Programme director
Your Excellency, Ambassador Elio Menzione
Representatives of Reggio Emilia
UNICEF Country Representative
Representatives from Singapore and Norway
The Headmistress of St Mary’s School, Mrs Des Hugo
Mr Dali Tambo
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen,
Permit me to start by thanking you most warmly for allowing us to be part of this important 2011 Reggio Children Conference on Early Childhood Learning.
We’re making history by just being here, at St Mary’s School, which was founded 123 years ago, in 1888, and therefore boasts a rich history of education. Our reunion rekindles fond memories going back in time to the difficult days of struggle when the world united against the fascist apartheid regime.
Cde Oliver Reginald Tambo addressed the second National Conference of Solidarity with the peoples of Southern Africa, in Rome, in February 1982. This was before the birth of the democratic South African state, when the African National Congress (ANC) was still a banned organisation.
This finest leader of the South African revolution paid tribute to Italy’s solidarity movement. He celebrated the unbreakable ties the Reggio Emilia Conference had with the people of the South. His presence here among us is embodied in the person of Cde Dali Tambo, his son, a son of the soil.
In OR Tambo’s words: “we wish to address special greetings to the Municipality and people of Reggio Emilia to whom the ANC is bound by a pact of Solidarity”.
When Cde OR Tambo said these words, it was at a time when apartheid was “not merely segregated sport, separate facilities for education, culture and recreation. It was a brutal system of national oppression, embedded in economic exploitation and institutionally entrenched by a monopoly over the political process by a small white minority”.
With the help of the people of Reggio Emilia and the entire anti-apartheid movement, we’ve made strides in hammering the last nails to apartheid’s coffin, although its vestiges still remain.
My sincere appreciation to St Mary’s School for hosting us and making the Department of Basic Education a part of this important conference, convened strategically in June – the month in which we celebrate the youth and the struggle for better education to which they gave impetus in June 1976.
We welcome and support the principles of early childhood learning on which the Reggio Children’s approach is based.
Carefully followed through with the conscious and undivided attention of a San-hunter in search of prey, early childhood development will help us lay a solid foundation for our children and advance the quest for a better life for all our people, using education as a tool for transformation and human development.
Though much work is still required on our part, we believe in the principles of the Reggio Children’s approach that say:
- Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing and hearing
- Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world
- Children must be allowed to explore and
- Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.
We have also adopted a comprehensive approach to Early Childhood Development (ECD) focusing on children from birth to nine years of age.
Research shows the influence of preschool and its impact on performance in the first year of schooling and on the child’s performance in the longer term.
Accordingly, we have made early childhood development one of our government’s key priorities, and as a result, budgets to address ECD have dramatically increased, with good returns.
There has been a huge improvement in the delivery of ECD services in the country.
For instance, since the dawn of democracy, in 1994:
- A number of government departments have policies and programmes addressing early childhood development, the most critical being the Departments of Social Development, Health and Basic Education
- The Department of Social Development has taken responsibility for the registration and payment of subsidies for the 0 to four age group
- The Department of Basic Education has assumed responsibility for the training of practitioners and development of curriculum and early stimulation programmes for children. We have already trained more than 20,000 ECD practitioners
- National Early Learning and Development Standards have been developed (with support from United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)) to assist ECD trainers and early learning material developers with information and ideas on appropriate content to include in their resources
- We have ensured that children in the age category of seven to nine fall under the compulsory school-going age, and therefore are the responsibility of the Department of Basic Education
- The Department of Health is responsible for the general health needs of children in the 0 to nine age category, which prioritises prevention, treatment, care and support, research, and human and legal rights
- We provide various ECD services directly to children in public centres, community centres and in households and
- Building public awareness – this primarily involves conscientising parents about the value of ECD with the aim of increasing the demand for ECD services.
Despite these developments, more still needs to be done. It is in this context that we have recommitted to improving the quality of Early Childhood Development and universalising access to Grade R by 2014. By 2009, around 74% of schools offering Grade one also offered Grade R, and learners who had received schooling before Grade one were around 80%.
Thank you for organising and convening the 2011 Reggio Children Conference in South Africa particularly in a time like now. You have helped us refocus much more on another area prioritised by our struggle icon, Mama Albertina Sisulu who gave her life to others, especially women and children.
Through the Albertina Sisulu Foundation, she did much to improve lives of little children. In 1990, she was at the forefront when we set up the National Children's Rights Committee. This body, an umbrella organisation for civil society groups working for children's rights, was instrumental in making sure the principles of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of Children were included in South Africa's democratic Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I’m mentioning the selfless role of this ANC stalwart precisely because she was granted honorary citizenship of Reggio Emilia in 1987. We must sustain the work of Mama Sisulu and other heroines of our struggle for the protection and care of young children. No doubt, this conference will help us do just that.
Most importantly, we thank you for joining hands with us in tackling a formidable challenge confronting all of us. To borrow from Cde OR Tambo, our immediate challenge “is to turn South Africa around – to make of her the opposite of what she has been. Where she has been the exemplar of racism and national antagonisms, we must turn her into the exemplar of non-racism and national harmony”.
Quality education, from the foundation phase where it matters the most, is very key in achieving this goal of social and economic transformation.
And thus, we’re indebted to you for the interest you have shown in early childhood learning and your willingness to share with the African continent your experiences and resources just as you did when we fought the brutal system of apartheid.
We wish you well in this special and unique dialogue and trust that the networks participants will form with other educators in Southern Africa will advance the goal of universal access to quality and equal early childhood learning.
We hope this conference will also provide us with pointers on:
- effective strategies for increasing access to Grade R
- models for funding of Grade R classes
- ways of stimulating parents’ interest and participation in early childhood learning and
- how best to make early childhood learning a societal issue involving all stakeholders.
We are proud to remain bound to the city of Reggio Emilia by a strong “pact of Solidarity”. Thank you for giving OR Tambo the freedom of the Commune di Reggio nell’Emilia. That noble gesture of friendship has done much to restore our human dignity as a people.
I thank you.
Source: Department of Basic Education
