E Cape programme to boost early learning
A TRADITIONAL council, a nonprofit organisation and a university have joined forces to prioritise early learning for children.
The programme by the Gompo Traditional Council, Blue Crane Foundation and the University of Fort Hare is aimed at empowering community structures involved in early childhood development (ECD) centres through capacity training.
The initiative will see hundreds of ECD managers, teachers and school governing bodies being equipped with managerial skills, teachers obtaining suitable qualifications and books being sourced for children to promote the culture of reading.
The programme has already been rolled out at 45 preschools in East London where the centres participated in the training offered by Fort Hare.
The training includes basic ECD training for new teachers and principals to manage ECD programmes.
Speaking to the Dispatch, Dr Namhla Sotuku, from Fort Hare, said the objective was to make ECD centres more practical and to lay a solid learning foundation for children.
Sotuku said some of the challenges identified were parents’ and families’ lack of involvement in their children’s development, unqualified ECD practitioners and the need to improve the quality of service offered by ECD programmes.
Fort Hare recently established a centre for excellence to address challenges related to ECD.
The centre will focus on research, teaching, as well as scholarly and community engagement.
Sotuku said the outcome of engagements and “trans-disciplinary” research to be conducted by investigators from different disciplines, would be used to inform ECD policy implementations, intervention programmes and practices.
To address the issue of unqualified practitioners, Sotuku said they were planning to introduce short courses, NQF Level 6 diplomas and NQF Level 7 degrees in early childhood care and education.
The centre will be based in a building, now under construction, next to the university’s faculty of education campus in East London.
Some of its features will include a model of a pre-school that will be used to provide a site to test effective practices in child development in classrooms, and video conferencing facilities.
Blue Crane Foundation director Galit Cohen said there was substantial international evidence which indicated that providing structured and quality ECD services and programmes to preschool children created better societies.
“This evidence indicates that providing appropriate cognitive stimulation, nutrition, care and health services during this critical development period results in increased primary school enrolment, enhanced school performance, lowered repetition and drop-out rates, reduced juvenile crime rates and [increased] social productivity in adulthood,” Cohen said.
Gompo Traditional Council head Chief Mthuthuzeli Makinana, said lack of managerial skills of people whom government entrusted with the responsibility of grooming future leaders, prompted the council’s involvement in this programme. —