Programme Director, Pastor Koeberg
Executive Mayor of Francis Baardt District Municipality, Me Buyiswa Ximba
Councilor Vuyu Ndela
Acting HOD, Mr. Ichabod Manyane
Provincial Manager of the National Development Agency, Mr. Piki
District Directors
Esteemed guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
I am truly humbled by the gesture of the National Development Agency for allowing me to address an esteemed audience gathered for the Early Childhood Development Awards.
I am always excited to be part of occasions such as these where we can get together and spend time with people who makes such a huge impact in the lives of the little souls we love and treasure. We know that you do it for the cause and not applause, but it is important that we get together and acknowledge the work that you do and to also just say thank you for the sacrifices you make to enrich the lives of so many young children. And it is equally important that you know that you are honoured and appreciated.
Ladies and gentlemen, the importance of early childhood development was recognised by Maria Montessori as far back as the early 1900’s. She said: “The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six”. This philosophy has been further developed with the very recent research on brain development. Dr. Jack Shonkoff, Director of the Centre on the Developing Child at Harvard University who said, "I think what’s most important for people to understand is that a newborn at birth has most of the brain cells that we will have for our entire life, but relatively little of the connections, the circuits among the different cells."
I was surprise to learn that at birth, the brain has about all of the neurons it will ever have? It doubles in size in the first year, and by age three it has reached 80 percent of its adult volume. Our job is to make sure that we provide children with good experiences that enable them to develop the connections between the cells to ensure that they reach their full potential.
Our own Tata Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, in the UN Special Session on Children (2002) too recognised the importance of the early years and indicated that: “History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children”. Ladies and gentlemen, we therefore cannot fail our children, we are meeting here this morning to reflect on the gains made in ECD in South Africa in order to work together to ensure that we create safe and supportive early childhood development a reality for this country’s poorest and most vulnerable children. To achieve this we need to work together across all sectors to promote and advance early childhood development.
Programme director, we don’t only know, but we believe that through laying solid foundation in the lives of our young citizens, we will ensure that history will judge us in a positive way.
Program Director; if education is to be a success, children need to enter school with the ability to learn. Investment in early childhood development is the most powerful investment in human capital that a country can make, with compounding returns as skills beget skills. There is now an extensive body of evidence that effective early childhood development improves cognitive scores and learning outcomes at school, and if taken to scale, can reduce the schooling gap by more than one and a half years.
The ECD sector is a vibrant but complex one, characterized by multiple role players.
As part of the implementation of the Integrated Programme of Action, we are proud to say that we now have an ECD Policy to scale up the delivery of quality services. The Policy was developed through an extensive consultation process with stakeholders in the ECD sector (government and non-governmental organizations). It introduces a number of new services to close identified gaps in the provision of quality ECD services to infants and young children. This has to be done in an integrated manner with partner departments, to support children, parents and their families. In so doing, it elevates the importance of investing in early childhood development for physical, cognitive, social, emotional, psycho-social, general health and wellbeing.
As many of you know, the ECD Policy is largely informed by the country-wide audit of early childhood development services conducted by the Department of Social Development in 2013 and 2014. The Audit found that there was a need to introduce sector-specific training for ECD practitioners in order to improve the quality of service provisioning.
A critical understanding is that the educational trajectory of children is largely determined before they enter school. Schooling enables children to capitalise on the foundations laid down in the first five years of life; intensive remediation can overcome part of the deficit, but the extent of divergence between high and low achievers mainly depends on the differentials established in the first two years of life. Brain development in terms of synaptic connection for language, sensory-motor and cognitive function peaks in the first year of life. Yet there is a major programme gap for children aged 0-2 years that other countries have successfully filled with home-visiting and children’s playgroups.
If the foundation in Grade R is not solid, the benefits for learning later on will be negatively affected. We need to ensure that the foundation is solid so that we can build a nation of children who can read, write and count.
Our goal is clear. It is to ensure all children have access to a quality Grade R programme. We’ve done very well as a democratic state to broaden access to Grade R, post-1994.
Our Department’s approach to ECD is based on clear policies and legislative framework, including the constitutional mandate to promote rights to primary education. We’re guided among others by the National Education Policy Act of 1996 and the South African Schools Act of 1996 that promotes access, quality and democratic governance in the schooling system.
In respect of Early Childhood Development, the National Development Plan underlines the need for access for all children to at least 2 years of pre-school education.
The Grade R programme is one of our critical interventions for improving people’s lives. Through this programme we aim to ensure that children are well-prepared for formal schooling.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is imperative that parents realize just how important it is to ensure that their child is thoroughly equipped for their school career. In fact, I want to ensure that through the opportunities extended by the Northern Cape Department of Social Development, in terms of early childhood development, we produce the best equipped learners in the country. I furthermore believe that well-equipped and prepared learners will ensure an increased retention rate from grades 1 to grade 12.
According to the statistics from Stats SA there are one hundred and forty five thousand and twenty seven children in the Northern Cape: naught to five years old. Currently eighty nine thousand one hundred children receive a Child Support Grant and twenty five thousand three hundred and thirty nine children naught to five years old years are currently accessing ECD services. This means that one hundred and nineteen thousand nine hundred and seventy two children, or eighty three percent of these children do not have access to early childhood development services in the Province. This, ladies and gentlemen, you would agree, indeed is not a positive or desirable state of affairs.
