Compulsory Grade R faces budget constraints and unplaced learners as 2026 academic year begins

Among issues under the spotlight heading into the 2026 school year is the implementation of a compulsory Grade R year in the foundation phase, in line with the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act of 2024.

While this requirement has the potential to improve access to learning, education experts have raised concerns about how budget and resource constraints surrounding the execution of the law could pose a risk to children’s development.

The roll-out of compulsory Grade R remains an unfunded mandate for provincial departments of education, with no specific allocation in the National Treasury’s budget. Departments have been expected to reallocate funding from within existing budgets to facilitate the shift – a challenging demand in a sector that is already bearing the strain of years of fiscal consolidation.

Unplaced learners

The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) is still working to place 2,743 Grade R applicants, many of whom are late applicants, according to an update on Tuesday, 13 January by department spokesperson Bronagh Hammond.

“We are working through these as fast as possible,” she told Daily Maverick.

Reflecting on the challenges around the implementation of compulsory Grade R, Hammond said: “Unfortunately, the implementation of Bela [the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act] did not come with any funding for provincial governments.

“In the Western Cape, we are fortunate to have previously had the highest proportion of learners attending Grade R out of the provinces. Through our continuous investment into early learning, Grade R enrolment went from 68,638 in 2015 to 75,463 learners in 2025.”

Hammond noted that the 2026 figures for enrolment would be determined after a snap survey conducted once schools had been open for 10 days, intended to provide accurate data on learner numbers in each grade once the system had settled.

As part of the strategy for assisting unplaced learners, the WCED has been engaging with principals and management teams since the reopening of schools for staff on Monday, 12 January, to identify additional spaces.

However, not all parents struggling to place their children are late applicants. Robyn Galiem, a mother from Bellville, said she applied for Grade R placement at three schools – two in Bellville and one in Brackenfell – the morning applications opened last year.

“I’m one of those mothers that prepare way in advance... I work from home most of the time, so it makes sense that I go for the schools closer to home,” she said, adding that the Bellville schools were 2km and 3km from her home, respectively.

Galiem said that all three schools were oversubscribed in terms of applicants, and her application had been rejected. When she followed an appeals process to find out why, she was told the schools were prioritising learners in the immediate area.

“If I’m two kilometres away from the school, living in Bellville... I would assume that I’m also part of the... houses that are in the area of the school,” she said, adding that there was a desperate need for more schools in the Western Cape region.

Once her appeals were rejected in November, Galiem tried calling and emailing other schools, but did not receive a helpful response. When she asked the Western Cape Education Department, she was told to call the schools to which she had applied, and that officials would be returning on Monday, 12 January, when school placements were getting under way. She was told the same thing when she visited the WCED offices in Kuils River in early January.

“[An official from the WCED office] called me two days ago and told me, ‘Don't come in. There’s no point. The queues are long.’ But it’s more for people who haven’t even applied for school during that online process. So, the number of [unplaced learners] is increasing,” said Galiem.

“I think the Western Cape is... blaming most of the [cases of unplaced learners] on people who haven’t applied at all, but I think there’s quite a number of people that have applied and just not been placed.”

Galiem is on unpaid leave while trying to find a placement for her son, a situation that affects her income going into the new year.

In a statement released on 9 January, the WCED said that “further movement within the system” was expected as schools finalised promotion, progression and enrollment lists, which often created additional capacity.

“The WCED has built 175 new classrooms through the building of new schools and the expansion of existing schools. This too will contribute towards the placement of learners,” said the department.

Daily Maverick asked the Gauteng Department of Education (GDOE) about the number of unplaced Grade R learners, but hadn’t received a response at the time of publishing.

Sérgio dos Santos, DA representative for education in Gauteng, told Daily Maverick on Tuesday, 13 January, that when he asked the GDOE head of department about the issue, he was told that Grade R placements were done directly with schools, and that no complaints had been received by the department so far.

Daniel Al-Naddaf, Equal Education Law Centre researcher, said that the centre had received reports of unplaced Grade R applicants in Gauteng before the beginning of the school year, but that it would need to monitor the situation in the days after schools opened to confirm whether these learners remained unplaced.

