To strengthen and revolutionise the Early Childhood Development sector (ECD), the Free State Department of Education has embarked on some vital information sharing sessions to ensure that no ECD in the Free State province is left behind when it comes to the funding, development and registration of the ECD programme.
The department’s MEC, Makalo Mohale, this week led an ECD road show and information sharing session that took place at Tiisetsang High School in Bethlehem and Heide Primary School in Bloemfontein to discuss and inform ECD practitioners and owners of some of the expectations from the department regarding funding and registrations of ECD programmes.
These conversations started on 31 January 2024 when Mohale, together with Basic Education Minister Angie Motshega, met ECD forums, organisations, and practitioners in Sasolburg, Fezile Dabi District, to ramp up the department’s efforts to ensure full-scale integration of ECD into the Basic Education department.
Howard Ndaba, who speaks on behalf of the Free State department, says the province currently has 2 200 ECD centres and only 1 446 of them are registered. He added that the purpose of these sessions is to provide ECD owners and stakeholders with new developments and expectations in the ECD space since the sector was transferred to the Department of Basic Education on 1 April 2022.
“The province has a database of 3500 ECD practitioners and about 1 472 of them have been trained on the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) and 283 have upskilled to the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) Level 4 in the 2023/24 financial year. About 1 567 Grade R practitioners have between NQF Level 4 and 6 qualifications,” Ndaba highlighted.
During the sessions, the ECD practitioners were informed about the requirements that they need to have in order for them to qualify for the department’s funding, saying that amongst other requirements, a practitioner must have a minimum of an NQF Level 4 qualification.
“To ensure that all ECDs are registered by the end of 2024/25 financial year, the department intends to launch a registration campaign for ECD centres by the end of March,” he said.
Some of the topics that were discussed during these sessions are funding for 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 financial years, compliance, registration of ECD programmes, training of practitioners in NQF Level 4 and NCF, distribution of learning and teaching material, training on classroom management, school readiness reports as well as Grade R issues in ECDs.
Principal and owner of Ha Re Ithuteng ECD in Viljoenskroon, Sara Setlhare, says she was happy to attend the information sessions because she was able to get information that she did not know she needed as a practitioner. She says things have changed since the move from the Department of Social Development.
“Our challenge as ECD practitioners is that parents do not bring children between the ages zero and four years to school and that is a serious challenge because by the time these children go to school, they struggle with pencil gripping. This gives a bad impression to us as ECD practitioners. We ask the department to help to educate and inform parents about the importance of bringing children to pre-schools,” said Setlhare.
She pleaded with the department to consider including teachers with a teaching Diploma, to qualify for a salary as they are currently only receiving a stipend of R1 751.
“After attending this session, I have noted that we must have faith in the department of education,” she said.
Ndaba said the department intends to train 1 000 practitioners in the 2024/25 financial year on NCF and classroom management and that following the success of these formation sessions, the department will host road shows in March. The road shows will further inform and educate communities on the importance of ECD, ECD registrations and financial management training.