We position early childhood development (ECD) as a key contributor to human capital to secure increased and more accessible funding to rapidly expand ECD.
About 5% of South Africa’s public budget is spent on ECD service delivery every year, with most funds allocated towards maternal and child healthcare and the Child Support Grant. Only 6.5% of all ECD spending goes towards early learning, nutrition support, and support for primary caregivers. No funding is directed towards supporting women who want to set up new Early Learning Programmes (ELPs).
The ECD subsidy of R24 per child per day is provided to almost 1mn children attending approximately 15,000 ELPs. However, this value is too low to support the provision of quality services in low-income communities, so fees remain the main funding source for almost 70% of ELPs, excluding the most disadvantaged. The cost of providing a basic quality ELP that is registered and compliant with most norms and standards is estimated to be closer to R91 per child per day. Moreover, there are estimated to be at least 25,000 unregistered ELPs which are not currently eligible to receive the ECD subsidy.
Beyond the subsidy, there is no dedicated nutritional support programme for ELPs, and very little public money is allocated to non-clinical preventative interventions such as support to primary caregivers.
Outside play at an early learning centre in uMzinyathi District, KwaZulu-Natal (2018)
Our 7 strategic focus areas are the conditions needed for the early childhood ecosystem to function at scale.
