Speech by the Minister of Basic Education, Ms. Siviwe Gwarube at the launch of the Thrive by Five index, Sandton
Programme Director
Deputy Minister, Mhaule
the Head of Social Investing at FirstRand Group, Ms Kone Gugushe;
MECs of Education;
Directors-General;
Heads of Provincial Education Departments;
Deputy Directors-General; and
All our ECD stakeholders here today.
Thank you so much for being here.
It is fitting that we launch the Thrive by Five Index on World Literacy Day.
Literacy does not begin when a child learns to read in Grade 1. It begins in the preschool years – in the way a child holds a pencil, in how their eyes and hands work together, in the stories they hear and their early attempts at writing.
If the beginning of the story is weak, the chapters that follow will always be harder to write.
The significance of literacy is recognised across the world, and I am pleased that we too can join the international community in the 58th year of observing World Literacy Day.
Today will be the start of how we celebrate, and you’ll be seeing many more efforts across the country over the month of September as we remind each other of the need to stay focused on improving the quality of literacy outcomes.
The 2024 Thrive by Five Index is historic. It is the largest child development survey of its kind in Africa and is the first reliable baseline and measurement post-Covid.
The Index offers a data-driven, nationally representative picture of how South African children are developing before formal schooling and highlights the structural barriers that shape children’s early opportunities.
This information is vital as it enables us to take strategic decisions and respond with fit-for-purpose programming. Availability of data enhances our insights and accuracy, allowing us to respond appropriately.
To demonstrate this, the 2021 Index clearly confirmed the correlation between poverty and poor outcomes. So does the 2024 Index. It is this clarity that affirmed our decision to double our efforts in making a case for investing in early years. The R10 billion for ECD support announced by the Minister of Finance shows that we are on the right course.
We have also heard from the presentation by Sonja that the children who are not in early learning programmes are far more at risk of falling far behind when compared to their peers who are in early learning programmes.
To my point about the importance of data-driven decision making, we now know that we made the right decision by rolling out the Bana Pele Mass Registration Drive, so that we can provide access to early learning opportunities for all our 3-5-year-olds, for, ladies and gentlemen, there can be no quality without access. The financial injection therefore puts us in a better place to bring those non-enrolled children into the access net.
Because of this data, we have a clearer sense of the context and very real challenges impacting children and practitioners and can now respond decisively.
Upon receipt of the 2021 Thrive by Five Index report, we prioritised building systems and strengthening relationships and leveraging the ecosystem through partnership building, to ensure we had the necessary support and investment to put impactful, scalable, strategic programmes and projects in place.
This is at the heart of the Shared Blueprint to Achieve Universal Access to Quality Early Learning that we have been developing as this ecosystem and have recently released for engagement and feedback.
I am therefore eternally grateful to DataDrive2030, for doing the heavy lifting of collecting and analysing the data to give us this Index; and to FirstRand, Yellowwoods, This Day, and The Lego Foundation for financially supporting this significant undertaking.
Let me now focus on the major findings:
The Index demonstrates that only 42% of enrolled children are On Track in early learning and children in high-fee preschools are twice as likely to be On Track than those in low-fee ones.
7% of enrolled 4-year-olds showed signs of moderate/severe stunting, costing children months of learning. Stunted children are on average 5 months behind their peers in early learning.
Children struggled most in the domain of Fine Motor Coordination and Visual Motor Integration (FMC-VMI) where only 29% of enrolled children are On Track. This matters because fine motor coordination is the bedrock of early literacy.
It is a little more encouraging that 53% of our children are on Track in the Emergent Literacy and Language (ELL) domain, which assesses children’s ability to express themselves in full sentences, to recognise the initial sounds of words, name common objects, and understand stories they listen to.
We however know that the fact that children struggle with Fine Motor Coordination and Visual Motor Integration undermines their ability to capitalise on this strength, as they need to combine these skills with their emergent literacy and language capability to be able to read and write for meaning, particularly when they start schooling.
Going back to these three domains – Fine Motor Coordination, Visual Motor Integration, and Emergent Literacy and Language – socio-economic background affects children’s developing abilities with the wealthiest children significantly outperforming the rest. Proficiency in all three domains is vital prior to commencing Grade R.
I cannot overemphasise that the home learning environment is key for developing early language and literacy skills. Parents and caregivers can play a significant role by building the vocabulary of children.
We should challenge ourselves in our homes to speak to children meaningfully, beyond everyday instructions. We can speak about animals, gardens, or even our families as a way to deliberately expose children to a growing vocabulary.
