Hands-on Learning Brief April 2026

Issue 33: April 2026

DGMT is a South African public innovator through strategic investment. Our goal for South Africa is a flourishing people, economy and society. Towards this end, DGMT currently distributes about R200 million per year and leverages and manages a similar amount of funding through joint ventures with other investors.

Through our Hands-on Learning publication, we hope to play a helpful role in synthesising information from innovators and implementers in civil society, supporting them to share what they have learnt so that others are able to draw from and build on their experiences.

IN THIS ISSUE WE FEATURE

LEARNING BRIEF 1

Shaping the future today

This learning brief is the first in an issue dedicated to unpacking how early childhood development can be strengthened in South Africa. It looks at what the 2024 Thrive by Five Index tells us about young children’s early development and how DGMT’s pivotal projects have put the recommendations from the Index into action — from thinking about how to best spend budgets to rolling out on-the-ground interventions that can help reduce chronic malnutrition manifesting as stunting, help get children ready to read and do maths, and support parents to give their children the best start through responsive caregiving.

4

LEARNING BRIEF

2

Building better: Why tracking quality is part of strengthening early childhood development in South Africa

This learning brief examines how the process of developing an early learning programme quality assurance and support system unfolded, the progress achieved and the challenges ahead. Programme quality has two dimensions. The first, structural quality, relates to the physical setting in which children learn. The second, process quality, refers to how a programme creates opportunities for children to interact with the world around them.

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LEARNING BRIEF 3

Aiming for gold: How to make it easier for early learning programmes to get state support

This learning brief looks at how early learning programmes can be assisted to access state support and how Ilifa Labantwana’s work over almost two decades has helped shape and improve South Africa’s early childhood development ecosystem, contributing to the implementation of a streamlined system that helps programmes register to receive subsidies and support.

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SHAPING THE FUTURE TODAY

South Africa’s future depends on its children’s brainpower — and a child’s brain grows fastest in the first few years of life. To help children reach their full potential in those early years, they need nutritious food, early language development through age-appropriate books and responsive caregiving. Yet too many receive few or any of these crucial building blocks. It’s a problem that needs to be addressed from multiple angles, as suggested by the recommendations of the latest Thrive by Five Index.

This learning brief is the first in an issue dedicated to unpacking how early childhood development can be strengthened in South Africa. It looks at what the 2024 Thrive by Five Index tells us about young children’s early development and how DGMT’s pivotal projects have put the recommendations from the Index into action — from thinking about how to best spend budgets to rolling out on-theground interventions that can help reduce chronic malnutrition manifesting as stunting, help get children ready to read and do maths, and support parents to give their children the best start through responsive caregiving.

WHY GETTING OFF TO A GOOD START MATTERS

South Africa’s potential relies on its children’s brainpower. But brains are built over time, child development experts say. Early childhood development (ECD) should therefore be understood as a process during which a child’s brain builds a complex network of connections between the more than 100 billion cells a baby is born with.1 The circuits formed by these connections drive how we think, learn and behave. And because experiences in early life shape how this network forms and works, the first years of a child’s life create the foundation for what follows.

Childhood development is rooted in the progressive way in which the brain’s architecture takes shape:2

Areas responsible for seeing and hearing are the first to start making extensive connections in a newborn’s brain; the process is quickest during the first five or so months after birth.

Neural connections then expand in areas governing speech production and language comprehension — processes that require both visual and auditory input — peaking at around one year of age.

In the meantime, the prefrontal cortex — the brain area that underpins complex mental processes like problemsolving, decision-making, planning and creative and critical thinking — has already started ramping up in building connections, with the development rate at its highest around the age of three or four.3

SYNAPSE FORMATION IN THE DEVELOPING BRAIN

Higher cognitive function

Receptive language area/speech production

Seeing/hearing

Birth–5 years

Source: National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 20244

1 Ackerman, S. 1992. Discovering the brain. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Chapter: “The development and shaping of the brain.” Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234146/

2 National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development. 2001. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. Chapter 8. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK225557/

3 Development continues long past these periods; the time windows described here only pertain to the periods in which neural connections form at the highest rate.

4 National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. 2024. The timing and quality of early experiences combine to shape brain architecture (Working Paper No. 5). Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University. Available at: https://developingchild. harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Timing_Quality_Early_Experiences-1.pdf

Assessing children’s developmental progress by age four is therefore a valuable checkpoint to see if they’re ready to start school soon5 — and in the broader sense to get an idea of what a country’s potential for social and economic development looks like. Early learning, especially in structured programmes in the years before a child goes to school, boosts a society’s wellbeing. This is not only because it gives people better chances of building sustainable livelihoods, but also because it allows them to access healthcare, build resilience, become more engaged citizens and make better choices about their lives.6 Supporting children to learn well is therefore a powerful lever for building a sustainable future for a nation.

THE STATE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

The 2024 Thrive by Five Index,8 a three-yearly national survey that measures how four-year-old children are developing and what influences their progress across early learning, physical growth and social-emotional functioning, paints a concerning picture of the state of ECD in South Africa:9

“The highest rate of return in early childhood development comes from investing as early as possible, from birth through age five, in disadvantaged families.”7

—James Heckman, American economist and scholar

5 In South Africa, children may start Grade R in the year they turn five or six. Grade R forms part of the compulsory Foundation Phase in the public schooling system. See: Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (Act 32 of 2024). Government Gazette, 16 September 2024. Available at: https://www.parliament.gov.za/storage/app/media/ Acts/2024/Act_32_of_2024_Basic_Education_Laws_Amendment_Act.pdf

6 World Bank. 2018. World Development Report 2018: Learning to realize education’s promise. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-1096-1

Only 42% of children of this age enrolled in early learning programmes (ELPs) were developmentally on track — and of the close to 60% that were not on track, half were far behind the expected milestones. For children outside of ELPs, only about a fifth (18%) were on track, and more than half were far behind.10

Nearly half of the children in the survey were not emotionally ready for school.

Almost four in 10 children lagged behind when it came to engaging in social relations with peers and adults, such as when they had to participate in group activities, resolve conflicts or ask for help.

7 Heckman Equation. n.d. Invest in early childhood development: Reduce deficits, strengthen the economy. Available at: https://heckmanequation.org/resource/investin-early-childhood-development-reduce-deficits-strengthen-the-economy/

About a third (32%) of the sample showed signs of stunting, although it was moderate to severe in only a fifth of this subgroup (7% of the total sample). Stunting means a child is too short for their age because of chronic malnutrition; the condition can be worsened by repeated infections, and contributes to suboptimal brain development.

Close to 50% of the girls in the study were developmentally on track compared with about 40% of boys.

Children in low-fee ECD centres (charging less than R50/month) were half as likely to be on track as those in high-fee centres (charging more than R1 690/month).

8 Thrive by Five. n.d. Thrive by Five Index. Available at: https://thrivebyfive.co.za/

9 Giese, S., et al. 2025. Thrive by Five Index 2024: National findings. Pretoria and Cape Town: DBE and DataDrive2030.

10 A subsample of 272 children not enrolled in an ELP was included in the 2024 survey to gain insights into a highly vulnerable population of young children. This sample was purposively selected from low-income areas in three provinces. However, owing to the small sample size, findings are not provincially or nationally representative.

INDEX

The 2024 Thrive by Five Index surveyed 5 001 fouryear-olds attending one of 1 388 ELPs across South Africa’s nine provinces. Standardised tools were used to assess developmental milestones across five subdomains of early learning, as well as physical growth and social and emotional functioning. A child’s abilities in language, emergent mathematics, executive functioning, fine motor coordination and visual-motor integration are the building blocks for reading, writing, problem-solving and classroom participation. Assessing children’s performance in these areas at the age of four is therefore a good way to gauge whether they’re ready for formal school-based learning, which starts in the Foundation Phase.11

A subsample of 272 children not enrolled in an ELP was also included, selected from low-income areas. These findings are not nationally representative but do offer important insights regarding the developmental progress of children in a highly vulnerable population.

