1. Select Committee on Appropriations Hearing on the Early Childhood Development Grant
Presenter| National Treasury | 16 May 2018

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. Grant Budget and expenditure at 31 March 2018

6. Children subsidised

7. ECD centres upgraded/maintained

8. 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.

9. 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 R per centre not sufficient in certain cases not adequate due to high quotations from contractors.

10. 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.
Focus of white paper 5:
1.4.1 While we acknowledge and recognise the vital importance of investment in early childhood development before the age of three years and the continuity of early childhood development until age nine, the policy priority of this White Paper is the implementation of the pre-school Reception Year (grade R) for five year olds In this regard, our medium term policy goal is progressively to realise our constitutional obligation to provide all learners with ten years of compulsory school education, including one year of early childhood development called the Reception Year Our policy target is that by 2010, all learners that enter grade 1 should have participated in an accredited Reception Year programme and that we shall have created a system of provision that is 75 per cent state subsidised rather than the current estimated 25 per cent state subsidisation. In this White Paper we provide details as to how we intend to achieve this policy goal In respect of early childhood development of children in the age range six years to nine years, our policy goals and programmes are outlined in our five year plan, Tirisano: , and its annual supplementary work programmes. These policies and programmes focus on improving the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning and the functioning of our schools as they serve these children in Grades 1, 2, 3 and 4. They also focus on improving learners’ language, mathematical and life skills, knowledge, values and attitudes With regard to children four years old and younger, this White Paper prioritises the development of a strategic plan for inter-sectoral collaboration, focusing our efforts on improving the quality of early learning programmes In this regard, our strategic plan will prioritise the development of curricula, and practitioner career pathing and development. In the period leading up to 2010, the Department of Education will also prioritise the subsidisation of early learning programmes for four year olds from poor rural and poor urban families, HIV/AIDS positive/infected children and children with special learning needs The White Paper outlines how we intend to achieve these goals. But first, let us turn to a description of the current status of ECD in our country.

11. Education allocations to ECD

12. ECD Programme - Education

13. ECD infrastructure - Education
LP include their grade R infrastructure under the primary school infrastructure, i.e. it is not a separate item.

14. Grade R classrooms built – Education 2017/18

15. 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 (R from R ) 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.

16. Thank you