THE ECDLC NEWSLASH: ISSUE 1 DECEMBER 2010 – PRINT-FRIENDLY VERSION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Call for comments on Policy on Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications

The ECDLC Hub - a locus for learning, building relationships and collaboration

Policy progress and advocacy priorities for 2011

Progress

Ongoing gaps

Advocacy – moving forward

Minister promises improved monitoring, funding and prioritization of children in rural areas

Educational interventions for severely disabled children given a boost in the Western Cape

Sixty percent under-enrolment in Grade R in 2009

Progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS

15 habits of highly effective integrated ECD programmes

MEMBERS’ NEWS

Building the capacity of Community Development Workers as advocates for young children

Golang-Kulani and the Family Literacy Project share their wisdom with each other

Cultural impacts on HIV & Aids explored at fifth bi-annual Learning and Sharing Conference

Exploring Local and Indigenous Knowledge to enhance the quality of the care environment for young children: an ECDLC Collaboration

Call for comments on Policy on Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications

The Minister of Higher Education and Training has published the Policy on the Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications for public comment (Government Gazette number 33788, 22 November 2010).

The Policy has been developed in consultation with affected stakeholders and it describes a set of minimum standards for different types of teacher qualifications. The standards are designed to ensure that the higher education system produces the kinds of teachers that the country needs. It provides guidelines for designing learning programmes for teachers, and describes the basic competencies required of newly qualified beginner teachers. The programmes envisaged by the policy ought to qualify and enable teachers (from Grade R to Grade 12) to have a strong subject content knowledge and be able to teach and communicate in more than one official language, including an indigenous African language.

The draft policy iterates the seven “Collective roles of Teachers in Schools” as follows:

  1. Specialist in a phase, subject discipline or practice
  2. Learning mediator
  3. Interpreter and designer of learning programmes and materials
  4. Leader, administrator and manager
  5. Scholar, researcher and lifelong learner
  6. Assessor
  7. Community, citizenship and pastoral role.

The Policy stipulates the following competencies and knowledge areas in the Foundation phase and specifies the qualifications and minimum admission requirements to realise the stated competencies:

  • Grade R teachers are expected to be able to prepare learners for formal schooling.
  • Grades 1-3 teachers are expected to teach all three subjects – literacy, numeracy and life skills.
  • All foundation phase teachers (1) need extensive and specialised knowledge of early childhood learning to teach reading, writing and numeracy and to develop key initial concepts and skills to lay a foundation for learning in later phases; (2) must be skilled in early identification of barriers to learning and be skilled in addressing these through curriculum differentiation for different learning levels within a grade; (3) must specialise in First Language teaching in one of the official languages together with First Additional English Language Teaching; (4) must be competent to work with Grade R learners. The focus of Grade R is learning through play, developing physical coordination, and developing spoken language competence and fundamental ideas that will form the basis for later development of number sense and literacy.

A copy of the proposed policy may be viewed by clicking here.

Written comments on the draft Policy must be submitted by the 22nd of December 2010. They must be addressed to: The Director-General, Office of the Ministry of Higher Education and Training, Private Bag X174, Pretoria, 0001, 123 Schoeman Street. Marked for the attention of Dr D Parker, Chief Director: Teacher Education and Development. Fax number: 012323 3322. Dr Parker’s e-mail address is: . The contact telephone number is 012312 6214.

The ECDLC Hub - a locus for learning, building relationships and collaboration

Doug Reeler for the ECDLC Hub

The Early Childhood Development Learning Community has brought together NGOs in several provinces in the past three years to learn together and to begin to work together. Through national workshops, cross-visits, organisation development workshops and action research, the ECDLC has begun to forge learning and working relationships that can help members to put together programmes and initiatives that reach across project boundaries and have the potential for responding more holistically to the issues facing young children and caregivers.

One of the key ingredients for working collaboration is simple information – who is doing what, what is happening, what new practices and ideas are being tried out, what is working, what is coming towards us? Shared information connects us, reduces isolation, enriches, stimulates and sparks us, enabling us to find common ground. The issues and challenges facing us all can only be faced by us all, but only if we keep in touch, if we keep connecting.

This Newsflash, an idea from the members themselves, will provide a space for sharing and connection. If members can put in a little time to share I have no doubt that each will receive so much more. Hopefully this will be interesting for an even wider group of ECD practitioners and policy-makers and become a wider platform for collaborative learning and action.