CHANGING THE COURSE

Although the survey’s findings appear to paint a bleak picture, they also offer hope — because knowing where the problems lie means appropriate solutions can be explored. According to the study’s recommendations, prioritising the following six approaches can change the story for South Africa’s children and help the country to build a more equitable early learning system:12

1 Finance the ECD sector for access and quality.

2 Strengthen the ECD workforce and classroom practices.

3 Integrate early learning and child health to tackle stunting.

4 Support positive parenting by all caregivers — including fathers.

5 Strengthen Foundation Phase teaching.

6 Advance data and research.

One of the goals of DGMT’s approach to building a thriving society in South Africa is focused on helping all children get on track by Grade 4.13

GOAL 2: ALL CHILDREN ON TRACK BY GRADE 4

The four opportunities included in this strategic goal are as follows:

OPPORTUNITY 4:

Give every child the benefit of early childhood development.

OPPORTUNITY 5:

Stop nutritional stunting of young children.

OPPORTUNITY 6:

Make sure every child is ready to read and do maths by the time they go to school.

OPPORTUNITY 7:

Build simple, loving connections for every child.

12 Thrive by Five Index. 2024. Recommendations brief: Evidence to action. Pretoria and Cape Town: DBE and DataDrive.

13 DGMT. n.d. Goal 2: Keep all children on track by Grade 4. Available at: https://dgmt.co.za/our-approach/goal-2-keep-all-children-on-track-by-grade-4/

The four opportunities identified under this goal intersect with the recommendations that have come out of the 2024 Thrive by Five Index. The following section of this learning brief focuses on four ways in which DGMT and its pivotal projects are putting the Thrive by Five recommendations into action: investing in early childhood development; preventing stunting; promoting early literacy and language development through the distribution of books; and supporting caregivers to give their children the best start.

MAKING THE BEST OF BUDGETS TO BUILD BUSY BRAINS

Funding early childhood development makes sense — for everyone.14 Based on extensive analysis of data from the United States, Nobel laureate James Heckman showed that the earlier funding is directed to supporting ECD, the better.15

HECKMAN CURVE

That’s because the return on investment — in other words, the gain derived from spending an extra unit of money on something — is highest when expenditure is prioritised in the first five years of life, but tapers off in the following years and almost flatlines by the time a child leaves school. It’s clear that waiting too long before investing in a child’s development dilutes the “bang” that can be gained from each “buck”.

Improving funding for early childhood development as recommended by the 2024 Index is part of Opportunity 4 of DGMT’s strategy. Having more money available will help not only to get more children enrolled in ELPs in South Africa — and especially those from the poorest households who can least afford to pay for care — but also to make sure that programme practitioners work in decent conditions, are paid fairly and have ongoing access to training opportunities.

Programmes targeted towards the earliest years

Source: James Heckman, 200816

14 Dulvy, E.N., et al. 2022. South Africa: Public expenditure and institutional review for early childhood development. Washington, DC: World Bank.

15 Heckman, J.J. 2008. Schools, skills and synapses. Economic Inquiry 46(3), p. 289. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2812935/

16 Ibid.

In 2021, the government spent about R9.5 billion on early learning, representing less than 1% of its total public expenditure that year.17 Of this amount, only about 40% — R3.8 billion — was allocated to preschool programmes; about R2.8 billion of that was channelled through ECD subsidies. At that time, a subsidy of R17 was available to support a child in an ELP per day, an amount that had not changed since 2019 and did not change until 2024. But because of inflation, that R17 translated to only R13,59 of buying power in real terms by 2023.18

In 2025, a R10 billion boost from Treasury over three years pushed up the amount to R24 per child per day19 and has the potential to expand early learning programmes to 1.2 million children by 2027, bringing South Africa closer to the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) goal of subsidising 2.3 million children by 2030. While significant, the increase from R17 to R24 served only to recover the subsidy’s value lost to inflation over the years. Further increases are needed to bring it closer to what quality ECD provision actually costs, estimated to be as high as R91 per child per day.20

South Africa’s national policy on ECD says that cost should not be a barrier to access for early learning. In an ideal situation, this would imply that ELPs should be fully publicly funded, says Daniel McLaren, public finance economist at Ilifa Labantwana.21 “But we haven't gone that far yet. Where we’re at now is simply trying to increase funding to the sector so that ELPs can rely less and less on having to charge fees.”

Results from the ECD Census in 2021 show that roughly seven out of 10 ELPs in the country depend on fees as their primary source of income.22 Three-quarters of the centres that took part in the survey were in wealth quintiles 1–3, where monthly fees could be, on average, between R218 and R313.23 Only a third of the almost 42 500 programmes surveyed received a subsidy, and data showed that those without subsidies may have had to charge almost three times as much as centres that were able to access government help.

There are two components needed to get to a point where public funding for early learning relieves the financial pressure on families, says McLaren. One is working towards increasing the value of the subsidy so that it’s closer to what it actually costs to support a child in an ELP that offers quality learning. The other is to increase access to the subsidy for more children, which means getting more programmes registered in the system so that they can be eligible for funding.

To this end, Ilifa Labantwana has been working with the government to model the cost of quality provision and the funding amount necessary to achieve universal access to ELPs for all children by 2030. Ilifa is also working with the DBE, which administers the ECD subsidy, and a range of social partners to develop guidelines and step-by-step tools that can help decision-makers ensure that the subsidy reaches all children who need it, especially those attending ELPs in the most informal and low-resource environments. Currently, a number of systemic obstacles linked to regulation and administration, such as meeting the requirements for getting to Silver status on the DBE’s registration system (on page 24), prevent the subsidy reaching children in these settings.

The collaboration is an example of the power of strong relationships between the public sector and non-government players, says McLaren. “Something like the Thrive by Five Index, and also other research in the sector, gives us a much stronger platform for engaging with the government. The closeness of this relationship, together with evidence that sparks ideas for innovative change, is where our strength lies.” It’s a social compact as proposed in the 2030 Strategy for ECD Programmes.24

17 Dulvy, E.N., et al. 2022. South Africa public expenditure and institutional review for early childhood development. Washington, DC: World Bank.

18 Brooks, L.E., et al. 2022. Assessing the policy options for the public provisioning of early childhood development programmes. South African Journal on Human Rights 38(3–4), pp. 240–260.

19 Parliament of the Republic of South Africa. 2024. Finance Minister announces budget allocations for employment of doctors and teachers and expansion of the ECD programme. Available at: https://www.parliament.gov.za/news/finance-ministerannounces-budget-allocations-employment-doctors-teachers-and-expansion-ecdprogramme

20 Kika-Mistry, J. 2024. Spending and budget trends in the early childhood care and education sector. Note 14: Teacher Demographic Dividend Project. Research on SocioEconomic Policy (RESEP), Stellenbosch University.

21 Ilifa Labantwana. n.d. Ilifa Labantwana. Available at: https://ilifalabantwana.co.za/

22 Department of Basic Education. 2022. ECD Census 2021: Report. Pretoria: Department of Basic Education. Available at: https://datadrive2030.co.za/wp-content/ uploads/2022/09/ecdc-2021-report.pdf

23 In 2021, the child support grant was R460. This means some families may have had to spend about half of the grant on early learning.

24 Department of Basic Education. n.d. ECD workshop unpacks 2030 strategy for ECD programmes. Available at: https://www.education.gov.za/ArchivedDocuments/ ArchivedArticles/ECD-Workshop-unpacks-2030-Strategy-ECD-Programmes-0524. aspx

HELPING CHILDREN GROW WELL

About a third of children in the latest Thrive by Five Index showed some signs of stunting, meaning they’re too short for their age. This happens because of chronic malnutrition (either not having enough food or not getting the right balance of nutrients), especially in the first 1 000 days of life.25 Moderate to severe stunting was seen in only about a fifth of this group, representing just 7% of the total sample.

