Question NW2242 to the Minister of Basic Education to ask the Minister of Basic Education

Reply:

The Department of Basic Education has historically been responsible for the development and implementation of the National Curriculum Framework for children from birth to four years old (NCF).  Provincial and national monitoring and support systems have therefore, been established and implemented to ensure that ECD centres comply with the standards set out in the NCF.  However, the Thrive by Five Index, which was established to evaluate the efficiency of Early Learning Programmes (ELPs), indicated the need to further strengthen our monitoring and support of quality ECD provisioning.  Given this, the Department is in the process of developing a Quality Assurance and Support System, that will set out very clear quality standards so that ELPs will clearly understand the expectation around quality provisioning.  The Quality Assurance and Support System will further include support mechanisms to progressively reach the quality standards that have been agreed upon.  The Thrive by Five Index will also be repeated every three-four years, to continuously provide an independent evaluation of whether quality is being improved.