Groundbreaking study reveals impact of home-based early learning initiatives

Every weekday morning in South Africa hundreds of thousands of young children leave their home to attend an early learning programme. We know these places by various names – preschools, creches, playgroups, day mothers – but they all have one thing in common. They are sites of potential transformation in a young child’s developmental trajectory.

The most familiar types of early learning programmes are those in purpose-built facilities. Less visible – and less appreciated – are the thousands of programmes run in homes and multipurpose community venues. Yet in underresourced communities it is these types of programmes that provide a lifeline for families, offering not only structured play and learning opportunities for vulnerable children, but also vital childcare that enables parents to work.

Now, a landmark new study of the SmartStart early learning network shows that these programmes are boosting outcomes for children – and offers intriguing insights into how they are doing this. The findings will be presented to a global audience at a side-event of the UN General Assembly in New York next week, alongside evidence of the positive impact of other home and community-based early childhood development programmes in India and Uganda.

The SmartStart network includes 12 implementing partners, which together support more than 14,000 early learning practitioners to reach 165,000 children across South Africa every week. With this kind of scale, in 2023 a team of independent researchers gathered data on outcomes for children in SmartStart early learning programmes, to investigate whether the positive impacts identified in an earlier evaluation were being maintained. 

The researchers tracked the progress of 551 children in 325 SmartStart programmes over eight months, using the Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM) – making it the largest study of its kind to date in South Africa. They found that the proportion of children “on track” increased by a remarkable 20 points from 45% to 65%, while the proportion of those “falling far behind” nearly halved. This meant a dramatic reduction in the achievement gap between children from low- and high-income households, falling from 25 points to just six points. 

ELOM is a set of population-based child assessment tools designed to track whether children are developmentally on track for their age. Alongside the Thrive by Five Index, which is a representative survey of outcomes for children attending preschool, it enables interventions to compare their impact with the norms in South Africa. Importantly, the researchers found that the SmartStart cohort outperformed the Thrive by Five Index benchmark. The average Total ELOM score for SmartStart children was 11 points higher than the 2021 Thrive by Five Index, and a significantly higher proportion of SmartStart children was “On track” at endline (65% vs 46%).

These results tell two stories. One is about the infinite abundance in every child in South Africa, and our responsibility as a society to ensure that potential is fully released. The second is about the nascent talents of hundreds of thousands of women living in low-income communities, and their potential to be powerful agents of change. They are the unlikely heroes – or perhaps the likely heroes – of this study.

SmartStart’s approach is underpinned by a deep respect for the inherent strengths of communities – and a commitment to make them count. In practice, this means capacitating local, underemployed women in low-income areas, to use available venues to host quality early learning programmes. Most are in homes, often in converted extensions, while some use community sites, such as church halls.

The study found that these kinds of basically trained paraprofessionals can significantly improve outcomes for young children when using a carefully designed daily programme supported by child-centred approaches and contextually appropriate materials.

Research has long told us that a unique and wonderful alchemy occurs where nurture, talk and play are present for children. This is the food of brain development, physical growth and emotional wellbeing. And it doesn’t require costly infrastructure and equipment.

In this context, the researchers looked at what specific practices seemed to be linked to better outcomes for children. They found that there was a notable likelihood of increased gains for children in programmes that faithfully used the SmartStart Daily Routine (a structured programme of play-led activities), and where children could play and learn at a level that is appropriate to them. 

Other simple child-centred practices, such as building children’s language, acknowledging and encouraging children’s efforts, and involving children in solving conflicts, were also found to be positively linked to gains in early maths and early literacy.

In some ways, these findings challenge conventional notions of “quality” in early learning. They emphasise that it is not what we see, but what children experience that matters. The implication is that women from diverse backgrounds can be empowered with the knowledge and skills to provide quality early learning opportunities, because it is simple, everyday practices that move the needle.

Moreover, much of the magic that can be found in home and community-based early learning programmes does not happen in spite of the setting, but because of it – because of the relatability of a personal context, because of the small group size, because of the cultural rootedness, because of the social relationship between the practitioner and the children’s parents. 

Why does it matter? At a sector leadership summit in March, the President announced that early childhood development was a national priority. The government committed to universal access to early childhood development as far back as 2010, but more than one million new places in early learning programmes are still needed to achieve this.

This scale of task requires new solutions, which are pragmatic, affordable and immediate. So, if an early learning delivery platform focused on home and community-based settings in low-income communities can shift outcomes for children as it goes to scale, it strongly signals the path to equitable, quality access. And this understanding should in turn inform more enabling approaches to government regulation and funding.

Poverty is not attractive. But our justified rejection of unacceptable living conditions should not mean a rejection of the dignity and possibilities that people create for themselves and their communities in these contexts. When we pay attention to the value of what is already there, and focus on assets – such as capable women, home and community venues and informal economic activity – rather than scarcity, the opportunities for transformation are endless. Far from being considered an inferior form of provision, quality early learning programmes in homes and community venues should be elevated as today’s solution for today’s children. DM

Grace Matlhape is the chief executive of SmartStart, a national early learning network that is pioneering a new way to make sure children in every type of community have access to quality early learning. Rebecca Hickman is the chief ecosystem and policy officer at SmartStart.