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Discover the impact of the ECD Grant and its role in preparing children for academic success and societal benefits. Learn about the challenges faced and improvements made to ensure quality ECD services. Explore the role of ECD in education funding and infrastructure development.
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Select Committee on Appropriations Hearing on the Early Childhood Development Grant Presenter| National Treasury | 16 May 2018
Early Childhood Development (ECD) • Children have rapid cognitive and emotional development during the period from birth up to the start of Grade R, and as such, ECD plays a critical role in preparing a child to thrive in primary and secondary school. • ECD comprises of cognitive, emotional, physical, mental, communication, social and spiritual development of children. • Beside having a positive impact on a child's readiness to enter the schooling system, ECD can reduce the number of times a child repeats grades at advanced levels and minimise school dropout rates. • Over the long term, ECD programmes are likely to have many benefits, such as a productive workforce, reducing inequality across the richest and poorest quintiles and positive societal impacts. • Given the inadequate provision of ECD, particularly amongst poor households, a National Integrated Plan was adopted as a policy in South Africa in 2005 to ensure that each child has access to ECD even if there parents or caregivers cannot afford it. • National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy was approved by Cabinet in 2015
Early Childhood Development Grant (ECD) • Grant established in 2017/18 to extend access to early childhood development to South Africa’s children. • Purpose of grant • To increase the number of poor children accessing subsidised ECD services through partial care facilities through a subsidy component. • To assist existing conditionally registered partial care facilities providing an ECD programme to meet basic requirements in order to attain full registration through a maintenance component
ECD - Outputs • Subsidy component • Poor children that benefit from ECD services that are subsidised • Number of days subsidised • Number of attending ECD services in registered centres • Maintenance component • ECD centres conditionally registered as per registration framework • ECD centres assessed for the maintenance component • ECD centres upgraded from the maintenance component • ECD centres that moved from conditional registration to full registration as a result of the maintenance component
Challenges – Maintenance component • SLAs between the provincial DSD and ECD centres concluded late due to challenges with the format. The format is being reviewed by the DSD to address the challenges. • Some provinces subsidising ECD centres for less than the recommended 248 days, contend that they are doing so to extend services, however, actual children benefitting is much less than the target. • Late appointments due to delays in the recruitment process, with appointments being made as late as December 2017.
Challenges – Maintenance component • Appointment of staff to manage the grant has been slow in provinces. This makes management of the grant with the existing poor capacity in infrastructure units difficult. • Delays in the supply chain management processes for the appointment of contractors. Some contractors were only appointed in September • Limit of R100 000 per centre not sufficient in certain cases not adequate due to high quotations from contractors.
ECD in the Education sector • The purpose of the ECD programme in education is to provide support to grade R in public schools and grade R in ECD in centres in line with white paper 5 on ECD. ECD in Grade R is not funded from the ECD grant. • Government funding covers: • The payment of stipends for ECD practitioners • The payment of ECD educators • The purchase of Learner Teacher Support Material • Training of ECD staff, which includes the purchasing of training toolkits • Human Resources Development, which includes bursaries offered to employees who are interested in ECD • In addition, the ECD sub programme in infrastructure provides for the construction of new or additional grade R classrooms in schools. However, some provinces include their grade R infrastructure under the primary school infrastructure, i.e. it is not a separate item.
Conclusion ECD Grant • At an overall spending of 79 per cent, the grant performed relatively well for a new grant, performance should increase going forward, given the appointments made. Outstanding SLAs, however will have to be finalised. • Performance targets were met in most provinces, with exception of Eastern Cape and North West who under performed on the upgrading of centres. • The increase in the limit to be spent for each ECD centre (R180 000 from R100 000) will assist departments experiencing challenges on quotes. Education • Allocations to ECD programmes and ECD infrastructure are quite varied across provinces. • Spending and performance on the ECD programmes seem relatively good, partly due to a large part of the programme budget being allocated to COE. • With the exception of EC, provinces performed relatively well on the completion of new of additional grade R classrooms. There might not be a correlation with the spending on the ECD infrastructure programme, but this can be explained by provinces utilising the primary school infrastructure programme for instance.
