Learners don’t have vote, but have a powerful voice — ‘prioritise education and ECD’

“We are tired of these empty promises... Sooner or later, if we don’t recognise it now, our education system will be a new pandemic… What solutions do you have?” — Yonela Zembe, Equaliser, Western Cape

Learners may not have a vote, but they do have a voice. On Friday 10 May 2024, thousands of learners marched through the cold streets of Cape Town as part of a mass action organised by Equal Education (EE) to tell the next government to give education and early childhood development (ECD) the attention they so desperately need.

Education remains as important as ever. It is a crucial part of the interconnected web of human rights. Learners and parents across South Africa know that a good education is the key to unlocking other rights — rights to equality, dignity, freedom of expression, housing, healthcare, and social welfare.

The foundations of a good education are laid early on, in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. During this period young children need nurturing care across five key areas: not just early learning, but also nutrition, health, caregiving, and safety and protection. This will allow them to grow, learn and thrive later in life.

For many years, EE and the Equal Education Law Centre (EELC) have been fighting for every child’s right to a basic education and early childhood development (ECD). While there have been important gains, there is still a very long way to go.  Across the country, learners are raising their voices to say: enough. The time for change is now.

Building our nation’s future

The education sector continues to be hampered by flawed laws and policies at the national, provincial and school levels which do not take full account of lived realities on the ground.

Recent budget cuts have further impeded learners’ access to the components of their right to basic education and have deepened South Africa’s vast education inequalities.

The result is a shortage of safe school infrastructure, insufficient school places, overcrowded classrooms, widespread sexual violence and physical assault in schools, and low literacy levels - 81% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning, a gap in learning which, without intervention, will only widen as learners advance in their school journey.

In the ECD sector, chronic underfunding and an overly complicated and burdensome regulatory framework contribute to a situation where only one third of children attend an ECD programme, one in every four children is stunted, and less than half of young children are on track to thrive by five.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Early childhood development — moving beyond departmental silos

School children at Kwa-Zubumnandi Pre School in Durban, South Africa 18 January 2023. The authors argue that the education of children is one of the most powerful investments the SA government can make. (Photo: Gallo Images / Darren Stewart)

Political attention

Children are one of the most powerful investments a government can make. To secure our nation’s future, it is essential that education and ECD are at the top of the political agenda. So, which political parties are prioritising the next generation?

Ahead of election day on 29 May 2024, we analysed 11 party manifestos to find out.

Our analysis reveals that not a single party expressly acknowledges that there is an admissions crisis, with thousands of learners each year being denied the most fundamental component of their right to a basic education: a place at school. Only three parties specifically address overcrowding and the need to ensure sufficient classrooms and teachers.

Read more in Daily Maverick: 2024 elections hub

While all 11 parties mention inclusive education, all but two focus narrowly on children with disabilities and, even then, key priorities such as early identification, referral pathways, and provision of habilitation and rehabilitation services at mainstream schools are missing. Mentions of inclusion of LGBTQ+ learners, undocumented learners, and other marginalised learners are rare.

Only a handful of parties propose targeted, school-based interventions to improve safety and psychosocial support. Admittedly, some propose plans to improve community safety more generally. However, we think that targeted support at schools is vital, given the extent of trauma experienced by learners at school.

Promisingly, most political parties commit to ensuring that all children access quality ECD services. However, detail is limited.

Most political parties, too, acknowledge the need for interventions to improve the quality of education in our schools.

In a statement released following their attendance at EE’s march, Rise Mzansi is explicit about the need to make quality education accessible for poor and working-class communities, including in the deeply unequal province of the Western Cape.

Some manifestos contain some encouraging commitments to improving teacher and learner support. But more than half propose punitive interventions which focus excessively on exam results and/or risk deepening education inequalities.

The authors write that education is a crucial part of children's human rights. (Photo: Andrea Stalbom)

Funding and social inequality

After years of persistent activism on EE’s part, most parties now explicitly commit to improving public school infrastructure, with plans to build and resource schools, provide safe and dignified sanitation, and expand digital infrastructure.

Unfortunately, however, the current ruling party — whose government has already missed multiple deadlines to comply with Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure — is committed only to expanding digital infrastructure and made no mention of eradicating current backlogs.

Similarly, the Democratic Alliance, which currently governs the Western Cape, boasts of its Rapid School Build Programme but does not commit to school infrastructure expansion outside of increased digitisation.

Of course, it is very important to put parties’ education commitments in their wider context. We are disappointed to see that most parties support market-led solutions to economic development, advocating for “fiscal restraint” and regulatory incentives for the private sector.

Even if education spending is not directly reduced, economic policies favouring market forces can disproportionately impact students from low-income backgrounds by weakening labour rights, privatising services, and deregulating industries.

Education equity will not be achieved while broader socioeconomic inequalities deepen and we encourage all voters to consider manifestos holistically before casting their vote.

We know that political party manifestos can only do so much. But manifestos do represent commitments; commitments which we can use to hold the next government to account. When you’re in the voting booth, we ask you to consider: which party has committed to putting learners and young children first?

This is the time for us to come together and use our votes to give South Africa’s young people the government they deserve — and to hold that government to account once the votes have been counted.

EE and EELC won’t sit by while education becomes a new pandemic. We won’t give up the fight for education justice. Will you fight alongside us? DM 

Tatiana Kazim is a senior legal researcher at the Equal Education Law Centre (EELC) and she represents EELC on the Real Reform for ECD steering committee.

Mikhaila Steenkamp is a researcher at EELC and a former teacher.

Mahfouz Raffee is a researcher at Equal Education (EE) focussing on education funding and parliamentary oversight.