Dear Editor
Since 2017, 8 357 Early Childhood Development (ECD) practitioners have been trained using the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) Manual developed by the WCED at the province’s six TVET colleges. This year alone, 1 640 practitioners have enrolled at these institutions and will further contribute to the stellar work being done in this sector.
This was revealed during a briefing by the WCED to the Standing Committee on Education regarding the curriculum for the foundation phase, especially as it relates to ECDs. Owing to the essential role early childhood education plays in ensuring that our children receive the proper development they need, the Standing Committee will schedule oversight visits to ECD centres to monitor the efficacy of the migration.
ECDs
With the responsibility of ECD centres having been transferred from the Department of Social Development, the WCED now oversees 1 613 registered centres in the Western Cape. Above this, there are also 3 283 unregistered ECD centres operating in our province. These centres are privately-owned entities and are run by various organisations such as non-profits, trusts and others working in civil society. It is these centres which provides the crucial development for children below the age of four.
However, the WCED has also embarked on expanding this support to children who are at-risk and find themselves outside this age bracket. This is why the WCED has spent more than R9.5 million on the Blocks4Growth and Step-Up Programmes, which will provide 4 to 5-year-olds and 5 to 6-year-olds, respectively, with the opportunity to progress developmentally so that they can meet the demands of their learning environments. The funds are being managed by two social service organisations (SSOs), namely the Learning Initiative and the Knysna Education Trust.
Grade R
Even though early childhood development is primarily focused on those who are not formally in school, it is something that should not be viewed solely as such. Grade R plays an important role in providing the essential foundations for a child to flourish in the schooling system. Currently, there are a total of 90 671 children in Grade R this year in the Western Cape.
It is essential that the subject advisors and teachers are upskilled and kept up-to-date with the objectives of the Grade R curriculum. As such, these are the following training programmes used by the department to ensure this:
- Provincial Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) workshops.
- WCED Provincial Grade R Emergent Literacy Training (ELIT).
- Grade R School Based Assessment (SBA) workshops.
However, in order for the training of our teachers and advisors to have a real impact, it is paramount that Grade R be formalised and made compulsory for children to attend.
Foundation Phase (Grade 1-3)
Once a child has received their initial development, the first three years of their schooling career is crucial to laying down the building blocks for skills development. Already in the foundation phase, the focus is placed on languages, life skills, coding and robotics, and mathematics. Currently, the following number of schools have been involved in pilot project associated with the development of these focuses:
- For languages, there have been 90 schools involved in the Afrikaans HL Funda Wande Pilot, 418 in the English HL Jolly Phonics approach and 103 in the isiXhosa HL Funda Wande Online Course.
- For mathematics, 500 schools were involved in the Maths Curriculum Online, 90 in the Banda Wande Pilot and 16 in the Mental Starter Assessment Programme.
- For coding and robotics, there were 32 pilot schools for teacher training and implementation.
To make sure that learning is done optimally and that a child is able to easily grasp these concepts, the WCED makes use of a synthetic phonics approach. This approach allows for a child to expand their vocabulary and enables stronger reading comprehension. After this approach has been implemented, Early Grade Reading Assessments (EGRAs) are done to assess a child’s reading abilities. The WCED has made an interactive poster for parents and learners, which can be found via https://datastudio.google.com/reporting/583c8f9e-e8e2-468d-875f-239d00020f60 and https://bit.ly/AfrikaansHT-Interaktiewe-Plakkaat.
MPP Deidre Baartman: “Following the migration of ECD centres to the WCED, we look forward to beginning and further oversight in this regard.
While there is a lot of work needing to be done, the Committee commits to playing its oversight role over the WCED’s commitments to ensure that the children in the Western Cape receive the highest quality education available to them.
As the DA, we will continue to monitor the progress being made on this front”.
Regards
Deidré Baartman, MPP
DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Education
