as employers in a new social security and development Seta.
Major challenge
The major challenge here would be the ability of the participating organisations to pay levies and to benefit from discretionary funds. Levies are paid by employers to the South African Revenue Service to promote and implement the National Development Skills Act. During a financial year, Setas apply for project funds for training and development from the department of higher education and training.
Surpluses that are not used are referred to as discretionary funds and are available to employers who pay levies. They have to submit a workplace skills plan to access this funding.
It is hoped the department’s intention to streamline the work of Setas will ensure that the capacity of NGOs and other organisations will be enhanced. Private training providers will remain with the current Education, Training and Development Practices Seta, to be renamed the Education Training Skills Development Seta.
But financial concerns remain pressing. From April this year the department of social development decreased the number of subsidies paid for a child a day to all centres nationally. This is very disturbing: it impacts on the ability of an ECD centre to respond to the physical and educational needs of the child.
Especially in this economic climate, parents have to work and so they entrust their children to ECD centres. Children are dropped off early and collected late after work. It then becomes the responsibility of ECD practitioners to provide a nutritious and balanced diet, educational equipment and learner support materials, clean water and electricity, if available.
Victor Modiba, a capital projects consultant to Tshikululu Investments, says: “South Africa, as a developing economy, needs to start responding to the pressures of being a global player by producing the highest levels of quality in education and health as one of its primary objectives.”
Greg J Duncan, an education professor at the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues analysed data on a nationally representative sample of people born between 1968 and 1975. Exchange Everyday, the United States’s newsletter on early childhood programmes worldwide, reported last month on Duncan’s research: “More so than any other periods of childhood, the researchers found poverty in early childhood was strongly linked to having lower earnings and fewer work hours 30 years later. The researchers estimated that a $3Â 000 annual increase in family income between a child’s prenatal year and fifth birthday is associated with a 19% increase in earnings and an additional 135 work hours a year for that child down the road.”
Our children dare not go the route of having to be impoverished now to suffer hardship in the future. If South Africa hopes to improve its educational system and have matric results that empower learners to be competent for the changing economic and global environment, ECD must once more be prioritised as the foundation and bedrock of our society.
Leonard Saul is the chief executive of the South African Congress for Early Childhood Development