The Department of Basic Education (DBE) received a total budget of R31.8 billion for the 2022/2023 financial year. This is an increase of 7% of the budget received by the department during the previous financial year.
Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga says studies conducted by the department show that only 45% of children are attending ECD programmes.
The Thrive by Five Index and ECD Baseline Audit was done in 2021 to assess the quality of ECD programmes in a nationally representative sample.
The minister was delivering the Budget Vote Speech on Thursday in Cape Town
Additional findings from the audit indicate that of the children attending ECD programmes, only 45% of them are on track, 45% of children attending these programmes will not be able to write by the age of 5 years old and 6% of these children are chronically stunted and have major malnutrition.
The minister said their department is hard at developing and implementing an innovative strategy to strengthen the foundations of learning in the Early Childhood Development sector.
The ECD function was transferred to the DBE from the Department of Social Development (DSD) in April 2022. The DBE will look to support more than 40,000 known ECD centres around South Africa.
This support will largely be provided through the administration of the early childhood development grant. The grant is estimated to be worth around R5.5 billion over the next three years bolstered by an additional R1.6 billion to support ECD centres.
Early Childhood Development is allocated R200 million for Resource packages.
The additional allocation of R1.6 billion will be aimed at increasing the number of children receiving the ECD subsidy, providing pre‐registration support packages, and launching a pilot programme for nutrition support and a results‐based delivery model.
Motshakga noted the vast access challenges of ECD centres in South Africa. To rectify this, the minister announced that their department is in the process of creating a new publicly planned and coordinated funded mix ECD provisioned model.
This model will be based on the DBE’s social inclusive principles of access, equity, redress, inclusivity, efficiency and quality.
The DBE is also working with the DSD to amend the Child's Act to regularise the alliance function. Additional work is being done with the presidency's red tape reduction team to identify areas of the ECD registration process that can be streamlined the ECD and enable collaboration with local governments.