Back-to-school monitoring

While challenges around learner placement at the beginning of the school year are a longstanding reality for provinces, Al-Naddaf noted that placement for Grade R applicants may be particularly difficult due to both underfunding and uncertainty among some caregivers about whether they could still enrol their children in an independent school that offered Grade R.

“Legally, they can, but it’s often unclear to clients and parents. As a result, we've already started receiving reports that parents have learners who are unplaced, and we think it will be quite an issue this year,” said Al-Naddaf.

“We are already receiving clients… who individually have an entitlement to Grade R because it is compulsory, but who are not getting places… We’ll offer the regular assistance that we provide to clients whose children aren’t placed in school, and where necessary, that may include litigation.”

He said issues around learner placement would become clearer after the snap survey.

Attorneys from Equal Education Law Centre will be on the ground in the provinces where they organise – Eastern Cape, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Gauteng – assisting parents with unplaced learners over the return-to-school period.

The Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal Departments of Education had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.

‘Tight fiscal space’

While the Bela Act made Grade R attendance compulsory, the grade has been a part of the official basic education curriculum since 2002, noted Heleen Hofmeyr, researcher at the Research on Socio-Economic Policy (Resep) in Stellenbosch University’s Department of Economics.

She said that school-level data from across six provinces, presented by the Data Driven Districts Programme, showed that enrolment in Grade R already exceeded 80% before it became compulsory (when looking at the proportion of Grade 1 learners in a public primary school who had attended Grade R in a public primary school).

However, Hofmeyr said that it was a concern among provinces that they were being held to the law around compulsory Grade R without the necessary support to expand access.

“This is also happening against the backdrop of already extremely tight education budgets in all provinces… Even without this, provinces are struggling and having to make really difficult decisions around what gets prioritised... We’re in a very difficult, tight fiscal space,” she explained.

Read more: Treasury’s decision not to allocate extra funding imperils compulsory Grade R roll-out

An Equal Education Law Centre report on the inclusion of a compulsory Grade R year, published in November 2025, stated that provinces would need to integrate an estimated 200,000 children into the schooling system and increase quality to meet minimum standards, without any extra support.

“What we do know is that some provinces have reprioritised, very worryingly, things like learner transport funding – which is already itself under-resourced – towards Grade R. And there are initial indications that some districts in some provinces are essentially trying to spread the per learner allocation across grades to try to cover … for Grade R,” said Al-Naddaf.

“Most of what we’ve seen so far is that even better-resourced provinces like the Western Cape and Gauteng are under-resourced for Grade R.”

At a meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education in December 2025, Simoné Geyer, deputy director-general for delivery and support in the Department of Basic Education, said that National Treasury had agreed to make R870-million available for Grade R from 1 April 2026. However, she noted that it remained necessary to meet the Treasury to determine the details of how this funding would be used across provinces.

The Equal Education Law Centre had been engaging with the Treasury about the nationwide funding deficit for Grade R since the 2024 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement, and would continue to do so in the lead-up to the 2026 budget, according to Al-Naddaf.

From the ECD sector

Tshepo Mantjé, an early childhood development coordinator with the Equality Collective, said the organisation had observed a shift in the numbers of children attending Grade R at independent early childhood development (ECD) centres, as many parents would rather send their children to a school-based Grade R class with no fees. Some caregivers also believe the service will be better at schools.

However, “what we’re then seeing is that the schools themselves, from the ECD practitioners’ point of view, are not ready for an uptake of all of these young children”, said Mantjé.

“Also, with schools finishing relatively earlier than ECD centres, we’ve seen young children being out of school by 12pm or 2pm, and then going back to their previous ECD centres because parents are not home yet from work to take care of them... ECD sites also act as an aftercare, where their child can stay for a while longer.”

Where Grade R is being offered at ECD sites, a challenge has been a lack of capacity at centres due to limited dedicated resources and support for practitioners offering this grade, he said.

Daily Maverick asked the Department of Basic Education about the funding constraints surrounding the implementation of compulsory Grade R, but had not received a response at the time of publishing. DM