Good luck to Patricia and Andre who are holding this. I encourage and urge all members to bring your selves wholeheartedly to this new initiative, to water this seedling to full growth.

Policy progress and advocacy priorities for 2011

Progress

The past year or two has seen the introduction of new and improved policies and laws which will improve young children’s enjoyment of the multiple rights relevant to integrated early childhood development. Some of these changes include:

(1) The possibility of birth registration becoming easier for orphans. The Births and Deaths Registration Amendment Bill 18-2010, which was introduced to parliament in July 2010 (Government Gazette 33356), allows for social workers to register the births of orphans.

(2) Children without birth certificates and/or whose caregivers do not have identity documents can access the Child Support Grant. In addition, the CSG has been extended to include children between the ages of 15 and 18. The Regulations to the Social Assistance Act governing the eligibility criteria for the CSG were amended on 1 January 2010 (Regulation No 32853, 31 December 2009). Prior to this date the CSG was only available for children younger than 15. In practice this resulted in younger children’s CSGs being split to support older siblings as well; anecdotal evidence indicates that often the older children’s needs were seen as more pressing and immediate and a greater share of the grant income was spent on their needs as opposed to the needs of their younger brothers and sisters.

(3) The Children’s Act, No 38 of 2005 as amended by Act No 41 of 2007 is finally in place. This means that:

  • More ECD centres will be registered and more rigorously monitored in terms of norms and standards.
  • The provincial departments of social development must provide and fund prevention and early intervention services. These services are very important to integrated early childhood development, as can be seen from the direction given by the Act. Section 144 requires that prevention and early intervention programmes focus on, inter alia, developing appropriate parenting skills and engaging young people in sports, arts and recreational activities; the identification of individuals, families and communities at risk; providing families and communities with information to enable them to access resources and professional help; involving and promoting the participation of children, youth, parents and families in identifying and seeking solutions; promoting appropriate interpersonal relations within families; promoting the well-being of the service user and the realisation of his or her full potential.
  • Protection services have been strengthened through the creation of an obligation to screen all people who will work with children. They have been similarly strengthened by expanding the group of children who qualify for protection services to include all children in need of care and protection.
  • Children in child-headed households will now receive greater protection, care and support.

(4)Home and Community Based care and support programmes will be governed by a national policy framework which will integrate and improve the quality of services around crucial issues such as breastfeeding support. Click here to view copies of the draft Home and Community Based Care national Policy Framework and the draft Management Policy for Community Care Workers.

(5)Strengthened PMTCT and Children’s Treatment guidelines target pregnant women, infants and children.

(6)A new andimproved road to health card has been developed and will be implemented in 2011. Click here to view a copy of the new road to health card.

Ongoing gaps

(1) The Births and Deaths Registration Amendment Bill will make it more difficult for vulnerable families to register births within the first year of life. This is critical, given the fundamental link between a birth certificate and early access to integrated early childhood development services; and given the developmental importance of accessing these services as early as possible within the first year of life.

The new Bill only permits a non-parent to register the birth of a child if the parent is deceased. The current Births and Deaths Registration Act allows a duly authorised other to register the birth of a child where a parent is unable to do so. In addition to disallowing registration by non-parents, the Bill makes registration after 30 days after birth more expensive and onerous than is currently the case, without addressing the factors which make registration within 30 days difficult, such as cultural naming practices and the absence of migrant and other biological fathers.

(2) Despite protracted advocacy over the last few years, there is still no statutory obligation in terms of the Children’s Act or elsewhere on government to provide and fund home and community-based integrated ECD services. Funding has been limited up until now to supporting ECD centres; there is nothing compelling a change in this trend.

(4)Poverty continues to exclude many young children from early childhood centres as most continue to charge fees.

(5)Prevention and early intervention and protection services are inadequately funded and resourced, despite the obligation created by the Children’s Act.

(6)There are 55,000 too few social workers.

(7)There is no adequate nutrition policy for pregnant women and young children to prevent rather than treat protein-energy malnutrition.

(8)There is no adequate housing/shelter policy that prioritises families with young children.

(9)There is no enforceable sanitation policy or law in South Africa.