There’s some good news in this finding, as the number of worryingly stunted children is lower than what was suggested in earlier national surveys.26 This demonstrates the protective effects of ELPs, of which most provide at least one of the day’s meals (usually lunch).27 This point is reinforced by the finding that about 20% of children not enrolled in ELPs show signs of moderate to severe stunting. Only 18% of these children were developmentally on track, and more than half were far behind the expected milestones. Although this subsample was small and not nationally representative, it offers insight into the developmental consequences of living in poverty and vulnerability.

Stunting — even when mild — impairs children’s ability to learn, grow and do well at school. This developmental setback has long-term health and economic consequences, such as earning low wages as adults, lost productivity and a high risk of chronic diseases later in life.28 On the flip side, research shows that rolling out 10 simple nutrition interventions at scale (including supplementing pregnant women’s diets with vitamins and minerals such as zinc, vitamin A, folic acid and calcium), promoting breastfeeding, teaching pregnant women about good nutrition for themselves and their babies and nipping malnutrition in the bud early, can yield $18 in productivity returns later for every $1 invested.29 If the quality of learning improves and labour market participation becomes more equal, the returns can be up to $30 for every $1 invested in early childhood nutrition.30

Tackling stunting is more than a health issue; it’s a whole-ofsociety issue, says Edzani Mphaphuli, executive director of Grow Great, an organisation focused on combatting stunting. “[It] is a complex and wicked problem, of which the root cause really is poverty, and our aim is to halve stunting in South Africa by 2030.”

25 World Health Organization. n.d. Stunting in a nutshell (Chapter 2). Available at: https:// www.who.int/multi-media/details/stunting-in-a-nutshell-chapter2

26 Data from the 2016 South African Demographic and Health Survey and 2021–2023 National Food and Nutrition Security Survey.

27 Department of Basic Education. 2022. ECD Census 2021.

28 World Health Organization. n.d. Stunting in a nutshell (Chapter 3). Available at: https:// www.who.int/multi-media/details/stunting-in-a-nutshell-chapter3

29 Desmond, C., et al. 2021. Realising the potential human development returns to investing in early and maternal nutrition: The importance of identifying and addressing constraints over the life course. PLoS Glob Public Health 1(10): e0000021. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000021

30 Ibid.

The Grow Great campaign follows a two-pronged approach, focusing as much on pregnant women as on children. Early interventions can cushion even children at high risk of stunting, explains Mphaphuli, so the Grow Great Flourish programme supports pregnant women with knowledge about both their own and their developing child’s health through a peer-to-peer model. “We call it the school of motherhood,” she says, “to help mothers become their children’s fiercest supporters and protectors.”

On the other end is the Grow Great Champions programme, which trains community health workers (CHWs) to check up on pregnant women, track how well their babies are growing after birth, share knowledge on nutrition and wellbeing, and link them to health and social services early on.

NUMBERS THAT COUNT

In the past seven years, Grow Great has:

monitored 357 037 children to see if they’re growing as they should

trained 4 294 CHWs on tracking children’s developmental progress

supported 65 464 mothers

licensed over 400 Grow Great Flourish hosts

seen 80% of mothers book for their first antenatal visit before 20 weeks of pregnancy.

“But the thing that really makes my heart sink is seeing how debilitating poverty can be for pregnant women and the mothers of young children,” says Mphaphuli. Because even when mothers know all the important things they need to do to raise healthy babies, there’s little they can do if they don’t have the money to go for antenatal check-ups, buy healthy food or take pregnancy supplements. Low birth weight is one of the strongest predictors of stunting, she explains, and financial support during pregnancy can help to ensure that babies are born at a healthy weight.

“That’s why we advocate for a Maternal Support Grant to be introduced. From our research during Covid-19, we saw that giving mothers fortnightly vouchers of R300 allowed them to buy food, which improved both their and their children’s nutritional status. On top of that, we saw an improvement in maternal mental health, telling us that financial support changes a lot for a mother who would otherwise already be under pressure during pregnancy.”

Says Mphaphuli: “If there were a treatment for poverty, it would be to invest in a young child’s mother.”

BOOKS BUILD BRAINS

The 2024 Index showed that when early learning is viewed at a domain level, children performed best in emergent literacy and language, with just over half of them being on track and only about a fifth falling far behind the expected milestones.

Being able to read and make sense of language is important in all aspects of learning, says Kwanda Ndoda, development practitioner at DGMT.31 Moreover, having abundant access to books, especially at home, boosts early learning skills, executive functioning and early numeracy — as demonstrated by results from the Yizani Sifunde project in the Eastern Cape.32 The project, which was a collaboration between Book Dash, Wordworks and Nal’ibali, helped children to have access to 25–50 books in their homes. After a year of the intervention, the proportion of children who were developmentally on track approximately doubled and the proportion who were falling far behind approximately halved.33 This was seen not only in literacy and language,

but also with regard to fine motor skills and executive functioning,34 two domains in which only 29–40% were found to be on track in the 2024 Thrive by Five Index.

Just 11% of households covered by the 2024 Index had more than five children’s books, and over a quarter had none. Umncedi, a pivotal project at DGMT that provides support and resources to a network of early learning practitioners and principals, can help address this book deficit; it’s well placed to act as a link between book distributors and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) working to strengthen reading and literacy outcomes. Umncedi’s collaboration with the book distribution network Book Dash involves distributing boxes of books, including some 50 000 wordless picture books, to a network of 400 ECD centres.

31 University of Minnesota Center for Early Education and Development (CEED). n.d. Center for Early Education and Development. Available at: https://umncedi.org/

32 Book Dash. n.d. Research and evidence base. Available at: https://bookdash.org/ research-and-evidence-base/#local-evidence

33 Findings are from an external evaluation of the Yizani Sifunde project, and shown in the infographic “Abundant book ownership: A key contributor to improving preschool outcomes”.

34 Ibid.

“Early learning is one-quarter stimulation and three-quarters encouragement,” says Ndoda, who has been an avid reader from a young age and understands the value of reading time with his two-year-old son. “He will bring me his favourite book every day and demand story time. It’s gold.”

To Ndoda the power of shared reading lies in it being not only a way to help children unlock their language ability, but also an activity that helps them to strengthen their developing social and emotional relations with caregivers. It also promotes focus and attention on a single activity. Wordless picture books as included in the Book Dash boxes are especially valuable, as they are language independent, making them suitable to distribute at scale.

Says Ndoda: “It doesn’t matter whether they get delivered to Delft in the Western Cape or a rural area in Limpopo; they have the same power everywhere.”

CARING THROUGH SHARING

While ELPs play a critical role in children’s early development, learning begins — and continues — at home. The 2024 Index suggests that many caregivers also overestimate their child’s developmental progress, suggesting a gap in awareness of age-appropriate milestones. Helping families recognise key developmental milestones and understand why they matter, and offering simple, low-cost ways to support children to reach them, can go a long way in strengthening ECD.

“If we want children to thrive, we need to help parents thrive too,” says Aqeelah Tootla, innovation manager at DGMT focusing on Opportunity 7, which is all about establishing an environment of simple, loving connections for children. This doesn’t apply only to children’s primary caregivers, but also to the other adults that children interact with in their community, such as family members, people at church or teachers at school.

“To me, responsive caregiving is really about being able to pause and think what a child needs in a certain context, responding to those needs consistently, and also understanding yourself in order to provide that response. It starts during pregnancy already and continues as a child grows and develops after birth — and this approach underpins all our grant-making,” explains Tootla.

Currently, 27 projects are supported with grants under Opportunity 7. “It really does take a village to raise a child,” she says, and for this reason the team aims to view grant applications in a holistic way and tries to find touch points between projects to facilitate wide-reaching impact, setting organisations up to learn from and tap into one another’s strengths.

One of the implementing partners funded through this opportunity, for example, is the South African Parenting Programme Implementers Network (SAPPIN),35 which brings together NGOs that use evidence-based solutions to develop parenting support programmes. “Our current grant to SAPPIN focuses on their work around establishing a community of practice with regard to the role of fathers in the lives of children, and how this can then be part of the work that organisations do in supporting caregivers to form the connections that will help children thrive,” she explains. This links perfectly with the recommendation from the 2024 Index to recognise the role of fathers in strengthening positive parenting.

