Ft Hare commits millions to EL
Childhood centre aims to improve early development
WHEN Fort Hare committed to making East London its second home it meant business – the university is injecting millions of rands, revamping several buildings and constructing new ones in lower Oxford Street.
In doing so it joins several other big businesses, including retail stores such as Jet, vehicle sales outlets such as Toyota and Volkswagen, as well as furniture stores such as MacNamees and Bradlows, in bringing new life to the city centre.
The Saturday Dispatch can reveal that the latest development currently underway is an R80-million Early Childhood Development Centre (ECDC) building which is located off Fleet Street, opposite Home Affairs regional offices.
Fort Hare University spokesman Khotso Moapi said the Department of Higher Education and Training “has made available a total sum of R47-million to complete construction of the physical space”.
“The total construction cost based on current designs has been estimated at R67-million while the furniture and fittings for the building is estimated at R1.8-million,” said Moabi.
“The mission of the ECDC is to advance knowledge of the development of young children in their communities in the region, and to use this knowledge for building capabilities and transforming public childhood provisioning for social justice and achieving meaningful outcomes.”
The project complements a call President Jacob Zuma made in 2014, for the state to inject more resources into preschools, as part of early childhood development.
The vision saw the inclusion of Grade R as part of mainstream education in all public schools in phases immediately thereafter.
Moabi said UFH had embarked on a journey to establish and develop a centre of excellence in research, teaching and scholarly engagement in the field of early childhood development.
He said the centre also represented the university’s commitment to developing a niche academic capacity that could contribute to addressing the key questions and challenges related to a child’s development in South Africa.
“It aims to extend its current academic focus on children in the formal schooling system (5–9 years, including children in Grade R) to children from birth to four years outside of the formal schooling system.”
The launch of the centre comes a year after research conducted by Stellenbosch academics revealed that Eastern Cape lower primary school pupils were struggling to read and count. The research revealed that central to the problem was the use of second language as medium of instruction.
Moabi said African children in poor communities and living in rural areas were far more likely to be excluded from any form of ECD support than those from affluent communities in urban areas.
He said poverty and inequality remained key factors that conditioned patterns of access and the development outcomes achieved.
“For the country to meet its legal and developmental obligations, massive scaling up of the reach of the support provided to young children is necessary, with enhancement of the quality of support available.
“It is also necessary to do so in a manner that privileges those young children currently excluded from the reach of ECD support if patterns of unequal access and outcomes are to be transformed. This is the challenge the ECDC aims to address,” said Moabi.