What about language? What language do they use at Cotlands? Maybe it is not an issue for them, but it is an issue everywhere else. An orphanage can't be the model for the country, or can it? _____
New Age2.png Education, earlier the better If only 42% of grade 1s of 2003 passed matric in 2014 what does that say about early childhood development? Mealang van Heerden, The New Age, Johannesburg, 9 September 2015 In 2003, 1 252071 children embarked on their formal school career. These children would become the class of 2014: the matric pass rate was 75.8%. Yet if we consider the more than 1 million children who started Grade 1 in 2003 only 688660 would eventually write matric, this means of the children who started school in 2003 only 41.7% would pass matric. Research shows that the foundation for lifelong learning and success at formal school is laid in preschool years. In 2001 there were only 3486 preschools registered with the Department of Education (DoE), and that 2.4% of all pupils in the DoE system were attending preschool (a total of 275044 children) - although I'm sure many more children attended preschool sites and programmes that were not registered and possibly did not facilitate a prescribed curriculum. Perhaps we can agree if more of the grade 1s in 2003 had the opportunity to attend well-run preschools with an age appropriate curriculum the number of children writing and passing matric could have been higher. Formalising Grade R and including it in the Curriculum and Policy Statement (Caps) was a step in the right direction. Not only has it has increased the accessibility to learning opportunities but provided a good age-appropriate programme. The disparity was still in the birth-to-four-year-age cohort, so many of these children are either not accessing any early learning programme or are attending programmes where teaching is not age appropriate and methodology is incorrect. Taking all this into consideration I would like to give the DoE a huge thumbs-up for developing and sharing the birth-to-four national curriculum framework (NCF). The NCF can be utilised to ensure good age appropriate learning programmes are in place so the birth-to-four year olds will be ready for a successful career by their fifth birthday. The NCF encourages early childhood development organisations to implement a child-focused, play-based programme that meet the needs of this cohort. For NGOs like Cotlands which aim to address the education and social crisis by establishing early learning playgroups and toy libraries in poor communities to serve vulnerable children aged birth-to-six, the NCF will provide a framework for developing the programmes. The NCF has taken the Constitution and early learning developmental standards (Nelds) into account and helps bridge the Nelds and Caps documents. These were the documents previously used by early learning organisations to develop material. The NCF is divided into four specific age ranges, and has six early learning and development areas (Eldas): . Wellbeing . Identity and belonging . Communication . Exploring mathematics . Creativity . Knowledge and understanding of the world Each of the learning areas has a developmental guideline, some examples of possible activities, broad assessment guidelines and watch points for each age range. It also guides practitioners on an acceptable assessment and evaluation process. The assessment process allows for tracking and reporting children's development. As a programme development manager I undertook to use the NCF as a benchmark to evaluate the Cotlands programmes, and methodology. It was exciting to see the Cotlands early learning programme covered all the Eldas and our assessment process was aligned. We advocate for young children to experience concepts and life kinesthetically. The best way to learn is through 3D play. Having a nationally recognised framework the DoE is willing to share increases accountability and can be used as a benchmark when evaluating programmes. One of the challenges is that it's not the DoE's role to evaluate services offered to young children as this falls under the Department of Social Development's and Department of Health's scope. Looking ahead, it will be beneficial if the DoE goes on to develop a nationally recognised curriculum for children from birth to four years. Many early learning practitioners do not have formal training and we do not have the capacity or funding to formally train enough practitioners to meet the demand for early learning services in our country. Many civil society organisations utilise their funding and expertise to build capacity in the ECD sector and if we all were to make use of the same curriculum to capacitate we will impact school readiness more effectively. If we agree on a few principle issues like what and how children should be learning in their formative years we will see different Grade 12 results for the class of 2026. . Mealang van Heerden has worked in the early education space for 16 years. She is the national early learning playgroup programme development manager at Cotlands. From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/DRIVE/main%20edition/09092015/epaperpdf/19.pdf -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . 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