BANA PELE: ECD subsidy expands as government races to close SA’s one-million-child gap

More children are being reached in quality early learning programmes today than at any other time in the history of South Africa, according to Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube. At the Bana Pele Leadership Summit 2026, which began on Monday, 19 October, she celebrated bringing access to the ECD subsidy to an additional 200,000 children over the past two years.

However, there is still a long way to go in realising the goals of the Bana Pele Shared Blueprint for 2030.

“While we should take confidence from the progress we have made, we should not take our foot off the pedal. Around 1.2 million children aged three to five currently access early learning. That still leaves a gap of about one million children. One million children not accessing any ECD programme is not a statistic we can become comfortable with. It is the distance we still need to cover,” said Gwarube.

This year’s event follows on from the inaugural Bana Pele Leadership Summit in 2025, which sought to introduce a shared blueprint for the government, business, civil society, funders and communities to work together to reach the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE’s) 2030 goal of universal access to quality early learning.

According to Gwarube, more than 954,000 children currently have access to the ECD subsidy of R24 per child per day, up from 748,000 two years ago. As of September 2026, about 1.6-million children under six were enrolled across almost 40,000 registered early learning programmes in South Africa, suggesting ECD subsidy coverage for these learners was at 59%.

By 2030, the Department of Basic Education’s Bana Pele Shared Blueprint strives to:

• Expand access to quality early learning programmes, reaching an additional 250,000 children between 2025 and 2027, and 950,000 more between 2027 and 2030, bringing in 1.2 million children overall.

• Raise quality in programmes by improving developmental outcomes, increasing the percentage of children classified as green (on track) in the Thrive by Five Index from 46% in 2024 to 51% by 2030, while reducing those in the red category (falling far behind) from 28% in 2024 to 19% by 2030.

• Resource the sector by mobilising financial and non-financial resources from public, private, philanthropic and corporate partners to support this targeted scale-up.

• Enable government systems by focusing on modernising core business processes, improving management information systems and digitising key functions across provincial education departments and local government.

Accessing the ECD subsidy

While ECD centres enter the registration process at the bronze level, they can only access the ECD subsidy once they have achieved silver or gold level, issued for regulatory partial or full compliance, respectively.

“By the end of September, 1,343 programmes had received silver or gold approval since the start of this year. During September alone, the daily rate of approvals rose from between 10 to 15 a day to around 25 to 30. We have doubled our rate of approvals,” said Gwarube.

The ECD subsidy budget had grown from R3.43-billion in 2024/25 to R6.49-billion in the current financial year, and was projected to reach R9.1-billion by 2028/29, she added.

Despite the progress made towards expanding access to the ECD subsidy, practitioners in some regions have reported failures of provincial departments of education to pay out the funds on time. The KwaZulu-Natal Division of the High Court in Pietermaritzburg issued an order in June 2026 compelling the provincial education department to pay outstanding subsidies to local early learning facilities after longstanding complaints from centres that they faced non-payment over multiple months.

Responding to a question from Daily Maverick about how the national Department of Education would be ensuring the proper administration of subsidies at province level, Gwarube said: “The ECD subsidy is a conditional grant, so there shouldn’t be a scenario in which provinces aren’t able to release that subsidy. Every single child who’s either in a silver or gold status ECD should be receiving that subsidy as a matter of course... I think we still have a long way to go, and I think that we can be a lot more aggressive in finding those children.”

Gwarube advocated for greater collaboration across different levels and departments of government, arguing that practitioners should not have to travel from one agency to another to get what they needed.

“We should be able to say, ‘Here is... a checklist. This is what you need to do. How can we help you?’” she said.

Collaboration across departments and sectors

ECD coordinator with the Equality Collective and Real Reform for ECD, Tshepo Mantjé, who was in attendance at the summit, said that what stood out for him from the event was the Department of Basic Education’s effort to recognise the inter-ministerial work that was needed in providing holistic ECD services. Both the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, and Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs [Cogta], Dr Namane Masemola, contributed to the discussions on taking early learning forward.

“Having seen the Department of Health and Cogta in the room was really promising... and I saw that Salga [the South African Local Government Association] had signed on to support the [Bana Pele] blueprint. It’s showing the importance of all government departments coming together because... early childhood development, particularly within the nurturing care framework context, includes nutrition, learning, safeguarding, health, responsive caregiving... If we’re talking about an ECD summit, it’s not just a Department of Basic Education thing; it is a multi-sectoral and multi-departmental effort,” said Mantjé.

ECD practitioners in attendance at the event told Daily Maverick that they were inspired by the work of the Bana Pele movement. Paballo Langa from Little Stars Daycare Centre in Soweto said what captured her attention was the effort of government to work “hand in hand” with ECD centres to make the registration process easier.

“What I’ve seen today, there’s a lot of hope... and I like that when working with Bana Pele, they give us a time frame. They did mention that we should expect results in 2030, which will give us time as well to push where we’re left behind, like the registration,” said Langa.

“The experience was helpful. Going back, I’m going to share this knowledge with other ECDs... We’re used to doing these things on our own. But now we have support.”

In an effort to bridge silos in the government, all eight metros and 44 district municipalities were now part of the ECD registration effort, noted Gwarube, reaching South Africa’s full network of 257 municipalities across all nine provinces.

She added that more than 75 NGOs and social service organisations were supporting registration; five Bana Pele Community Hubs were being prototyped; and joint outreaches with the South African Social Security Agency and the Department of Home Affairs were pairing birth registration with early learning registration clinics.

From the president

Speaking at the summit, President Cyril Ramaphosa emphasised how the rapid development of technologies, including artificial intelligence and automation, was transforming the way the children of today would live, learn and work. He argued that while technology might change the world, it could not replace the fundamental skills of reading, writing, counting, thinking and understanding.

“We must therefore prepare our children not merely to use the technologies of the future, but to think critically, solve problems, communicate effectively and adapt to change,” he said. “That preparation begins in the earliest years of life.”

Policy developments related to ECD in the past year included the gazetting of revised norms and standards for early learning centres, and the Cabinet’s approval of the Children’s Amendment Bill, which would simplify the rules for early learning programmes, for submission to Parliament, he continued.

He called on businesses to help accelerate the drive towards the Bana Pele 2030 goals, through investment in early learning infrastructure, the training of practitioners, learning resources, and subsidised access for children from poor households.

“I would like to see early childhood development become a central part of corporate social investment and broader economic development strategies. Not simply because it is the right thing to do, but because it is one of the most effective investments we can make in the future prosperity of our country,” said Ramaphosa.

Reaching 2030

With four years to go until the Bana Pele Shared Blueprint’s 2030 targets, Gwarube said there was a need to be “ambitious”. She acknowledged that the Department of Basic Education and its partners were still building some of the systems for accelerating early learning development, but said that once these were running well, there would be a lot more “momentum” towards the stated goals.

Mantjé said he was optimistic about the way forward, and proud of a government that was “bold enough to do things differently”.

“I am optimistic and encouraged that the right steps are being taken. I’m encouraged that we are at the second Bana Pele Summit, which in itself is an accomplishment... I remain cautious in relation to practitioner participation... I want to see, for us to get the last mile correct, the Department of Basic Education connecting more directly with practitioners and hearing directly from practitioners through forums...

“My fear is that much of this work is happening from the top down, and a movement needs to be... informed by what's happening at the grassroots for it to be successful,” he said. DM