Among the enrolled children, only 11% of households have more than five children’s books in the home and 26% reported having no children’s books at all. In the non-enrolled sample, 77% of primary caregivers reported having no children’s books at all in the household.
Notwithstanding this sad reality, we need to build on the green shoot of 53% children who are on Track in the Emergent Literacy and Language by supporting homes with family literacy programmes, for parents and caregivers are the first teachers of literacy and language.
Seeing that many homes do not have children’s books positions early learning programmes as vital in bridging the gap, which is why we have focused our efforts on providing poorly resources early learning programmes with children’s books and practitioner resources. We are finalising our processes so we can roll these out shortly.
In line with our priority on mother tongue-based bilingual education, we will be providing these resources in the languages the children and our practitioners speak.
Further to this, and in the true spirit of the social compact, the DBE has partnered with UNICEF and Book Dash to build a collection of "Stories for Joy" storybooks as an investment in early literacy and creating access to books.
This collection is available in multiple languages and will be made publicly available online, for free download this month in support of World Literacy Day and International Literacy Month.
We encourage parents and caregivers to use all the reading resources available to them to create a culture of reading in the home, to model what reading looks like and to build the vocabulary of our children.
Robust and rigorous data allows us to develop, prioritise and champion programmes, projects and partnerships that drive not only access but also quality as we walk the road to 2030.
The expanded use of this data to leverage and sharpen our practices with targeted, data-driven interventions will bear the true value of this data, beyond this launch.
So, what now? What should we do next?
The early years are the big years for brain growth, emotional skills, and physical health which sets the stage for lifelong outcomes.
This is not only about education – it is about nutrition, health, parenting, and safe communities working together.
We have a lot to do, but with these findings we have a lot to work with.
We have thousands of entrepreneurial women establishing and leading Early Learning Programmes (ELPs) in their communities and a vibrant and committed NGO sector supporting these efforts.
There is greater access to high-quality data to inform decision-making and unprecedented levels of public investment in ECD.
And finally, we have exciting public-private partnerships in planning and provisioning, demonstrated by your presence today and your longstanding commitment to early learning.
We also have evidence that poor outcomes for poor children are not inevitable – the findings clearly show that some children do exceptionally well, despite their impoverished circumstances.
These beacons of light point us to strategies that work, showing us where to invest and how to replicate success at scale. This shows us that in spite of the challenges we will face, we have hope.
Our call to action and government commitment centres on 4 key areas.
The first is finance and investment for quality and access, and this is done by making subsidies for Early Learning Programmes predictable and reliable, where we pay on time and in the full amount. We also need to remove financial barriers for the poorest 4-year-olds to access these programmes.
The second area we need to focus on is equipping and empowering practitioners and principals by investing in these very people who run early learning centres. They are truly nation builders. We also need to build practical training for responsive teaching, not just qualifications.
The data has shown us that the quality of the engagement between practitioner and child is a more successful predictor of a child’s learning success. With this new insight we are able to enhance our ECCE Human Resource Development Plan to empower practitioners with strengthened pedagogical practices and programmatic structures.
Thirdly, integrated learning, health and parent support is vital. Preschools already deliver meals to hundreds of thousands of children every day. We must support this. We need to partner with the Department of Health to leverage preschools that offer a platform for health outreach. We also need to support and equip parents with basic knowledge on child development and expected milestones, as well as expanding access to books in the home.
Finally, we have to strengthen Grade R because it is the bridge between early learning and formal schooling. For children who start behind, it must help them catch up. And for those who start strong, it must build on these good foundations. We cannot allow gains made in early learning to fade once children enter school.
I want to repeat this - the Index serves as a vital data backbone for the Bana Pele Shared Blueprint – the Department of Basic Education’s roadmap to achieve universal access to quality early learning by 2030.
By 2030, no child should be left behind because of where they were born or how much their parents earn.
As we work towards this, we must remember that access and quality are not just about how many children are reached, but how well services prepare children to thrive.
Access opens the door for a child; quality unlocks their potential.
Holistic child development is paramount.
We must assess and strengthen the full range of services and support children need - including nutrition, health, protection, responsive caregiving, and early stimulation.
This calls for collaboration and partnership across multiple sectors and departments.
The Thrive by Five Index is not just a measure, it is a movement - to ensure every child starts school ready to learn, to grow, and to thrive. We know more. Now we must do more.
While the index equips us with the data, we need to better serve our children. We must remember that behind every number, there is a child’s life.
Thank you for your partnership, your investment and your strategic guidance as we continue to champion our children by putting them first.
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