The Department of Basic Education’s 2030 Strategy for ECD Programmes commits to providing quality early learning to all children by 2030. A key component of this commitment is “quality”, as it is a critical determinant of whether children start school ready to learn.
We are supporting the government in designing and developing a Quality Assurance and Support System (QASS) that employs a developmental approach and promotes continuous quality improvement of early learning programmes, alongside compliance systems.
Early learning providers are largely non-profit organisations and micro-social enterprises, often operating outside of the government’s registration and compliance safety net (although this is changing with initiatives such as the Bana Pele ECD Registration Drive). The QASS is sensitive to the various modalities of ECD service delivery, meeting early learning programmes “where they are”, and is intended to offer targeted support to programmes – often by leveraging the existing strengths of the non-profit sector.
Front and centre to the QASS is the QASS tool, an observation-based instrument and questionnaire that assesses programme standards across five domains: learning programme; staff, leadership and management; parent and community engagement; inclusiveness; and nutrition and safety.
The QASS tool was validated in 2024 and found to be a reliable tool that is suitable for the Department of Basic Education to use in making policy decisions.
The QASS tool will be one of the core assessment tools in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Outcomes Fund, launched by the Minister of Education in 2025. The project is expected to reach 2,000 ELPs across KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, and Limpopo.