Working Paper

20/055

A Sector Hanging in the Balance: Early Childhood Development and Lockdown in South Africa

This paper comes from RISE Fellow Janeli Kotzé and co-authors. Early Childhood Development (ECD) programmes can be an important factor in school readiness for children. This paper examines how COVID-19 has disrupted the function of ECD programmes in South Africa, and what the consequences of this disruption may be for children and their families.

Authors

Gabrielle Wills

Research on Socio-Economic Policy (ReSEP), Stellenbosch University

Image of Janeli Kotzé

Janeli Kotzé

RISE Fellows

Department of Basic Education, Government of South Africa

Jesal Kika-Mistry

Research on Socio-Economic Policy (ReSEP), Stellenbosch University

New evidence suggests that over four months after the closure of early childhood development (ECD) programmes on 18 March 2020, the ECD sector was likely to be operating at a fraction of its pre-lockdown levels. Of the 38% of respondents from the new NIDS-CRAM survey reporting that children aged 0-6 in their households had attended ECD programmes before the lockdown in March, only 12% indicated that children had returned to these programmes by mid-July, well after programmes were allowed to reopen. Using these findings, we estimate that less than 5% of children aged 0-6 were attending ECD programmes by mid-July to mid-August compared to 38% in 2018. The last time that ECD attendance rates were as low as this was pre-2000. At this point it is not yet clear what proportion of these declines are only temporary, or whether there will be a lasting impact on ECD enrolment in the country. This dramatic contraction in the ECD sector relates to prohibitive costs to reopening ‘safely’ imposed by the regulatory environment, coupled with shocks to the demand side for ECD programmes (both in terms of reduced household incomes and parent fears of children contracting COVID-19). When viewed from a broader socio-economic lens, the threat of ECD programme closures across the nation will have impacts beyond ECD operators to the lives of millions of children, millions of households and millions of adults who rely on these ECD services. A swift intervention by government is necessary to save this important sector and limit the ripple effect of programme closures on multiple layers of society.

Note: The original version of this paper was published in November 2020. 

Citation:

Wills, G., Kotzé, J. and Kika-Mistry, J. 2020. A Sector Hanging in the Balance: Early Childhood Development and Lockdown in South Africa. RISE Working Paper Series. 20/055. https://doi.org/10.35489/BSG-RISE-WP_2020/055