The urgent need for
South Africa has set itself the ambitious target of achieving universal and equitable early childhood development (ECD) by 2030, with plans to provide every child up to five years of age with a minimum of two years of preprimary school exposure before they enter basic schooling.
As the foundation phase in the education value chain, ECD has been found to deliver lasting benefit to pupils, particularly the poor and disadvantaged. Research shows that pupils with sufficient exposure to ECD have better attainment levels and cognitive abilities, and that the return on investment in ECD programmes can far exceed that of economic development projects.
For parents, and women in particular, ECD can facilitate economic and social inclusion as it enables them to take up jobs instead of having to look after children at home.
Much of South Africa’s education challenges, marked in part by poor literacy and numeracy aptitude, as well as high attrition rates, can be attributed to limited-quality foundation-phase education. Just over a third (two million out of six million) of the children eligible for ECD enrolment have access to out-of-home early learning centres that offer quality educational programmes.
Enrolment and access levels are acutely and undesirably lower for children in poor communities, where early education interventions are needed the most.
A larger proportion of the children fortunate enough to be enrolled are cared for in home- or communitybased facilities that are poorly structured and equipped, and thus unsuited to providing quality education-oriented ECD programmes. A recent audit found that 70% of ECD facilities are not suited to providing the necessary level of services.
The glaringly high levels of ECD under enrolment are not a reflection of a shortage of facilities, but instead an indictment of policy failure. There are as many ECD centres as there are