Working with a network like SAPPIN is a practical way to expand impact. Says Tootla: “We know that we can’t fund everyone who applies, but by partnering with an established network, a grant can reach further and help to support interventions that can deliver small, consistent changes in behaviour. And that’s what we’re aiming for: solving one thing at a time to make a difference in the long run.”

35 South African Parenting Programme Implementers Network (SAPPIN). n.d. SAPPIN Available at: https://sappin.org.za/

LESSONS LEARNT

Giving our children the best chance to thrive and shape a bright, sustainable future is a goal Jack Shonkoff, the founding director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University,36 calls “a very challenging art”.37 Here are some of the lessons DGMT’s teams working in this space have learnt so far.

1

STRONG RELATIONSHIPS HELP TO ACHIEVE THE BEST OUTCOMES

In working towards making the best use of the ECD subsidy and giving more centres access to it, “we didn’t realise just how strong our relationship with the DBE was,” McLaren says. That closeness in relationship is based on evidence and data on how interventions can help drive change, showing a real willingness to support the government in their needs. “We were able to work really closely with the department on innovative ideas and now that things are starting to take shape, we’re quite humbled by how nimble and agile the government is in supporting ECD and how open they are to new ideas.”

2

TO HELP CHILDREN THRIVE, WE HAVE TO START EARLY — AND BUILD ON WHAT WE HAVE

“Investing in a child’s mother is the most important investment that you can ever make for that child’s growth,” says Mphaphuli. This is what both Grow Great Flourish, a peer-support network for new mothers, and Grow Great Champions, an initiative that trains community health workers to help new and expecting mothers know what’s best for their babies, focus on. In addition, financial support during pregnancy, such as what could be available if a Maternal Support Grant were introduced, can help mothers to buy healthy, nutritious food during pregnancy, improve their babies’ growth and nutrition outcomes and relieve financial pressure on households, Grow Great’s research has shown.38 Through these initiatives and collaborative networks, “we can ensure that every malnourished child is linked to care and food to reduce significantly the impact of stunting on early childhood development,” says Mphaphuli.

36 Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University. n.d. Center on the Developing Child. Available at: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/

37 Shonkoff, J. 2023. Opening address at the national symposium of the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=z0ygFrNGo2E

38 Grow Great. 2024. CoCare Maternal Support Study (handout). Available at: https://growgreat.co.za/ow/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GG-MSG-HANDOUT2final-revised-PRINT.pdf

PARTNERSHIPS HELP BRING THE WHOLE PICTURE INTO VIEW

Ndoda says that before collaborating with Book Dash, he understood the idea of a book distribution initiative only in theory. Seeing the printing and distribution process first-hand — and understanding what drives the costs — opened his eyes to what could realistically constrain an initiative of this kind, and what would not.

For example, 20 000 books were printed at R15 each. The cost was relatively low because the books were wordless, and the print run included only two titles. This meant the books could be printed in large volumes, without the set-up having to be changed repeatedly. “Consider a print run to be an assembly line,” explains Ndoda. “The more different models you want to assemble, the more components your assembly line must have and the more costly that process becomes.” In addition, courier costs were found to be cheaper than initial estimates: instead of approximately R1 500 per delivery, it cost around R500 per delivery. This shows that practical knowledge informs better decisions about designing an intervention that can yield real benefit for children.

ASK PEOPLE WHAT THEY NEED, RATHER THAN TELLING THEM WHAT YOU NEED

When it comes to deciding which types of projects to fund, it’s easy to fall into a set way of thinking about what interventions are needed, rather than listening to what people on the ground say the needs are, says Tootla. “We need to be intentional in our grant-making and perhaps take a step back to find out what it is that people need and what realistic outcomes are for them,” she says. This means focusing on a grantee’s strengths and supporting them in the areas where they already excel. They know what they’re good at. Being too prescriptive can become a hindrance rather than an enabler of meaningful work. 3 4

WHAT’S NEXT?

Ilifa Labantwana is working with the DBE to develop meaningful strategies to maximise Treasury’s allocation to ECD. This includes supporting the Bana Pele Mass Registration Drive and exploring ways to use the allocated funds for structural improvements at facilities, enabling more early learning programmes (ELPs) to become eligible for state support (on page 24). Through its role in the Hold My Hand campaign, which supports the National Strategy to Accelerate Action for Children, other pivotal projects of DGMT are focusing on supporting responsive caregiving, helping to stimulate early language development and learning through promoting reading programmes and access to books, and advocating for the Maternal Support Grant to be implemented.

This brief was written by Linda Pretorius and edited by Rahima Essop, with inputs from Daniel McLaren, Edzani Mphaphuli, Kwanda Ndoda and Aqeelah Tootla.

This is the learning experience of:

4 BUILDING BETTER: WHY TRACKING QUALITY IS PART OF STRENGTHENING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

The earlier we invest in children’s development, the better. In South Africa, this means improving both access to and quality of learning programmes: about a third of the country’s 3–5-year-olds do not attend any form of an early learning programme (ELP) and of the children who are enrolled, about 60% are not developmentally on track.

Programme quality has two dimensions. The first, structural quality, relates to the physical setting in which children learn. The second, process quality, refers to how a programme creates opportunities for children to interact with the world around them. Research shows that this has a greater influence on children’s development than structural quality alone.

To improve process quality, it needs to be measurable in the first place. However, objectively measuring an abstract concept such as quality is tricky — even more so when the aim is to link findings on a programme’s offering to children’s developmental progress.

This learning brief examines how the process of developing an ELP quality assurance and support system unfolded, the progress achieved and the challenges ahead.

THE RIGHT INVESTMENT FOR REAL REWARDS

Investing in young children’s development is smart, research shows.1 Offering children structured and stimulating early learning opportunities capitalises on their natural responsiveness to the world around them — how they explore it, their role in it and how they engage with situations and people. This helps set them up to become productive citizens who contribute to the economy, create nurturing environments for their children and improve human development trajectories. The earlier the investment, the better the return.2

Yet in many developing countries, the environment to foster early childhood development (ECD) is not as strong as it should be. Although around 62% of the world’s children are enrolled in ELPs, children from low-income countries make up only a third of that group, with access even in that subset varying based on socio-economic status or geographic location.3 Similar trends are seen in South Africa: about a third of the country’s 3–5-year-olds do not attend any form of ELP, the 2021 ECD Census showed.4 In addition, of the children who are enrolled, about 60% are not developmentally on track, the 2024 Thrive by Five Index found.5

Strengthening ECD requires not only that more children have access to ELPs, but also that they’re exposed to quality learning. This means programme quality needs to be measurable in the first place – because only then is it possible to identify shortcomings, develop support and gauge whether interventions were successful in improving outcomes.

Research shows that the quality of an ELP has two dimensions.6 One relates to assessing structural aspects such as the physical state of a facility, group sizes, staff-to-children ratios and health and safety standards. These factors all help create conditions that allow children to learn well — and are fairly easy to quantify and compare against predefined benchmarks.

The other dimension, process quality, is harder to pin down. It focuses on how a programme helps children learn and develop through creating opportunities for interaction with other children and adults, their physical surroundings and materials, as well as their families and communities. Research shows that this category has a greater influence on child development.7

Objectively measuring quality can be tricky. How can a score be assigned to something that is descriptive in nature? And how can such scores be used to support and improve early learning,

1 Heckman, J. J. 2008. Schools, skills and synapses. Economic Inquiry 46(3), p. 289. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2812935/ Bendini, M. M., et al. 2022. From evidence to effective policies: How to invest in early childhood education to nurture children’s potential - Overview. Washington, DC.: World Bank Group. Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/ en/099925111162229966

2 Heckman. Economic Inquiry, p. 289. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ articles/PMC2812935/

3 Bendini, M. M., et al. How to invest in early childhood education to nurture children’s potential – Overview. Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/ en/099925111162229966

4 Department of Basic Education. 2022. ECD Census 2021: Report. Pretoria: DBE. Available at: https://datadrive2030.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/ecdc-2021report.pdf

5 Giese, S. et al. 2025. Thrive by Five Index 2024: National findings. Pretoria and Cape Town: DBE and DataDrive2030.

Maldonado-Carreño, C., et al. 2022. Measuring the quality of early childhood education: Associations with children’s development from a national study with the IMCEIC tool in Colombia. Child Development 93(1), pp. 254–268.

