JONATHAN JANSEN | The only way to prevent ECD 'own goals' is to go on the attack

There has been lots of talk this past week about “own goals”.

For those unfamiliar with “the beautiful game” — an expression made famous by the legendary Brazilian soccer player Pele — this means mistakenly scoring a goal against your own team. Still in literal mode, our most famous player in this regard was a man called Pierre Issa, who in the 1998 World Cup against France scored two own goals — the leading scorer for Bafana Bafana on the day.

Last week it was said of South African foreign policy that we had scored an “own goal” when South Africa’s ambassador to the US Ebrahim Rasool said in an online seminar that US President Donald Trump led a white supremacist movement. It was an own goal, said the chattering classes, because whether true or not, an ambassador does not say that. The role of an overseas diplomat is to swallow sh*t and smile in the process.

Our President Cyril Ramaphosa is a master at this. Trump klaps us, and the Presidency responds with words like “noted” or “regrettable” and urges “decorum” in our response. When the US government refuses to give us the time of day, “we are not being blue-ticked”.

Perhaps the greatest admission of an own goal happened on Monday when Ramaphosa addressed an early childhood development (ECD) leadership summit in Braamfontein and made this astounding acknowledgment: “Minister [of basic education, Siviwe Gwarube], you were saying we need to agree where we have made mistakes and I’m the first in government to admit that we have made a mistake. We should have started with early childhood development 30 years ago.”

In other words, the government had scored an educational and developmental “own goal”.

This statement is what makes me cynical about politics.

For three decades, ECD activists such as Eric Atmore, Mapitso Malepa, Monica Lolwane, Maggie Makhudu, Daniel Plaatjies, Snoeks Desmond and many others were knocking down the doors of both the ANC and the new democratic government, urging full funding for ECD after international donor funds dried up in the early 1990s.

Why did this happen? Because donors argued, reasonably, that their support was to address the neglect of ECD for black children under apartheid and that surely the new government would take over this critical function in the long-term education and development of the most vulnerable among us: the preschool child. We argued that the evidence was overwhelming — invest in ECD and the eventual benefits to individual children, their families and society as a whole would be significant.

There was even an ANC-supported think-tank called the National Education Policy Investigation, whose 1992 report on early childhood educare (as it was called at the time) stressed the importance of preschool education and laid the groundwork for an Interim Policy for ECD, which made the point that investment in young children from birth to nine years old would allow them to “grow and thrive physically, mentally, emotionally, morally and socially”.

There was no shortage of policies, plans and promises. There are 30 such ECD documents in place, says a veteran ECD activist — without life-changing material action

The National Integrated ECD Policy that followed made passionate arguments about investment benefits such as health, nutrition, social protection and parent support. There would be standards, infrastructure, norms, quality and delivery. There was no shortage of policies, plans and promises. There are 30 such ECD documents in place, says a veteran ECD activist — without life-changing material action.

So what does this incredulous statement by our president — “We should have started with early childhood development 30 years ago” — even mean? Is he ignorant of the many policies and plans in place? Does he know that ECD is not fully funded, let alone guaranteed for every single South African child? Who inserted the silly phrase “should have started”, when the government did in fact start (with an array of policies) — but did not finish?

Surely he knows that a concentration of government funding goes to noisy universities, at the expense of those at the starting line of their education journey — nearly 7-million of them under the age of six. The president must have seen the warning lights flashing, with one assessment after another showing that the majority of our children cannot read at the grade level.

The only way to prevent own goals is to go on the attack at the other end of the field. So if you are serious about what you said, Mr President, do the following five things:

• Authorise full per-capita funding for every single child under the age of six.
• Set uncompromising standards (including infrastructure) for the quality of pre-school education they are to receive.
• Ensure every pre-school teacher is trained — and retrained, if necessary — but every one of them fully competent (not merely “qualified”).
• Measure progress towards set learning outcomes in every year and make this transparent in the public domain.
• Have the minister report directly to you and a panel of experts on progress on a biannual basis — and if nothing changes, fire her.

Otherwise, expect more own goals on the wrong side of the field.

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