(10)There is a failure to address the systemic delivery blockages that prevent the youngest children, especially those in rural areas being reached. Despite the progress that has been made, we are not reaching rural children early enough in terms of basic developmental support services. The average birth registration rate is 85%; for young children 0-1 in rural areas the rate can be as low as 40 % (Peters. K and Williams L (2009) Barriers to accessing comprehensive social security in vulnerable rural areas in SA, Alliance for Children’s Entitlement to Social Security). The national average take-up rate of the CSG is 88%; as few as 20% of young children (0-1) in rural areas receive the CSG (Noble, M., Wright, G., Barnes, H., Noble, S., Ntshongwana, P., Gutierrez-Romero, R. and Avenell, D. (2005) The Child Support Grant: A Sub-Provincial Analysis of Eligibility and Take Up in January 2005, Pretoria: National Department of Social Development, Republic of South Africa). Given the link between the CSG, food security, and the development of children in the first two years of life, this failure is having a profound impact on the optimal early development of children in rural areas in South Africa. Younger children in rural areas are more at risk of malnutrition, stunting and wasting. One in five children are at risk of stunting (National Food Consumption Survey, 2005); younger children (1-3) have a twofold higher prevalence of stunting and wasting than 7-9 year olds.

Advocacy – moving forward

The NIP for ECD comes to an end now (2005-2010). A revised NIP must be developed. Civil society must advocate for participation in the development of the revised plan and emphasise the need for real integration and targeting of rural young children by calling for appropriate policies and programmes. The NIP for ECD must be designed to ensure that rural development strategies and local strategies know and action their commitments to young children. There are strong grounds for calling for the signing of performance agreements between national, provincial and local government agents to honour their agreed commitments to young children so that there may be real consequences where there is a failure to perform.

Minister promises improved monitoring, funding and prioritization of children in rural areas

The new Minister of Social Development, Ms Bathabile Dlamini, made the following undertakings at the opening of the Early Childhood Development Awards in Johannesburg on 8 November 2010.

The Department of Social Development will:

  1. Monitor and ensure that all ECD centres operate in line with the Children’s Act. Central to this is the screening of all people who work at centres.
  2. Review the amount of the ECD subsidy, as the subsidy as its stands (at R12 – R 14) may not be enough, especially for vulnerable children, orphans and children living with disabilities.
  3. Capacitate service providers to meet government expectations and standards.
  4. Develop a coherent ECD curriculum.
  5. Mobilise communities, especially in rural areas, to support the establishment, registration and subsidization of ECD centres and initiatives.

Click here to view a copy of the Minister’s speech.

Educational interventions for severely disabled children given a boost in the Western Cape

Organisations advocating for the rights of young children came together in 2008 at a conference hosted by ACESS. The purpose was to reflect on the progress we have made as a country and what still needs to be done fully to realise the rights of young children.

Barriers to the rights of young children with disabilities that were identified at the conference were a failure to identify children early and provide them with appropriate support and interventions. One form of support that is not freely available for children with disabilities is the lack of access to ECD facilities, Grades R, 1 and 2. Among the reasons identified for this blockage is the lack of adequate training and facilities to accommodate these children in schools.

The conference members called for the Ministries of Social Development and Education to prioritise the educational needs of children with disabilities and provide adequate services and facilities at schools.

There has been some progress by the Department of Education to improve facilities at mainstream schools with a view to including children with “moderate” disabilities in ordinary schools and by increasing the number of “special schools” for children with moderate to mild intellectual disabilities.

However, in the Western Cape no provision is made for the education of children who are considered to be severely (IQ 20-35) or profoundly (IQ less than 20) disabled. They are not admitted to special schools or to any other state schools. The only education available for these children is at “special care centres” run by NGOs. There are far too few of these centres to meet demand, and the children who cannot get into “special care centres” get no education at all.

The only contribution that the State makes is a subsidy that is paid by the Department of Health to the NGOs that provide the service in question. The sum of the subsidy is much less than the amount of money paid for the education of children who are not so disabled. The former subsidy is R 5,092 per annum per child; for “normal” children, R 6,632 is paid per annum per child for their education; and in the case of children with “moderate” disabilities, the sum of R 26,762 is paid each year for their educational needs.

The Western Cape Forum for Intellectual Disability, an NGO in the Western Cape which provides a “special care centre” for children who are severely or profoundly disabled, sued the Government of the Republic of South African and the Government of the Western Cape. They sued on the grounds that the rights of these children to education, to equality, to human dignity and to protection from neglect are infringed because much less is paid towards their education, compared to other children; because the amount that is provided is inadequate to meet the educational needs of these children; and because education is only available if NGOs provide it.