THE MAKINGS OF A QUALITY ASSURANCE AND SUPPORT SYSTEM

The basis for a national QASS for early learning was set out in the National Integrated ECD Policy published in 2015.8 It called for a tool that could support programmes’ ongoing self-assessment, direct them to support and encourage the attainment of external accreditation.

Although government is mandated to support efforts to improve the quality of care and learning, capacity constraints in the public sector can slow progress. In addition, as the ECD sector is largely run by private providers, the wisdom and experience of social partners can’t be ignored. These realities provide an opportunity for collaboration between government departments and non-state actors such as NGOs, civil society and private funders.

Clearly defining the responsibilities of different role players has helped capitalise on their respective strengths. For example, as the mandated owner of a national QASS, the Department of Basic Education (DBE)9 is positioned to develop an enabling policy environment for quality assurance and support, establish a framework within which the system can operate, and coordinate the operations and resources needed for implementation, particularly through provincial departments. With this in place, the expertise of NGOs and other private sector actors can be leveraged to handle the operational development and rolling out the system, along with monitoring how it’s being used to facilitate further refinement.

Ilifa has worked with the DBE to bring together contributors from different areas of expertise, managing the various steps of design, development and evaluation, and facilitating dialogue between multiple stakeholders.

“The government’s responsibility for introducing and implementing a quality improvement system stems from the ECD policy, which states that regulated ECD standards for registration are important but insufficient,” explains Shakira Maharaj, project manager for quality and human resources at Ilifa.

Maharaj says the bigger picture of tracking quality is to help children reach their full potential: too many are not meeting the developmental milestones they should be.10 “We’re not going to see children thrive if we just support the basics around health and safety and programme delivery. Research has told us that one of the most important components for improving child outcomes is how the practitioner engages with children, and a lot of that is determined by quality standards. That’s not an environmental health and safety thing; that’s about how programme delivery is happening,” she says.

To that end, the sector must develop a shared understanding of quality, Maharaj explains. As a first step in designing the QASS, it was therefore necessary to define the quality standards, how to measure them and how to respond to them to better support principals and practitioners so that children can thrive.

Maharaj says developing such an assessment system has been a long journey, and “the DBE has been incredible in driving this process as a priority” by welcoming input from experts in various fields: statistics, psychometrics, ECD, data analysis and more. The shared thinking eventually culminated in an initial set of tangible, measurable standards in 2021, organised across five domains to provide a well-rounded picture of how a programme operates:

Learning programme looks at how learning is facilitated in the classroom and the materials or resources available to help children play and learn.

Staffing, management and leadership focuses on practitioner competencies and experience and opportunities for further development and training.

Parent and community engagement considers how programmes reflect what caregivers teach children at home.

Inclusiveness looks at how classrooms support everyone’s participation, regardless of ethnicity, ability, language, gender or socio-economic circumstances.

Nutrition, health and safety describes how programmes promote an environment that fosters safe and healthy development.

8 Department of Social Development. 2015. National integrated early childhood development policy. Pretoria: DSD.

9 Government oversight for ECD was transferred from the DSD to the DBE in April 2022.

To arrive at an objective measurement of the quality of learning offered by an ELP, each statement within a domain is scored as a 1, 2 or 3, representing three levels of quality: basic, emerging and enhanced. Scoring all the statements across each of the domains can then give a general picture of a programme’s strengths and areas for improvement. This allows the quality assessment to be used as a developmental instrument rather than a scorecard that penalises ELPs for non-compliance. Maharaj says this approach is one of the core principles of South Africa’s emerging QASS: “We want the

tool to meet programmes and practitioners where they’re at and help us figure out how we can take them on a journey of support.”

That’s why a package of support was developed alongside the assessment tool, describing the roles and responsibilities of different actors, as well as the resources, materials and supportive processes needed to improve the quality of early learning programming.

A DECADE OF DEVELOPMENT THINKING

National Integrated ECD Policy released

Early research about tracking ECD quality

Draft version of QASS put forward, together with a package of support

2023

Talks around an Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Outcomes Fund set up by the DBE and donor organisations, and the need for a quality assessment system to track impact

Validation study

First roll-out as part of the ECCE Outcomes Fund

TESTING THE TOOL

To see how the proposed assessment tool worked in practice, it was field-tested on a small scale with about 20 sites in 2023. Once the results were in, the system would be refined and then trialled more extensively — or at least that was the plan.

But then talks between the DBE and donors began about launching an Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Outcomes Fund,11 a nearly R500 million collaboration between the DBE, the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) and a coalition of local and international donors and implementation partners. It is set to run over three years and expand access to quality early learning for more than 115 000 children in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo, provinces where access to quality early learning is low. Implementing partners will either build new ECD centres in the communities in which they’re tasked to work or help 2 000 existing facilities meet the requirements for attaining Silver registration status and so become eligible to access the government’s per-child per-day subsidy, as well as funds for infrastructure development (on page 24).12

The ECCE Outcomes Fund uses an outcomes-based funding model, meaning that payments to implementing partners are made only once outcomes linked to real-world change — such as improved literacy or school readiness — can be demonstrated.13 An objective, reliable and valid assessment tool is needed to verify that an implementing partner’s work has delivered the intended results. This is exactly the purpose of the QASS. The development team therefore recognised an opportunity to run a validation study to test whether the system could be trusted to deliver the insights it was designed

to generate — particularly in understanding how the quality of a learning programme translates into children’s ageappropriate development and readiness for school.

With the help of a team of data analysts, statisticians and ECD experts, the standards included in the QASS were translated into a survey instrument, which could be tested in different ways to determine its reliability and validity.

11 Donors include The Lego Foundation, Yellowwoods, FirstRand, the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation. The five implementing partners are Ntataise, SmartStart, ELRU, Impande, and The Unlimited Child.

12 ECD Info Hub. 19 December 2025. Transforming early learning for 115 000 children with R469 million. Available at: https://ecdinfohub.org/thrive-by-five-report-key-findingsand-recommendations-copy/

Education Outcomes Fund. 2025. Harnessing the potential of outcomes-based financing to improve early childhood outcomes. Available at: educationoutcomesfund.org/post/harnessing-the-potential-of-outcomes-basedfinancing-to-improve-early-childhood-outcomes

For more about outcomes-based financing, see: Gustafsson-Wright, E., Gardiner, S. and Smith, K. 2016. Ensuring effective outcomebased financing in early childhood development: Recommendations to the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity. Washington, DC: Brookings. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ensuring-effectiveoutcome-based-financing-in-early-childhood-development/

Guerrero, A. 2025. Outcomes-based financing in the new financing for development architecture: Lessons and opportunities for governments, development partners, and multilateral organisations. Paris: OECD.

13 Education Outcomes Fund. No date. Work. https://www.educationoutcomesfund.org/work

Education Outcomes Fund. 2025. Harnessing the potential of outcomesbased financing to improve early childhood outcomes. 18 Dec. educationoutcomesfund.org/post/harnessing-the-potential-of-outcomes-basedfinancing-to-improve-early-childhood-outcomes

Did you know?

In statistics language, reliability means testing whether a research instrument yields the same results when administered by different people, while validity refers to whether the information gathered from the tool really answers the research questions.

For the validation process, 288 ELPs were assessed, with two field workers each running the survey at 234 sites to see whether the tool yielded reliable results. To check whether the tool yielded valid information about children’s outcomes, results were correlated with data from the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) and the Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM).14

The QASS ticked both these boxes, “something we were really excited about,” says Maharaj. “Seeing that the QASS could predict ELOM scores was a big win, because finding statistical correlations between quality assessment and child outcomes is generally very hard. In fact, when we told the analysis experts initially what we’re setting out to do, their advice was ‘don’t!’, because they said it’s likely that results will be quite vague and statistically hard to prove as definitive evidence of a relationship between quality and real outcomes.” But in the end, the results were positive.

