Recommendations - Thrive by Five Index

2024

Thrive by Five Index

The Index offers a stark reminder of how much remains to be done to ensure that every child in South Africa has access to quality early learning. Every effort counts. Your work, resources, and networks can help to turn these recommendations into real change for children.

Findings: Enrolled Children

Method

Recommendations

Sub-Study: Non-Enrolled Children

From Insights to Action

Six priority areas for action to improve young children’s development.

Finance the sector for access and quality:

Improve the flow of public funds to ELPs: Predictable funding supports stable income streams, particularly for ELPs serving vulnerable communities. It is crucial to strengthen the subsidy disbursement systems to ensure the R10 billion National Treasury allocation to ECD (2025-2027), is spent within the stipulated period and invested effectively, where it is needed most.
Increase funding to align with the cost of quality: Subsidy values must progressively reflect the true costs of delivering quality early learning programmes – including fair pay, decent working conditions and continuous professional development for practitioners. Without quality, expanding enrolment alone will fall short of achieving the substantial gains in children’s developmental outcomes that are required.
Resource the non-profit sector: NGOs play a vital role in training and mentoring principals and practitioners, supporting curriculum delivery and enabling access to quality learning materials. To strengthen this crucial support tier, greater and more sustained funding is needed.
Remove financial barriers to enrolment for the most vulnerable children: Nearly one-third of 4-year-old children do not attend an ELP, mainly due to an inability to pay fees. It is these children – often the most vulnerable – who could benefit the most. Financial barriers must be addressed urgently to enable all children to access early learning and unlock the wider benefits of ELP attendance. Bridging this access gap requires targeted strategies, supported by an understanding of both the supply- and demand-side barriers to enrolment.

Strengthen the workforce and classroom practices:

Review training to strengthen responsive teaching: Teaching Strategies – the daily activities practitioners use to extend learning, build emotional skills, and foster independence – are strongly linked to higher ELOM 4&5 scores. Yet no positive link emerges between practitioners’ qualification levels and the quality of these strategies. This signals a need to review current training and qualifications so they better equip practitioners with the practical, evidence-based skills required for high-quality, responsive teaching.
Build Practitioner Capacity to Support Children’s Social and Emotional Development: Children’s social and emotional functioning plays a significant role in shaping their learning outcomes. Simple, everyday practices that are integrated into ELP routines can help children feel safe, seen, and supported: daily check-ins, activities that allow children to understand and name feelings, warm responses to emotional cues and needs, as well as reinforcing positive behaviours through praise and encouragement. Principals and practitioners need targeted training and support to integrate these approaches effectively and consistently.
Create environments that build focus and self-regulation: Task Focus is one of the strongest predictors of ELOM 4&5 outcomes, making it essential to design learning spaces and processes that help children concentrate, persevere, and explore with curiosity. Effective strategies include – differentiated learning areas stocked with engaging, age-appropriate materials; rotating between individual, small-group, and large-group activities to sustain interest; breaking tasks into manageable steps and gradually reducing support (scaffolding); and allowing children to make age-appropriate choices within a structured programme.
Equip under-resourced ELPs for focused, engaged learning: Children in better-resourced ELPs show stronger focus and problem-solving skills – key predictors of good outcomes. Closing this gap means supplying under-resourced programmes with high-quality learning and play materials, alongside practitioner training to use them effectively. This pairing ensures resources translate into richer, more engaging learning experiences for children.
Harness peer networks to drive quality: Peer-to-peer learning among ELP principals and practitioners – through ECD forums and communities of practice – presents opportunities to strengthen leadership and raise programme quality. These networks provide safe spaces for sharing experience, reflecting on challenges, and solving problems collectively. Investing in and expanding such networks can embed a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and mutual support across the ELP sector.
Back principals as leaders: Principals set the tone for programme quality – yet fewer than half received any in-service training in 2023–24. Their ability to recruit, develop, and retain skilled staff directly shapes children’s learning experiences. We need to invest in principals as both pedagogical leaders and capable managers – strengthening recruitment and retention strategies, building their capacity to drive programme quality and embed play-based learning, and equipping them with the financial and administrative skills to run sustainable ELPs.

Integrate early learning and child health:

Address the root causes of stunting: Stunting affects children’s physical growth, undermines cognitive development, and has long-term consequences for their educational trajectories. Addressing stunting requires a holistic, multi-sectoral response that reduces food insecurity, improves maternal health and wellbeing, and expands access to healthcare, clean water, and sanitation.
Expand health and nutrition services through ELPs: We need to build on the fact that 90% of ELPs already provide a daily meal to children and 60% provide platforms for health outreach. Nutritional support, regular growth checks, deworming and micronutrient supplementation can be delivered at scale through DoH-ELP partnerships.

Support positive parenting:

Enhance family involvement: While ELPs play a critical role in children’s early development, learning begins and continues at home. Only 11% of households have more than five children’s books, and over a quarter have none. Many caregivers also overestimate their child’s developmental progress, suggesting a gap in awareness of age-appropriate milestones. Communication campaigns and community outreach should help families recognise key developmental milestones, understand why they matter, and offer simple, low-cost ways to support children to reach them.
Recognise the role of fathers: Although father involvement is increasingly recognised as important for young children’s development, it remains poorly understood and often overlooked – particularly in low-income settings. Programmes and communication strategies should actively include fathers and other male caregivers, acknowledge their role and encourage their participation in early learning and care.

Strengthen foundation phase teaching:

Early learning gains can fade if they are not reinforced when children enter formal schooling, Quality teaching and learning from Grade R to Grade 3 are therefore critical both to close early learning gaps and to sustain gains from high-quality ELPs. For the many children who start Grade R already Falling Behind, Grade R must function as a purposeful bridging year to help them catch up. For children who have benefited from strong ELPs, quality teaching in Grade R and beyond is essential to maintain and extend those gains. Strengthening instructional quality across Grades 1–3 ensures that early advantages are not lost and that all children build steadily towards the competencies they need for later learning.

Advance data and research:

Shine a light on excluded children: The 2024 Index findings on non-enrolled children underscores the urgent need to deepen our understanding of this highly vulnerable group of children and households. Non-enrolled children are frequently overlooked in research and service provision. If we are committed to leaving no child behind, this group must become a central focus.
Invest in longitudinal studies to track developmental pathways: Cross-sectional data provides valuable snapshots, but South Africa needs longitudinal research that follows children over time – especially those in under-resourced settings. Tracking the combined effects of early learning, nutrition, health, and caregiver engagement on later academic, economic, health, and social outcomes will identify critical windows for intervention. Such evidence can guide investment towards strategies that deliver the greatest and most lasting impact.
Embed Index outcomes into administrative data systems: Linking data from the Index to the Department of Basic Education’s learner tracking system would allow South Africa to assess whether early gains are sustained – and under what conditions. Positioning the Thrive by Five Index as the baseline for long-term tracking offers a powerful opportunity to monitor progress, identify risk points, and refine interventions over time..