Nearly 30% of South Africa’s four-year-olds are estimated not to be enrolled in an Early Learning Programme (ELP), and children outside ELPs show poorer early learning outcomes than their enrolled peers.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO ADDRESS THIS GAP?
In a recent Daily Maverick discussion, The Invisible Backbone: How Women Have Shaped the Childcare Economy in SA, access to early learning emerged as an important thread. Our Executive Director, Sonja Giese, emphasised that access requires direct attention and cannot be treated as a secondary priority.
Against a backdrop of financial constraints, under-resourced ECD centres, evidence gaps and unequal household circumstances, expanding access remains a significant challenge.
Drawing on Sonja’s contribution to the discussion, we unpack four priorities for strengthening how we understand and respond to the early learning access gap.
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DEMOCRATISE DATA
Data is most valuable when it reaches the people who can use it to inform decisions and action. Sonja notes that “data is not an end in itself, it’s a means to an end.” Democratising data means making evidence accessible and useful to the people who need it — from policymakers and funders to ECD practitioners and families This can help decision-makers better understand who is being reached, who is being left out and where greater attention may be needed.
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UNDERSTAND HOW DIFFERENT FACTORS INTERACT
Children’s development is shaped by several factors beyond what happens within an ELP. These factors need to be understood in relation to one another rather than in isolation.
In our recent blog article, From Data to Insight: Five factors shaping learning outcomes, Sonja explored how factors including access to and quality of ELPs, child-practitioner interactions and children’s social and emotional functioning can interact in shaping early learning outcomes.
For example, understanding the relationship between early learning and nutritional stunting also requires us to consider the wider household and community environments in which children develop.
When we speak about the well-being of children, we need to look beyond individual learning inputs and consider how different conditions interact to shape their development.
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INVEST IN LONGITUDINAL DATA
South Africa needs stronger longitudinal evidence that follows children’s development over time.
Unlike a once-off snapshot, longitudinal data can help us understand how children’s outcomes develop over time and examine whether early measures are associated with later outcomes. This kind of evidence is also important for understanding what early childhood measures, such as the ELOM suite of tools, can tell us about children’s later learning.
For example, the Roots & Shoots Longitudinal Study found that the ELOM 4&5 and ELOM-R (v1) assessments were predictive of later academic performance. Researchers followed the same group of Western Cape learners from Grade R in 2022 to Grade 3 in 2025. Following the same children over time enabled researchers to examine the relationship between their early developmental scores and later language and mathematics outcomes.
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LEVERAGE TREND DATA FOR DECISION-MAKING
Ahead of Thrive by Five 2027, Sonja noted that the upcoming trend data will be crucial for measuring whether current initiatives have improved children’s outcomes.
Comparing findings over time can help identify where progress is made, where inequalities persist and which groups of children may require greater attention.
Addressing South Africa’s early learning access gap requires more than generating more evidence. It means making data accessible to those who can use it, understanding the different conditions shaping children’s development, investing in evidence that follows children over time, and using trend data to understand where progress is, and is not, being made.
Together, these priorities can strengthen the evidence available to those making decisions about investment in young children – and help ensure that the children who remain outside early learning programmes are not overlooked. Watch the full Daily Maverick discussion, The Invisible Backbone: How Women Have Shaped the Childcare Economy in SA, to hear more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w5L5WzuFI8&t=2s