NUMBERS THAT COUNT

5

Domains according to which ELP quality is assessed

FROM PAPER TO PRACTICE

The real challenge will be in implementing the system on the ground, says Maharaj. But the ECCE projects also present a valuable opportunity to gain insights into implementation and to learn from how NGOs respond to the assessment findings. “We’re excited to learn from implementing partners how programmes can be supported based on the assessment results, and then to work with the DBE to institutionalise the lessons into a public programme at scale.”

There are three important things to keep in mind when assessing how the QASS works in real life:

288

ELPs assessed as part of the validation study

1IMPROVING QUALITY IN ECD IS MULTIFACETED

Being able to assess an ELP is only one part of an ecosystem of ECD quality in South Africa; another important aspect is to help practitioners further develop their skills and competencies, and to support them by helping to create rewarding and nurturing work environments. “What we’ve seen in the process of developing the QASS, and also from other research, is that practitioners are the cornerstone of a learning programme and so, to move the needle on quality, we really have to support practitioners,” Maharaj explains.

Yet there’s substantial fragility in the sector, with nine out of 10 practitioners earning less than the minimum wage (R4 774 per month for full-time employment in 2024), the 2024 Thrive by Five Index shows. In fact, half of practitioners who took part in the Index survey indicated that low salaries were the biggest barrier to doing their job, while a quarter were planning to leave the ECD sector.15 In addition, only about a quarter of practitioners have a qualification beyond high school, and opportunities to pursue training and qualifications are often limited in the current ECD environment.

3

Provinces included in the validation study, namely KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Western Cape

The good news is that the quality standards as included in the QASS are referred to in the draft resource development plan being drafted by the DBE. Although this skills development plan is still a work in progress, it can help to concretise the relationship between developing practitioners’ capacity and programme requirements, says Maharaj.

QUALITY ASSESSMENT SHOULD DRIVE DEVELOPMENT, NOT BE A COMPLIANCE TOOL

The validation study showed that quality scores were distributed across domains and across ECD centres, showing the system is able to identify aspects that work well in a centre, as well as those that can be improved. That’s also good news, because the system appears to reflect local conditions well. “It’s a tool that’s been developed in South Africa for South Africa,” says Maharaj. “And that’s quite special, because many of the existing tools for ECD assessment speak to Global North conditions.”

Knowing that ECD centres operate at different levels of quality also raises challenges around how practitioners can best be supported. In theory, this could involve a process in which a centre engages with a quality coach after the initial quality assessment, followed by a period of support and a self-assessment before a formal re-evaluation to determine whether quality has improved. “But it’s going to be important to balance encouragement and recognition with identifying areas for improvement,” says Maharaj. “We really have to protect the QASS as a development tool.”

On-site coaching and mentoring have been shown to be effective, although the resource-intense nature of such interventions make them difficult to scale, explains Maharaj. It’s possible, though, especially when the expertise of the NGO sector can be leveraged, “because that’s really where the manpower and implementation experience sit.”

The role of NGOs was also highlighted in the recommendations that flowed from the Thrive by Five Index, noting that they “play a vital role in training and mentoring principals and practitioners, supporting curriculum

delivery and enabling access to quality learning materials. To strengthen this crucial support tier, greater and more sustained funding is needed.”16

Both Ntataise 17 and Impande 18 — implementing partners of the ECCE Outcomes Fund — are organisations with a proven track record in helping to upskill ECD practitioners. Ntataise, which has been working in this space since 1980 and has a network that reaches across six provinces, focuses specifically on helping women from marginalised communities acquire the knowledge and skills needed to establish and sustain ELPs in their communities.19 Impande similarly helps to empower women in rural areas who run small ELPs in their communities by, for example, hosting monthly learning groups for teachers to improve ECD programme implementation, helping practitioners at unfunded ECD centres receive an income through the Social Employment Fund, and collecting data about what centres need to improve the quality of their facilities.

MANY COMPLEMENTARY CHANGES ARE HAPPENING IN THE ECD ECOSYSTEM AT THE SAME TIME

After a sustained push over the last few years to improve the state of ECD in South Africa, many complementary systems are now being strengthened or introduced, and they all feed into each other. Take, for example, the DBE’s digital system known as eCares,20 which requires information regarding an ECD centre’s basic structural compliance as provided by the QASS. At the same time, the QASS can require information about centre registration as captured on eCares. “We have to be mindful that toggling a lever in one place can impact something else in the system, so there has to be a level of strategic thinking, as well as consideration for immediate operational aspects. That’s what’s really interesting and complicated and challenging about this work,” says Maharaj.

16 Thrive by Five Index 2024. Recommendations brief: Evidence to action. Pretoria and Cape Town: DBE and DataDrive.

17 Ntataise. No date. Ntataise. https://www.ntataise.org/

18 Impande. No date. Impande. https://impande.org/

19 Ntataise’s network has helped train more than 80 000 practitioners and reach ECD centres across Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Northern Cape and the Free State. Also see: https://www.ntataise.org/accredited-training-andqualifications/

20 The acronym eCares refers to the government’s Early Childhood Administration and Reporting System.

LESSONS LEARNT

It’s been a long road getting to a point where a workable version of the QASS can be used in a real-world setting at scale. Here’s what the process taught the team.

1

YOU CAN’T GET TOO ATTACHED TO YOUR ORIGINAL PLAN

It’s good to have a plan in place to guide how a process would work, but it’s also important not to hold onto it too tightly, says Maharaj. “When the ECCE Outcomes Fund opportunity came up, we had to let go of how we had initially thought of trialling the system. It was hard, because we had to rethink our timing, the budget, our capacity to manage the process well and the type of skills and thinking we needed to run the validation process. But when we look back at it now, it was the right decision to change course.”

2

DESIGNING SYSTEMS TO IMPROVE ECD QUALITY IS A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT

No single group has all the answers when it comes to developing something like a quality assessment system, which is why Ilifa brought people together and managed the process flow. “The QASS is a result of years of different thinkers supporting the DBE in their vision of strengthening ECD through a lot of compromise and robust debate. The process of getting different brains in the room to build what we eventually came up with was rewarding — even when difficult — and it’s something to take forward to other projects,” notes Maharaj.

NGOS ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE ECD ECOSYSTEM

Even though the DBE is the mandated owner of the quality assessment process, NGOs are an important component of implementing the system on the ground and shaping the support response. “The ECCE Outcomes Fund will be an opportunity to test that relationship, at a large scale, especially because it will run in particular provinces [where access to quality early learning is lower],” says Maharaj. This could yield early insights into population-based planning for driving new programmes and improving existing ones, and how a public priority can be realised by leveraging NGOs.

4

DEVELOPING A QASS IS A RESOURCEINTENSIVE PROCESS

Getting to a point where a reliable and valid quality assessment tool is ready to be rolled out has taken years of work, lots of different expertise and considerable investment. The way the DBE has approached the development of the system, and seeing the end product as a shared tool, is exciting, says Maharaj. “It will ultimately be a public tool, and the hope is that organisations working in the ECD space will be able to use it to assess the impact of their support.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

The ECCE Outcomes Fund will act as a springboard for observing how the QASS works in practice at scale. Further work will also be required to see how the QASS can be integrated into the eCares system to ensure the QASS is supported by a strong digital backbone.

3 This is the learning experience of:

AIMING FOR GOLD: HOW TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR EARLY LEARNING PROGRAMMES TO GET STATE SUPPORT

Thousands of early learning programmes (ELPs) in South Africa are not able to access state subsidies and official support because they are not registered with the Department of Basic Education (DBE). It’s a catch-22: to be registered, programmes must meet a set of regulatory requirements, which often requires a lot of money. In the end, children pay the price: about a third of 3–5-year-olds — about 1.15 million children — are not enrolled in an ELP. In addition, almost 60% of enrolled four-year-olds are not on track with regard to developmental milestones, as shown by the 2024 Thrive by Five Index. Financial support to help ELPs improve the quality of their service would ultimately translate into better child outcomes.