In the Northern Cape we try and make a lasting improvement in the lives of those we serve and to this endtThe Department of Social Development fund 381 ECD centres reaching 19 080 children. There are 51 Centres with 3 464 children in Pixley ka Seme; 104 centres in Frances Baard with 6103 children; 60 centres in ZFM with 2 581 children; 128 centres in JTG with 5 400 children and 38 centres in Namaqua with 1 532 children. The funding is done on the basis of a unit cost per child per day of R15 of which 50% is allocated to the nutritional programme, 30% for the salaries and 20% for running cost.
The Department increased the subsidy to the 6 Centres for children with Disabilities to R20 per child per day.
303 Practitioners with NQF level 4 are receiving a stipend which is equivalent to the EPWP rate of R1 762 per month which is to augment the salary of the practitioners.
To increase universal access and to create opportunities for more children to access ECD services, the Department launched mobile ECD services. The Department fund 2 service providers to run a mobile ECD service in the identified rural areas of JTG and Pixley ka Seme. The Mobile ECD in JTG reaches about 600 children monthly in 11 villages and the one in Pixley ka Seme 300 children monthly in 7 villages. A new mobile ECD service is now in operation in ZFM and target 150 children monthly in the islands and areas on the Riverbanks of the Orange River and Keimoes.
Presently centres are still struggling with registration due to the fact that the infrastructure does not meet the minimum norms and standards in order to provide a safe and conducive environment for stimulation and development. Conditional registration is given where the centre has the potential to develop to full registration in 5 years.
Social Workers in the districts monitor centres on the norms and standards as well as the implementation of a quality programme for the holistic development of our children. Districts conduct quarterly district forums involving all stakeholders involved in ECD services in order to coordinate and improve services to the 0-5 year olds. The implementation of the programme is critical for the quality measurement of the Department and also to improve the quality implemented by the practitioners.
The Department also launched the Home outreach ECD services in Bloemanda and the Isolobantwana volunteers presently reach 147 children monthly. The programme entails that the volunteer visit the children not attending an ECD and stimulate the child in the presence of the mother or caregiver and also empower the mother and caregiver to continue with the stimulation.
The Department also embarked on strengthening 6 sites in the Province and equipped them with the necessary resources to be able to implement a quality programme. Department of Health assisted with the baseline assessment of the 4 year old children and a final assessment before they go to Gr R. This is to measure the improvement and development of the child through the implementation of a quality programme and to track those children’s performance until Gr 3. Early identification of barriers were identified and children in need of intervention were included in therapy with Department of Health e.g. speech therapy, occupational therapy, dietician services.
The new Policy on ECD was approved by the Cabinet in December 2015 and the focus will be on ECD’s implementing the Policy and quality services. Training of Provincial Stakeholders and partners were conducted from 22 to 23 June 2016.
The Department had a provincial engagement session with ECD practitioners during March 2016 to promote uniformity in the reporting and promote inter-sectoral collaboration.
Ladies and gentlemen, recent diagnostic results from our schools have pointed to another major contributor to South Africa’s poor education performance. That is, too many grade 1 learners enter the school system without the basic cognitive and language skills needed to be able to learn and progress in the curriculum. Learners in this situation are prejudiced from the outset, and are more likely to drop out as school becomes increasingly difficult. This in turn fuels unemployment, crime and other social ills.
How do we turn this negative or less desirable state around? The missing piece of the puzzle is early childhood development, whether this is offered by parents or by ECD services where parents are unable to provide the service. Either way, it is crucial that parents of young children realize that from birth, their child needs them to provide adequate cognitive stimulation in order to learn basic skills. Parents need to read to their children, helping them to develop listening skills.
Parents need to teach children to tie their own shoelaces, to arrange blocks in different colours and shapes, and to brush their teeth. Reading to children, and playing games with them, is not just for fun. These activities are essential for the development of children’s brains, and help prepare them for school. I know that many parents work, and struggle to find the time for this, which is why the Department of Social Development commits over seventy six million rand a year to provide those parents with low incomes an opportunity to put their children into ECD programmes.
I want to urge parents amongst us here, and also to spread the word to parents out there, to find out more about how they can help their children to prepare for school, and to make as much time as possible to read to and play educational games with their children. While this government is committed to doing everything possible to increase the quality and reach of ECD, we need parents and educators to help us to turn this province –and this country – into an international success story. Through this partnership, we can make our children’s lives better together and move this great province forward.
As I conclude, let me hasten to say that ECD services provide education and care to children in the temporary absence of their parents or adult caregivers. These services should be holistic and demonstrate the appreciation of the importance of considering the child’s health, nutrition, education, psychosocial and other needs within the context of the family and the community.
And central to the development of these young minds we are talking about, are the ECD Practitioners we have come today to honour and thank. The work that you do is of immense importance not only in the lives of these young children, but plays an important role in the overall development of our Province and Country. May those who have won awards today serve as an inspiration to others and I want to stress that there are absolutely no losers here today. Each and everyone standing here today is a winner and champion in own right. You should be proud of what you achieve on a daily basis and I wish you and the Centre’s that you present grow from strength to strength.
Having said that, ladies and gentlemen, I wish you well during your deliberations and engagements. You have a mammoth task ahead of you but I am confident that you will emerge from this session with clear and concise solutions. We owe it to our children, our community and our country.
Ladies and Gentlemen, in closing, allow me to share this short quote by Lydia Sigourney:
“In early childhood you may lay the foundation of poverty or riches, industry of idleness, good or evil, by the habits to which you train your children. Teach them right habits then, and their future life is safe.”
Gods’ richest blessings.
Thank you
