Roger Federer Foundation leads the way
Massive boost for ECDs in Namibia
The Roger Federer Foundation invested close to N$100 million in early childhood development in Namibia.The announcement was made in the capital on Wednesday during a multi-sectoral dinner in support of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.2, namely that by 2030 all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education.
Speaking at the event, RFF trustee Sandro Giuliani said the Foundation’s goal for Namibia is to explore and implement multi-sectoral partnerships and mobilise resources in Namibia in order to support early childhood development and school readiness.
For more than three years, the School Readiness Initiative (SRI) has linked government primary schools with ECD centres for peer learning and mentorship with tablets equipped with teaching aids and capacity-building resources.
Eighty ECDs received support for a project called “It takes a Community to Raise a Child” between 2014 and 2018. Now the RFF continues its work to strengthen the quality of early childhood education in vulnerable communities.
In line with SDG 4.2, for the next seven years, the Foundation will be focusing on the significant change in life before the transition to primary school.
“It is important to prepare children well for school and enhance their school readiness,” Giuliani said. “This means that they should be developmentally on track in health, learning, as well as psychosocial well-being before they enter primary school.
“The transition from preschool to primary school is highly sensitive and full of challenges for children: If they are inadequately prepared for school or badly embedded in their new environment, they are highly likely not to develop properly and to drop out of school.”
The RFF initiative will not only enhance the children’s readiness for school but also the school’s readiness for the children.
ECD and Education
According to the RFF, there are currently 2 960 registered ECD centres in Namibia, with an average of 27 children per centre, run by 4 516 registered educarers of which 63% are trained. The RFF says that these ECD centres’ top three needs are training for educarers, educational material and playground equipment.
In light of this, the School Readiness Initiative (SRI) was established in July 2018 through a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Planning Commission that runs until the end of 2026 through three local implementing partners, namely Lifeline/ChildLine, Women’s Action for Development, and the Church Alliance For Orphans in a bid to secure a good start in primary education for vulnerable children aged between three and eight.
The hope is that by the end of the initiative, 80% of Namibian girls and boys will have access to quality pre-primary education and will thus be ready for primary school.
The challenges that ECDs face include the repetition of grades (in 2018, more than 100 000 children in Namibia repeated a grade in primary school, which costs around N$1.5 billion a year); access (only 20% of Namibian children between the ages of 0-6 years have access to ECD centres); and training and compensation (only 63% of ECD educators are qualified and of those, only 45% receive a monthly stipend).
Other challenges include a government contribution of only around 2% of the costs to run ECDs, parents being unable to pay for tuition and a lack of access to resources.
The RFF said that the actual total cost of ECD centres was estimated to be N$152 million in 2018, which translates into N$1 977 per child per year or N$5.42 per child per day.