This learning brief complements two others in this issue that focus on how the early childhood development (ECD) sector can be strengthened in South Africa. It looks at how ELPs can be assisted to access state support and how Ilifa Labantwana’s work over almost two decades has helped shape and improve South Africa’s ECD ecosystem, contributing to the development of a streamlined system that helps ELPs register and receive support throughout the process.

PUTTING CHILDREN FIRST

ECD is a national priority with the government committed to working towards every child being able to access quality early learning by 2030.1 In theory, this means that the state intends to invest meaningfully in young children and ensure that the most vulnerable are included — by subsidising their access to a quality ELP that is recognised and supported by the state. But in practice this goal is difficult to achieve, thanks to the fragmented nature of the ECD ecosystem, overly onerous regulations, a paper-based information system, and a lack of data to inform decision-making and resource allocation.

Of the 1.15 million children not enrolled in an ELP, two-thirds in the poorest wealth quintile don’t have access to structured early learning activities, compared to about a third of children from the wealthiest portion.2 In addition, of the roughly R14 billion South African families spent on early learning in 2021, about 26% (R3.7 billion) was spent by the poorest

Two factors contribute to young children falling through the cracks when it comes to early learning, namely lack of access to, and poor quality of programmes. Inadequate supply may result from too few facilities in communities, or from children being unable to access those that do exist because families cannot afford the fees. For example, in 2021, the poorest 40% of households paid around R280 a month towards early learning,4 approximately 60% of the value of the Child Support Grant at the time.5

Early learning is provided by private operators — often small business owners — unlike formal schooling, which the state is required to provide. Early learning programmes in low-income communities are strapped for cash. The fees they charge are not sufficient to cover the costs of quality services. Not having enough money to cover day-to-day operations — such as buying materials and equipment, providing at least one meal for children or paying staff — means that the quality of the early learning programme may suffer. In the end, children pay the price: almost six in 10 four-year-olds are not developmentally on track, and of this group half are falling far behind.6

A LEG UP

Recognising that insufficient funding was, to a large extent, at the root of historically poor ECD provision, the government introduced the ECD Conditional Grant in 2017. Ilifa Labantwana supported the National Treasury and the Department of Social Development (DSD) with the establishment, motivation, design, costing and planning for the administration of the landmark ECD Conditional Grant. A conditional grant is a mechanism through which Treasury allocates money to provinces specifically to support a national priority; the funds can be used only for that purpose and are linked to certain conditions being met in its spending. Before 2017, provinces subsidised ELPs from their equitable share allocation only, but the actual amount allocated was at each province’s discretion. The introduction of the conditional grant therefore meant that provinces had additional money available to support ELPs.

The ECD Conditional Grant is divided between the per-childper-day subsidy and infrastructure support, with subsidies receiving the largest share. However, although the need for better resourcing in the ECD sector is recognised, supply is confined. Regulations mean that only qualifying registered ELPs can receive the subsidy. Fiscal constraints make it difficult to support enough ELPs to offer quality learning opportunities. In other words, government has a limited pot of money available to support ELPs and it can only be given to those that comply with a prescribed set of regulations. Many ELPs can’t access the funding that is available, because they don’t have the means to meet the requirements. In the end, it’s a catch-22.

The infrastructure component of the ECD Conditional Grant, called the Maintenance Grant, was introduced to help ELPs in the poorest areas, often running on a shoestring budget, to improve their physical infrastructure to meet the required standard to register with the Department of Basic Education (DBE), and so become eligible for subsidy support. However, the infrastructure component has historically not been used to its full potential, due to a myriad of reasons including regulation, coordination and bureaucracy related to how best to support small-scale infrastructure improvements in informal settings and on private land.

A common saying holds that problems can’t be solved with the same kind of thinking that caused them — which is why it’s necessary to address issues on both the supply and demand sides. The DBE’s Bana Pele Mass Registration Drive,7 launched in 2024, was an effort to greatly increase the number of ELPs on the department’s radar and thus give them a leg up on the path towards getting state support. Bana Pele is made possible by a unique social compact led by the DBE and other social partners, including the system leadership of Ilifa.

Bana Pele has already paid off: 10 000 previously unregistered ELPs had been recognised by the department by the end of 2025,8 increasing the number of programmes in the net to around 27 500 at the time. This represents about 65% of the approximately 42 500 programmes counted in the 2021 ECD census9 — a significant increase from just over 40%, where the figure had hovered for several years.10

Bana Pele has demonstrated how sustained and creative leadership by the state, working with social partners, can begin to tackle wicked problems and shift the system to benefit the most marginalised. ELPs can now receive support to progress through the registration pathway — from entry-level (Bronze status) to conditional (Silver status) and ultimately full (Gold status) registration.

However, this national project must deliberately change the gradient of access, which still places the poorest and most marginalised children at the back of the queue. This will require both accelerated strategies to accredit programmes and support for children in ELPs that will not reach Silver in the next year or two.

The work is far from being done, though. Being eligible for support is not the same as receiving it, and given the slow pace of implementation of the infrastructure component of the ECD Conditional Grant, new ways must be found by government to support thousands of “Bronze” ELPs.

7 Department of Basic Education. No date. Bana Pele ECD registration drive. https:// www.education.gov.za/Programmes/ECD/BanaPeleECDRegistrationDrive.aspx

8 Department of Basic Education. 2025. Minister Siviwe Gwarube announces 10 000 Bronze ECD registrations under Bana Pele. Media statement, 15 Feb. https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/minister-siviwe-gwarube-announces10%E2%80%AF000-bronze-ecd-registrations-bana-pele

9 Department of Basic Education. 2021. ECD Census.

10 Ibid.

BUILDING BLOCKS

This is where the value of years of preparatory work to shape and co-create an enabling environment is now bearing fruit, with Ilifa playing a central role in building and supporting collaboration between government and civil society to bring about change.

Research from around 2014 yielded insight into the registration process at the government level and the barriers it created for ELPs catering to the poorest communities. It became evident that the long list of requirements made the process onerous for ELPs, many of which were already resource-strapped.

In 2015, the Ilifa team worked with Innovation Edge and the Network Action Group (now known as Impande) to develop a new approach, called Bhalisa Inkulisa, to address the registration challenges faced by both government officials and ECD programmes. The approach used workflow tools and documents to make the registration process simpler, faster and data-driven. At the same time, substantial work around understanding why ELPs in the poorest communities struggled to register and receive subsidies showed that they were unable to comply with the required norms and standards. Ilifa, together with the Project Preparation Trust and Impande, subsequently identified the most common infrastructure improvements needed for registration through the Strategic ECD Infrastructure Support Programme.

The learnings helped to build an evidence base that the government could use to inform a tiered, developmentallyminded ECD registration framework that broke the process down to three levels, now known as Bronze, Silver and Gold status. The tiered registration framework now used in Bana Pele allows programmes to easily achieve Bronze registration, and then receive support to progress to Silver and Gold status where they become eligible to receive subsidies.

Building the evidence base meant that Ilifa was well positioned to help influence policy and its application. Ilifa was able to influence the how of helping to get programmes registered, because they had demonstrated processes on the ground.

SCAFFOLDED SUPPORT

The regulatory environment is complex; to get registered, an ELP must comply not only with the norms and standards of both the DBE and the Department of Health (DoH), which in some cases overlap, but also with the by-laws of the municipality in which they’re located. And with 257 municipalities in South Africa, each with its own set of bylaws, it can be difficult to identify all the rules that need to be complied with.

However, the Children’s Act allows for a more developmental approach, recognising that programmes may not be able to meet all regulatory requirements from the outset. With this in mind, DBE consolidated the norms and standards and other rules into a tiered framework that would allow programmes to move through the registration process in a guided way.

