Real reform for Early Childhood Development (ECD) in South Africa

Real Reform for ECD is a movement advocating for holistic, well-funded, inclusive and quality early childhood development services for all children. Our focus is to ensure an enabling legal, policy and regulatory environment for the provision and expansion of ECD services.

Learn about the Right to Nutrition Campaign →
Download the ECD Manifesto

Have you heard about the People's Manifesto for ECD?

Ahead of 2024 elections, the ECD sector is calling on all political parties to recognise the significance of ECD in shaping our nation's future. A party for the children is a party for the future. Sign onto this manifesto TODAY to advocate for our country’s TOMORROW!

Endorse now (organisations) Sign on now (individuals)
Download the People's Manifesto for ECD
Colourful wooden blocks painted as houses

Vision

Our vision is to have an enabling legal, policy and regulatory environment for the provision and expansion of ECD services to see all children in South Africa thriving and we believe that an enabling legal framework is one essential component of how to achieve this.

Mission

We develop our own solutions to the legal and regulatory challenges we face, we intend to use the tactical power of the law in our struggle to achieve our vision, we hope to be one of the leading grassroots voices on the legal and regulatory issues facing early childhood development programmes.

Our people

We want to be a movement of knowledgeable and empowered ECD practitioners, parents, caregivers and community members. We have identified NECDA, SmartStart and Bridge as key alliance organisations - powerful partners for realising our vision.

Our first victory, but the campaign continues

On Saturday 6 March 2021, the Portfolio Committee on Social Development issued a statement announcing their decision to reject the proposed amendments that relate to ECD in the Children’s Amendment Bill that is currently before Parliament. The Real Reform for ECD Campaign marks this as a victory. Read the full statement.

1600

submissions made

7

provinces represented

200

organisations signed on

5

key reforms advocated

ECD practitioner and child

Photo credit: Ilifa Labantwana

The Right to Nutrition Campaign

Adequate nutrition is not just a need: It is a child’s right. Without proper nutrition, children are likely to be too short for their age (stunted). They are also more likely to do less well in school and to be less productive, earn less, and suffer more from diseases like diabetes and heart disease as adults.

The government provides a R17 per child per day subsidy to registered early learning programmes, of which R6.80 is intended for nutrition. But it reaches too few and is too little.

In late 2022, RR4ECD began to explore a campaign on the right to nutrition. We put together three research task teams to explore the right to nutrition, what adequate nutrition is and how the Department of Basic Education (DBE) could implement an ECD nutrition programme. This extensive research has informed the campaign’s approach and calls to action.

Download our synthesis report
Right to Nutrition poster

Our call to action:

We urge the DBE to provide nutrition support to all eligible children attending an early learning programme, regardless of whether the programme is registered or not. We must not neglect the most vulnerable children, especially those at unregistered programmes, who stand the most to gain from nutrition support.

Right to Nutrition poster

Our nutrition reforms

We are urging the DBE to:

  1. Create an ECD nutrition programme
  2. Test provincial procurement and delivery to unregistered early learning programmes
  3. Roll out training on the Department of Health’s Nutrition Guidelines
  4. Collect data on children’s growth indicators and attendance rates for evidence-based interventions
  5. Activate effective coordination and oversight mechanisms at the national, provincial and municipal levels
  6. Develop an ECD nutrition policy and make the provision on nutrition support a legal requirement

The Department of Basic Education should implement these reforms, while also simplifying the registration process and supporting early learning programmes to get registered.

RR4ECD's Nutrition Reforms are built on three research papers:

Spread the word about the Right to Nutrition campaign

Download these resources and share widely!

  1. Social media profile banners
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  2. People's Manifesto for ECD
    Download (PDF)

Other advocacy

Why do we urgently need a Second Children’s Amendment Bill?

The Children’s Amendment Bill (B18-2020) proposed amendments in relation to a wide range of issues impacting on children, including amendments regarding partial care and ECD. The Bill did not address the Five Reforms needed for strengthening the ECD sector. It had the potential to create additional burdens and challenges for ECD providers. Challenges with the Bill included:

  1. ×
    The registration process remains onerous.
  2. ×
    Different types of ECD provisioning are not recognised - "One-size-fits-all" approach is entrenched.
  3. ×
    Inaccessible health and safety standards have not been reviewed and streamlined.
  4. ×
    Conditional registration provisions are entirely unclear.
  5. ×
    Provisions aimed at unlocking support to ECD providers are weakened.
  6. ×
    Explicit ban on infrastructure funding support to partial care facilities run from private homes.

Key reading

The most relevant law, regulations and policy documents can be accessed here:

  1. the Children's Amendment Bill ;
  2. the Children's Act ;
  3. the General Regulations Regarding Children ;
  4. the National Environmental Health Norms and Standards ;
  5. the National Integrated ECD Policy .
Make your voice heard →
Infographic: Challenges with the bill
Click infographic to view full size

We support five key reforms

  1. 1
    We need a one-step registration process for ECD providers and different types of ECD providers must be regulated differently.
  2. 2
    All children attending any type of ECD programme should be able to access the early learning subsidy if they need it.
  3. 3
    Simpler, adequate health, safety and programme standards must be in place and must be accessed through one process.
  4. 4
    It must be made clear that you can get conditional registration if you can’t meet all the registration requirements and MECs must support providers to meet requirements and report on their systems of support.
  5. 5
    The infrastructure needs of the sector must be supported.

Do you agree?

Make your voice heard →
Infographic: Challenges with the bill
Click infographic to view full size

Get ECD in your local municipality’s IDP

Infographic: ECD and local government

Between the months of March and April, local municipalities are busy preparing their Integrated Development Plan (IDP). This is a plan that will outline the development areas that local municipalities will focus on for the next five years. The aim of this campaign is to have ECD included as a core focus area.

Many of our challenges with ECD programme registration lie at the local government level : there are impossible land-use requirements (zoning), excessive costs for building plans, high fees as well as onerous health and safety requirements. Local governments are also not enabling the expansion of ECD programmes. They are not supporting ECD programmes with infrastructure upgrades nor are they supporting with new ECD builds (as required by the ECD policy) and ECD does not feature in local government planning or budgets.

We are calling on all organisations, ECD practitioners, teachers, parents and caregivers to contact their local municipality and to call on councillors to:

  • Pull down the barriers to registration for ECD programmes;
  • Build more and upgrade existing ECD programmes; and
  • Make ECD a local spending priority.

Resources

Download and share these infographics and other resources to spread the word.

  1. The challenges
    Afrikaans · English · Zulu

  2. How the Bill fails the ECD sector
    English

  3. Our Five Reforms
    English

  4. Phrase guide
    English

Who's involved?

We are a broad-based alliance made up of dedicated elected representatives who form the Steering Committee to lead Real Reform’s work, supported by over 200 organisations .

Representatives: Nhlanhla Dzwingwa (Sisonke Orange Farms ECD Forums), Ruby Motaung (Training and Resources in Early Education and National Early Childhood Development Alliance), Sheniece Linderboom (Legal Resources Centre), Pam Picken (Do More Foundation), Rebecca Hickman (SmartStart), Tess Peacock (Equality Collective), Lashiwe Mparadzi (Farani Pre-School), Kayin Scholtz (Ilifa Labantwana), Eric Mahlo (Save the Children) and, Thandeka Rantsi (Bridge).

...and many other organisations working hard to make quality ECD a reality in South Africa! Is your organisation working in ECD and do you agree with the necessity of the Five Reforms? Please sign up! Every new organisation strengthens our voice in the parliamentary process.

View all signatories → Join us now →

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