Staff Reporter
Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube this week announced a package of education reforms while tabling the Department of Basic Education’s 2026/27 budget.
Among the announcements was confirmation that ECD centre registrations had grown by 200% since 2021, expanding access to 1.2 million children across South Africa.
Gwarube also announced an ECD Nutrition Pilot in the Eastern Cape, aimed at tackling child hunger, malnutrition and stunting during the early years of development.
The department will also develop national screen-time guidelines for children aged two to six, amid concerns about the effect of excessive exposure to phones and tablets on language, memory, attention span and social development.
In a major legislative development, Gwarube said the Children’s Amendment Bill had been approved by Cabinet and would now go to Parliament.
“The Bill is critical to unlocking a more efficient, child-centred ECD system so that vulnerable children are not excluded from support because of unnecessary red tape,” Gwarube said.
She also announced the establishment of a Multi-Disciplinary Technical Support Team to help provincial education departments facing severe financial pressure return to sustainable financial paths.
The team will support provinces with budget planning, financial analysis, school resourcing and financial stabilisation to protect classroom delivery and improve governance.
On foundational learning, Gwarube said 10,000 Foundation Phase teachers would receive targeted literacy and numeracy training in 2026/27. The department will also refresh the implementation of the National Reading Literacy Strategy.
Gwarube said the department would issue directives to schools to cut the number of reporting tools teachers were required to complete.
“We are reducing the administrative burden on teachers, educators must spend more time teaching children and less time filling in unnecessary paperwork” she said.
In one of the most significant changes, Gwarube said the department would begin ranking provincial matric performance using an inclusive basket of quality indicators, rather than allowing a single matric pass-rate percentage to dominate the national conversation.
The new approach will consider learner retention, bachelor passes, literacy and numeracy progression, mathematics participation and overall learning improvement.
The minister also announced that the department would launch an independent external forensic investigation into the Foundation Phase National Catalogue process.
On funding, Gwarube said the department had been allocated R38.2 billion for the 2026/27 financial year, despite fiscal constraints. This includes R32.7 billion in conditional grants, R11 billion for the National School Nutrition Programme, R16 billion for the Education Infrastructure Grant, and R4.6 billion for the Early Childhood Development Grant.
“We must build strong foundations for strong futures. The future of South Africa depends on the quality of education we provide to every child today,” Gwarube said.
INSIDE EDUCATION
