Early childhood development sector remains ‘vital’ but underresourced partner in provision of compulsory Grade R

Theodora Lutuli could be referred to as a generational early childhood development (ECD) practitioner. Her mother founded her first ECD centre, Khanyisa Nursery, on her property in Nyanga, Cape Town, in 1985. The second, Inkwenkwezi Educare, was established on land behind a neighbourhood church in 1997.

Today, Lutuli runs both. She keeps a photo of her mother in her office at Inkwenkwezi, where about 100 children between the ages of three and five attend each year. The centres are conditionally registered, meaning they receive the per-pupil ECD subsidy while they are on their way to meeting the requirements for full registration.

Across the Western Cape, about 22% of Grade R pupils attend registered ECD centres like Lutuli’s, with the other 78% at public schools, according to Unathi Booi, spokesperson for the Western Cape Education Department (WCED).

Nationally, the numbers are a bit more uncertain, but a presentation by Parliament’s standing committee on appropriations in November 2024 stated that the implementation of the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act might require the integration of more than 200,000 Grade Rs who fell outside the education system.

The ECD sector has an important role to play in the delivery of universal access to quality Grade R for young children, according to experts. However, despite recent mass registration drives for centres and the allocation of R10-billion for the ECD subsidy in the 2025 Budget – which meant the per-child allocation increased from R17 to R24 per day – resources and funding remain limited.

“[The ECD sector] is crucial, particularly for the most excluded children,” explained Grace Matlhape, CEO of SmartStart, a social franchise built around a network of licensed ECD practitioners.

“There’s a powerful opportunity in the public-private partnerships with existing ECD centres, supporting them… with greater intentionality around education outcomes for children, around all of the things that will reassure the nation that the quality being provided there is good... The evidence we have is that there’s good quality being provided even in those informal environments.”

Read more: Only one in three registered ECD centres receive subsidy they’re entitled to

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

Funding and recognition

Lutuli emphasised the importance of equalising the provision of resources for ECD- and school-based Grade R pupils. While she acknowledged that independent early learning practitioners were not employed by the state, she said it was important to meet children where they were.

“Basic education does not start from Grade 1. And if you are talking of securing… the economy of the country, we need to make sure that our investment starts at [early childhood development] because then there are no dropouts along the way. The children are ready,” she said.

The subsidy per pupil per day remains lower for Grade Rs in the ECD sector than those in schools, said Matlhape, which makes it more challenging to reach the most vulnerable young people. She argued that building partnerships with existing, good-quality ECD centres would allow provincial education departments to realise the goal of universal access to Grade R far faster than if they only relied on a strategy of building more schools and classrooms.

“With the additional delivery of Grade R, there should be recognition that when Grade R is provided for in a community environment and not at school, that should not mean that the... investment per child is lower than in a school environment,” she said.

“There’s been a lot of wonderful work in ECD with the Department of Basic Education in the last year, lots of wins that are a springboard to the promise of success in future, but as it is right now, it’s still an inequitable distribution of investment per child.”

According to the WCED, 298 ECD centres in the Western Cape are registered to offer Grade R, of which 286 receive funding.

The implementation of a compulsory Grade R year in the foundation phase, in line with the Bela Act of 2024, was an unfunded mandate, meaning provincial education departments were expected to reallocate funding from within existing budgets to facilitate the shift.

Daily Maverick asked the WCED whether it would expand resources for Grade R in registered ECD centres as well as schools if National Treasury were to allocate additional funding.

“This will be decided based on the funding mandate,” said Booi.

“However, the WCED has been working progressively to expand Grade R provision in our schools. In 2025, we had over 72,000 Grade R learners in our schools, and we have built 124 Grade R classrooms in the past 5 years. We will continue to open new Grade R classrooms at schools and ECD sites to provide more places in Grade R in the Western Cape.”

Qualifications versus competency

Booi noted that as the country advanced the “professionalisation” of Grade R, the ECD sector needed to align by enhancing practitioner qualifications, improving conditions of service, strengthening resources and upholding norms and standards in support of the universalisation of access.

With Grade R fully incorporated into the formal schooling system under the Bela Act, Grade R teachers are being held to stricter qualification requirements. Practitioners must now have a minimum National Qualifications Framework (NQF) Level 6 qualification.

Many practitioners in both schools and ECD centres who entered the system before the Act was signed into law held lower-level qualifications – NQF Level 4 or 5. Others did not have a matric.

“There is no incentive for [ECD practitioners] to qualify, because even if you do go to college and whatnot, you come back and what you earn in comparison to what the other Grade R teacher is earning at a formal school is chalk and cheese,” Lutuli pointed out.

“What we are doing here is no different to what they are doing on the other side… I’m not going to be naive and say that everybody within the ECD space is qualified. I know that’s not the case. But we are talking here about skills. These people have acquired skills in this period so that they are able to do whatever that needs to be done.”

Matlhape noted that while working towards an ideal scenario in which all Grade R teachers held NQF Level 6 was good, such goals needed to be realised progressively. She warned against driving out competent ECD practitioners in the pursuit of qualifications.

“If you look at the Thrive by Five survey, it has not really seen a close relationship between qualification and quality outcomes for children… Both the ECD sector and the schooling environment have to focus significantly on building competence around the areas most associated with child outcomes... We need to focus on the practitioners being able to deliver quality on a day-to-day basis,” said Matlhape.

“We don’t produce a lot of ECD teachers per year in relation to the million-or-so children who start Grade R every year, and so we do need to start with what we have and work towards the ideal, both in school and in ECD centres.”

Solving drivers of exclusion

There are many reasons some parents continue to choose ECD centres over schools for Grade R learning, according to Matlhape, including:

• Convenience of access, with some ECD centre falling closer to caregivers’ homes;
• Strong relationships of trust between some parents and practitioners; and
• Greater flexibility of hours at ECD centres, allowing working parents to drop children off early and pick them up late.

“I am in support of making Grade R compulsory, because it’s a firm step in saying we see and value the first five years. At the moment, we’ll start with the last of the first five years and see how we manage that transition from early childhood development or early learning programming to schooling as a mechanism for educating children,” she said.

However, she argued that more needed to be done to solve the underlying drivers of exclusion for children who fell outside the regulatory nets for the provision of early learning.

“Making Grade R compulsory is a firm political move. It makes sure that funding will follow, but it will not automatically solve drivers of exclusion of children, in particular the most marginalised children… Understanding what holds access back and solving for that will unlock the funding, because we will know what structural problem we are trying to solve.”

Daily Maverick asked the Department of Basic Education about the role of the ECD sector in the provision of Grade R, but had not received a response by the time of publishing. DM