The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has changed its subsidy formula for pre-primary schools to improve access to Grade R classes in the province’s poorest communities.

Education MEC Cameron Dugmore announced the pro-poor subsidy at the Little Flower Educare centre in Khayelitsha on Wednesday (30 November 2005).

He told a gathering of pre-school principals that WCED has more than doubled the subsidy for poorest pre-primary schools from R3 to R7 per child per school day.

"I believe all issues in education are very important, but reading and writing, in proper safe facilities are absolutely fundamental to quality education," he said.

Because of poverty, a significant number of both parents are forced to seek work and have to leave their children in the care of someone else, he said.

He said that children should be provided with safe and stimulating developmental care.

Poverty-stricken parents leave their children in the care of functionally illiterate child-minders who cannot provide a stimulating developmental care to their charges.

If no adult is available, he said, children are often left with a girl-child who herself is supposed to be in school.

"We have to break this cycle," he said.

He said the early years of a child’s life were crucial for the development of fantasy and creativity and therefore children should be introduced to books and good education early in their lives.

The WCED has an on-going programme to address the low levels of numeracy and literacy.

Numeracy and literacy are fundamental components of WCED curricula and the Human Development strategy in the Western Cape. The curricula recognises that the development of high levels of language use and numeracy are key to all learning.

Earlier this year, the WCED provided Grade R start-up kits to 30 Grade R sites in poor areas as part of the Premier Ebrahim Rasool’s Easter Delivery campaign.

The idea is to build the province as a Home for All.

While the province was making progress, MEC Dugmore said that the Western Cape is still "very far from that vision" because of inequalities that still exist among various communities in the province.

He said that WCED sought to increase participation and success rates of learners in the General Education and Training (GET) band, Further Education and Training (FET) in both schools and colleges, and to increase the number of FET learners who qualify to enter higher education institution institutions, especially from poor backgrounds.

The WCED currently subsidises 45 000 learners in Grade R and plans to increase this to 80 000 by 2014, in terms of the province’s Human Capital Development Strategy

The projected growth of 35 000 learners means an increase in enrollment at a rate of 3 500 per annum over the next 10 years.

The department supports 1 587 sites, far more than the number of public ordinary schools in the Western Cape. About 33% of these sites are in the poorest areas and communities.

The challenges facing the department now are general lack of access services, poor educational quality of many of the existing services and lack of nutritional support.

MEC Dugmore said the Western Cape has functionally illiterate population of about 1.13 million people.

Levels of numeracy and literacy among learners in all grades, and the performance of schools in mathematics and science are important indicators of the progress the province was making in eradicating legacies of apartheid education, he said.

WCED plans to provide quality Grade R schooling for all 5-year-olds by 210 and make it compulsory from 2014.

Said Dugmore: "We are doing this because we need to build this province as a Home for All. And therefore we have adopted an economic development strategy - iKapa Elihlumayo - to grow and share the Cape".

He said the new subsidy would "ensure an integrated approach to the physical, social and cognitive development of all 0 to 4-year-olds living in the province".