NOT Just Another Caretaker - Why ECD Educators Need Specialised Training

This is not a mechanical transfer of responsibility — it is a call to action. It is a recognition that without a deep educational intervention for both practitioners and communities, we will continue to reproduce cycles of poverty, violence, and school failure. To succeed, this shift must be grounded in a deliberate and empowering educational framework that acknowledges the vulnerability of our children and the structural conditions in which they live.

Not simply caretakers

For too long, ECD in South Africa has been treated as a welfare concern rather than a core educational imperative. While the social care component remains essential — ensuring that children are fed, safe, and healthy — the move to the Department of Basic Education signals a commitment to placing learning, cognitive development, and social-emotional growth at the centre of early years policy. This is long overdue.

If we are serious about improving the quality and outcomes of our education system, we must begin not in Grade 1, but at birth. And we must ensure that the adults entrusted with this foundational stage — our ECD practitioners — are equipped with the knowledge, confidence, and contextual understanding they need to make a lasting impact.

As someone who helped manage this transition at a provincial level, I witnessed both the promise and the pitfalls of such a shift. It was not merely about moving functions between departments — it required building new systems of accountability, retraining staff, and reimagining what support for practitioners could look like.

What I learned from that experience is that unless this transition is accompanied by a strong educational vision, we risk replicating the same inequities under a new name. The challenge is not administrative — it is philosophical. What kind of future are we building for our children, and who do we trust to build it?

Education in context

Most practitioners in poor communities work under conditions of scarcity. They are often underqualified, unsupported, and overwhelmed, yet they carry the burden of shaping the futures of children from broken communities — children who arrive hungry, traumatised, and developmentally delayed.

These practitioners do not need generic training based on outdated theories from the Global North. They need an education that reflects the context they work in. They need to understand how violence, instability, and poverty affect brain development and behaviour. They need to know how to nurture learning in children who do not have toys, books, or stable homes. Most of all, they need to be affirmed as professionals whose work is not only about survival, but about transformation.

Three imperatives to effective ECD education

An effective intervention must therefore do three things.

First, it must educate practitioners on child development in disrupted and unequal contexts — going beyond Piaget and Vygotsky to include trauma-informed care, cultural responsiveness, and community-rooted pedagogies.

Second, it must offer tools for literacy and numeracy development that are simple, local, and usable in resource-scarce environments.

Finally, it must restore dignity to the role of the ECD practitioner, helping them to see themselves as change-makers who are not just preparing children for school, but reshaping society itself.

Evolving mindset and methods

A growing body of practitioner-focused content is beginning to reflect these needs. Topics such as the NEET crisis, the importance of brain development in the first five years, and the influence of poverty and trauma on learning provide critical insight for those working at the frontlines.

Modules exploring why traditional learning theories fall short in poor communities, and why local knowledge must shape pedagogy, help practitioners to connect theory to lived experience.

Other essential areas include planning activities with limited resources, nurturing emotional safety, observing children as individuals, and understanding the link between ECD and long-term educational outcomes like dropout rates and low literacy levels. These themes do not just train practitioners — they reframe their work as a foundational part of national development.

Fundamental concern

Education, in this context, is the most powerful tool we have. A country like South Africa, scarred by a legacy of apartheid and now grappling with social fragmentation, inequality, and youth unemployment, cannot afford to treat ECD as a peripheral concern.

When nearly half our youth are not in education, employment, or training (the NEET crisis), and when school dropout begins long before high school, we must ask: what kind of early foundation are we providing? The answer lies in equipping those who shape the earliest years of life. Investing in the educational empowerment of ECD practitioners is a national imperative — one that can alter the trajectory of millions of children.

This shift, then, is not just about aligning departments. It is about aligning values. It is about recognising that education is not a privilege — it is the foundation of justice. And if we are to build a more equal, peaceful, and prosperous South Africa, we must begin by investing in those who care for and teach our youngest citizens.

Reflective framework

At the same time, we must confront the limitations of borrowed models and begin developing a new narrative — one that centres the realities of class and vulnerability in the Global South.

Our children do not grow up in sanitised laboratories of development. They grow up in crowded shacks, on farms with generational poverty, and in townships where violence and hunger are everyday occurrences. We need an educational narrative rooted not in idealised conditions, but in struggle, resilience, and the urgency of justice. Only then will we have a framework that reflects who we are, where we are, and where we must go.

Let us not waste this moment. Let us use it to transform not only how we deliver early childhood development — but how we imagine the future of our country.