As the process stands, an ELP enters the system at the Bronze level when they apply for registration. Central to the application step is creating a profile on eCares,11 the DBE’s digital information management system for which Ilifa has been the lead technical partner.

Once logged into eCares, the applicant completes the Bronze online application, confirming that they undertake to comply with 15 minimum health and safety requirements and submitting certified copies of all practitioners’ IDs and Form 30 to check their names against the national child protection register.

Once the application is approved, and a Bronze certificate has been issued, a programme has one year to prepare to progress to Silver status. An ELP at Silver status is conditionally registered with the DBE, meaning it has met the minimum requirements to provide safe and stimulating care for young children, as confirmed during a site visit by a social worker and an environmental health practitioner.

Silver status is valid for three years, to allow an ELP time to get everything in place to fully register with the DBE and thereby attain Gold status (which is valid for five years). Most importantly, Silver status makes the ELP eligible to apply for the R24 per-child-per-day subsidy (for 264 days per year), subject to the programme being in a priority poverty zone or the majority of the children who attend being recipients of child support grants.

11 The acronym eCares refers to the government’s Early Childhood Administration and Reporting System.

Bana Pele has evolved from a range of initiatives and lessons about how the registration system functions, making it much simpler for programmes to reach Bronze status — in other words, to enter the regulatory net for support. With Bana Pele, the initial level of registration has become easier, allowing programmes to be visible to the DBE and to be supported. This shift in thinking, together with a defined set of minimum requirements for achieving Silver status, is key to removing a major roadblock to state support, as programmes become eligible to access state funding at the Silver level.

Working as part of the project management unit for the Bana Pele drive, Ilifa also contributed to the development and rollout of the registration readiness assessment. This assessment is designed to align to the Silver registration requirements and to help programmes prepare to meet them. The self-reported questionnaire is completed either through a call centre or via an NGO partner, and serves as an “early diagnostic” to help identify gaps before a formal site visit takes place. This provides a useful way for programmes to see

DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING

eCares — the Early Childhood Administration and Reporting System — has made the digital registration of ELPs possible for the first time in South Africa’s history and will eventually incorporate all of government’s major early childhood administration and reporting processes. Ilifa, in partnership with the DBE, has led the research, design and development of eCares. In addition, the system is made possible through a diverse network of civil society, funding and technical partners that embody the DBE’s social compact for ECD as articulated in its 2030 Strategy for ECD Programmes.

The vision for eCares is to create a digital backbone for all of government’s critical administrative processes for registering, funding, supporting, and monitoring ELPs. eCares is significant because it will transform how ELPs interface with

FUNDING CHILDREN’S FUTURES

Introducing a mechanism such as direct cash transfers to ELPs could help Bronze-level sites meet the standards required for Silver registration. Research shows that cash transfers can help improve people’s financial situations and empower them to make decisions that will help address their specific needs.12

Applied in the context of ECD funding, since there is a bottleneck of children in registered, subsidy-eligible programmes, some money from the subsidy allocation of the ECD Conditional Grant could be made available for ELPs to improve their programmes and meet registration requirements.

More programmes would therefore be supported to achieve conditional registration (by moving from Bronze to Silver) and access more sustainable state subsidy funding.

LESSONS LEARNT

The past decade’s work has brought valuable insights into how to help more ELPs access state support.

1

REAL SYSTEM CHANGE TAKES A LONG TIME

In many ways, 2025 has been a ‘good news year’ for ECD, especially with more than 10 000 ELPs being newly registered with the DBE and a big funding boost from Treasury. These significant strides forward didn’t materialise overnight, though; they’re the result of years of collaborative effort to shape policy and build technical capacity to facilitate realworld implementation efforts, like the launch of the Bana Pele drive.

This collaborative effort is built on the foundations of over 100 resource and training organisations, some of which have been in existence since the 1960s. The move towards scale accelerated with the formation of Ilifa Labantwana as a systems support initiative. Over the next decade, support for the ECD sector expanded through bottom-up innovation,

the development of delivery platforms to achieve scale and measures to assess their impact, and the active engagement of practitioners in policy change.

2

HELPING ELPS GET REGISTERED IS A COMBINED EFFORT

Making it easy for programmes to register with the DBE — and to know where and how to access support if they are not yet ready — required input from many different role players. A system had to be developed based on what people were struggling with on the ground; it also had to comply with government’s goals and be implemented in a way that could accommodate registrations at scale. Drawing on members’ diverse strengths and backgrounds in ECD, Ilifa’s team was able to translate knowledge from people working across different disciplines — from finance and digital technology to systems design and policy development — into practical solutions suited to real-world use.

12 Hagen-Zanker, J., et al. 2016. Understanding the impact of cash transfers: The evidence. London: Overseas Development Initiative. Available at: https://odi.org/documents/5300/11465.pdf

3

EVIDENCE AND TRUST HELP TO BRING ABOUT CHANGE

Ilifa’s team was able to undertake years of research and testing thanks to the backing of patient, sustained donor funding, ultimately enabling systems change — the complexity and uncertainty of which their donors understood. The research yielded invaluable insights into what ELPs struggle with, as well as the workflow that underpins the registration process. A thorough understanding of where the gaps and bottlenecks were in the system — as well as what worked well — allowed changes to be tested in pilot projects; the results helped build a solid and trusted evidence base for engaging with government departments, including Treasury.

4

CLEAR COMMUNICATION IS KEY

With so many role players feeding into the system or receiving support, knowledge must be shared carefully to ensure the greatest impact. Ilifa understands that improving a system requires being able not only to share findings about what the shortcomings of a process are but also to explain how a process works or can be strengthened in a way that speaks to people involved at various levels of ECD — from NGOs working on the ground to government officials. It’s something that Ilifa is still in the process of learning.

5

FEEDBACK IS INVALUABLE

Feedback from implementers is invaluable because it helps refine interventions and make them fit for purpose. It’s not about developing a system and then imposing it on practitioners; it’s about listening to what people really need and then refining the system to deliver that.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Despite the Bana Pele drive substantially increasing the number of registered ELPs, many still need support to reach Silver status in order to access funding within the next year. In addition, another 15 000 — about a third of the total number of programmes in the country — still need to enter the system to ensure universal access to ECD. This will require further budget increases over the next three to five years.

Ideally, those advocating for greater access to ECD want to see the National Budget allocation increasing to about R20 billion for the period between 2027 and 2030, to subsidise more children at higher subsidy values — more than double where it sits now.

This is the learning experience of:

THE LEGACY OF DOUGLAS AND ELEANOR MURRAY

DGMT is a South African foundation built on endowments from Douglas and Eleanor Murray to promote charitable, educational, philanthropic and artistic purposes within South Africa. Douglas Murray was the son of, and successor to, John Murray, the founder of the Cape-based construction company, Murray and Stewart, which was established in 1902. This company merged in 1967 with Roberts Construction to become Murray & Roberts, with the parent Trusts as the main shareholders. In 1979, the Trusts combined to form the DG Murray Trust as the main shareholder before the company was publicly listed. Subsequently, the Trust relinquished its ownership to a major finance house. Eleanor Murray remained actively engaged in the work of the Trust until her death in 1993.

The Foundation is now the holder of a portfolio of widely diversified assets, which reduces the risks in funding the achievement of its strategic objectives. DGMT currently distributes about R200 million per year and leverages and manages a similar amount of funding through joint ventures with other investors. DGMT’s ultimate goal is to create an ethical and enabling environment where human needs and aspirations are met; where every person is given the opportunity to fulfil their potential, for both personal benefit and for that of the wider community.

By investing in South Africa’s potential we aim to:

› Create opportunity for personal growth and development that will encourage people to achieve their potential.

› Help reduce the gradients that people face in trying to seize those opportunities.

› Affirm the value and dignity of those who feel most marginalised and devalued by society.

The DGMT Board

TRUSTEES Mvuyo Tom (Chairperson) - Ameen Amod - Murphy Morobe Hugo Nelson - Diane Radley - Edgar Pieterse

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER David Harrison