Address by the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor MP, at launch of the Absa-Sowetan Early Childhood Development (ECD) Awards, Johannesburg

Riah Phiyega, Group Executive Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), Government Relations and Corporate Social Investment of Absa
Thabo Leshilo, Editor in Chief of the Sowetan and Sunday World and all other Leonard Saul of the South African Congress for ECD
Mabel Rantla of the Office on the Rights of the Child in the Presidency
Representatives of the Departments of Education, Social Development and Health
Ladies and gentlemen

A range of research studies and policy declarations assert that early childhood education makes a real and lasting difference in children's lives. This poses a challenge to all public systems of education, in that they have to ensure that early childhood development becomes a core and integrated part of education provision.

United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation's (Unesco's) 2007 Education for All global monitoring report is devoted to early childhood care and learning, as that is the first of six Education for All goals. All countries have committed to achieving the goals by 2015. The report indicates that Latin America and the Caribbean lead the developing world in the provision of pre-school education. Sub-Saharan Africa is lagging behind all regions of the world.

South Africa has several Early Childhood Development (ECD) related policies that span a range of departments. In 2005 we adopted the integrated ECD Plan for under four year olds. Implementing departments are Health, Education, and Social Development. The key objective of the plan is to ensure that ECD sites become core service provision centres for children, and to meet our 2010 target of 1 million children in sites that are registered to offer quality care and support. And 19 000 practitioners will be trained and equipped to be employed or self employed in this vital sector.

The demand for pre-school education and care is growing as more and more women find paid employment outside the home. Pre-school is almost universal in most European countries. For Africa provision in this area offers real opportunities for income generation and quality care for young children. Study after study has shown us the benefits of early development programmes. Subsequent repetition rates are lower, language development is higher, and primary school completion rates are higher for children who have had access to early development programmes.

Few of us need to be convinced of the benefits of early learning and care. The task that we should address is how do we ensure that in every community we have facilities for children's development? Unfortunately pre-school funding is low in most countries. The Unesco report finds that over half of United Nations (UN) member countries allocate less than 5% of total public education expenditure to ECD. This year, our provinces allocated 1,1% (just under R1 billion) of provincial education expenditure (three percent in the North West and two percent in the Western Cape) to ECD, this was a huge increase over 2005.

In 2005 we held a consultative conference on ECD and much of our push for funding and carer training in early learning comes from the impetus that that conference provided to the sector. In South Africa the Department of Social Development is the lead department for services to children under the age of four. Their responsibility is to manage the registration of the 9 000 ECD sites, as well as to provide a subsidy for those children who require it. The subsidy ranges from R4,50 per day to R11 per day according to the provincial determinations.

The subsidy is used to provide care (physical care, support systems, day time nutrition), pay for approved personnel, provide an educational programme, and other overhead expenses (furniture, equipment, educational material and maintenance). The Department of Education is responsible for the training of the carers in the registered sites. Training is essential and yet at the moment ECD carers typically receive less training than primary-school teachers. Qualified educators in primary schools that offer grade R or an ECD opportunity often work alongside untrained childcare workers, many of them part-time or volunteers. One of the reasons for the low wage levels of the carers is that we have not yet determined an agreed minimum wage in early childhood care and education. This is a matter that we will be investigating further.

This is what other countries are already looking into. Grade R provision continues to be an important budget priority. In fact funding for this phase of education has risen dramatically in the past three years. Our aim is to ensure universal grade R enrolment by 2010. Currently two in three children are in grade R in schools or in community centres. Currently 8 497 schools out of 1 490 primary schools offer grade R classes. By 2010 all primary schools should be supported to offer grade R. It is in this context that I am particularly excited to be part the Absa-Sowetan ECD awards.

Awards are a well recognised way of drawing attention to excellence. Given our practice of tending to focus on the negative, such awards acknowledge that there are many people making a positive contribution in education. I am pleased to be associated with this ECD Award process as it supports our aim of recognising and acknowledging quality and excellence in the provision of early learning and care in South Africa.

I see this initiative playing an important role in motivating our ECD teachers, practitioners, caregivers, parents and organisations. The recognition of individual contributions in ECD is critical, especially because work related to young children has been undervalued for too long. I hope that these awards will continue to highlight the importance of early learning for our children.

Thank you.

Issued by: Department of Education
4 October 2007