Real Reform for ECD is a movement advocating for holistic, well-funded, inclusive and quality early childhood development services for all children. Our focus is to ensure an enabling legal, policy and regulatory environment for the provision and expansion of ECD services.
Learn about the #ECDManifesto campaign →
Our vision is to have an enabling legal, policy and regulatory environment for the provision and expansion of ECD services to see all children in South Africa thriving and we believe that an enabling legal framework is one essential component of how to achieve this.
We develop our own solutions to the legal and regulatory challenges we face, we intend to use the tactical power of the law in our struggle to achieve our vision, we hope to be one of the leading grassroots voices on the legal and regulatory issues facing early childhood development programmes.
We want to be a movement of knowledgeable and empowered ECD practitioners, parents, caregivers and community members. We have identified NECDA, SmartStart and Bridge as key alliance organisations - powerful partners for realising our vision.
Now that elections have passed and a new administration has been appointed, the People’s Manifesto for Early Childhood Development (ECD)-supported by over 6000 people and 170 organisations-serves as a mandate from advocates for young children across the country to the new government. We call on the new administration to recognise the crucial importance of ECD in our country’s future by implementing this #ECDManifesto between 2024 and 2029. Our goal is to get to 10 000 signatures on our petition and 200 organisational endorsements - there is power in numbers!
Endorse now (organisations) Sign on now (individuals)Real Reform for ECD was founded in response to a poorly drafted Children Amendment Bill (CAB) put before Parliament in 2020 which did not meet the needs of the ECD sector. The sector united in numbers, calling for the ECD sections of the CAB to be removed, with over 1600 submissions made to Parliament by mostly ECD practitioners.
In response to our submissions, the Department of Social Development withdrew the ECD sections of the CAB in 2021 and a Technical Task Team was set up consisting of Parliament, Department of Social Development (DSD), South African Local Government Association (SALGA), the Office of State Law Advisor, representatives of civil society and the Department of Basic Education (DBE) was set up. Organisations on Real Reform for ECD’s Steering Committee were represented on this Technical Task Team.
In 2024, we are finally seeing progress with the new CAB being gazetted and opened for public comment between May and June 2024. In 2020, we proposed Five Reforms to the CAB that would be crucial for the ECD sector. We have now done an analysis of how the new CAB fares against our Five Reforms and we are thrilled to say that the Bill has improved significantly. One significant amendment is a one-step registration process for ECD practitioners. This is a huge victory!
Real Reform for ECD made a submission to the DBE in support of the new draft Bill which was supported by over 100 people in June 2024. The new draft Bill was expected to be tabled before Parliament in 2024 and passed by 2025, but this did not happen. Now we need to keep up the pressure and ensure that the new CAB is tabled before Parliament and passed by the end of 2026!
See our graphic to see how the new CAB fares against our Five Reforms.
Useful resources:
In 2020, as part of the #MakeTheBillBetter Campaign:
1600
submissions made
7
provinces represented
200
organisations signed on
5
key reforms advocated
Did you know that young children in South Africa currently do not have an expressed, unified and enforceable right to Early Childhood Development (ECD) in our Constitution? As the most crucial phase in a human being's development, and as a country that claims to uphold children's rights, it certainly should be!
Nurina Ally (Director of the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town) and Tatiana Kazim (Research Associate at the Centre for Law and Society) have written a draft Right to ECD Legal Framework for constitutionalising the right to ECD. They presented this framework to ECD practitioners, researchers, lawyers, activists and policy experts at Real Reform for ECD's Right to ECD Symposium held on 8 and 9 May 2025 in Johannesburg.
The inputs and engagements at the Right to ECD Symposium were crucial to ensuring that the draft framework is in line with international law, is fit for the developmental context of South Africa, and is grounded in the lived experiences of ECD practitioners and parents who nurture our young children on a daily basis.
We are now in the process of further consolidating inputs from our consultation session with ECD practitioners and civil society before releasing a new draft of the Right to ECD Legal Framework.
[WATCH] The Right to ECD Symposium in Johannesburg
[WATCH] How you can make your local government work for early childhood development
Between the months of March and April, local municipalities are busy preparing their Integrated Development Plan (IDP). This is a plan that will outline the development areas that local municipalities will focus on for the next five years. The aim of this campaign is to have ECD included as a core focus area.
Many of our challenges with ECD programme registration lie at the local government level : there are impossible land-use requirements (zoning), excessive costs for building plans, high fees as well as onerous health and safety requirements. Local governments are also not enabling the expansion of ECD programmes. They are not supporting ECD programmes with infrastructure upgrades nor are they supporting with new ECD builds (as required by the ECD policy) and ECD does not feature in local government planning or budgets.
We are calling on all organisations, ECD practitioners, teachers, parents and caregivers to contact their local municipality and to call on councillors to:
Adequate nutrition is not just a need: It is a child’s right. Without proper nutrition, children are likely to be too short for their age (stunted). They are also more likely to do less well in school and to be less productive, earn less, and suffer more from diseases like diabetes and heart disease as adults.
The government provides a R17 per child per day subsidy to registered early learning programmes, of which R6.80 is intended for nutrition. But it reaches too few and is too little.
In late 2022, RR4ECD began to explore a campaign on the right to nutrition. We put together three research task teams to explore the right to nutrition, what adequate nutrition is and how the Department of Basic Education (DBE) could implement an ECD nutrition programme. This extensive research has informed the campaign’s approach and calls to action.
We urge the DBE to provide nutrition support to all eligible children attending an early learning programme, regardless of whether the programme is registered or not. We must not neglect the most vulnerable children, especially those at unregistered programmes, who stand the most to gain from nutrition support.
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The campaign explained
Poster 1 (English)
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Poster 2 (English)
Poster 1 (Xhosa)
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Poster 2 (Xhosa)
Poster 1 (Sotho)
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Poster 2 (Sotho)
Poster 1 (Afrikaans)
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Poster 2 (Afrikaans)
Our nutrition reforms
English poster
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Xhosa poster
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Sotho poster
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Afrikaans poster
The evidence
English poster
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Xhosa poster
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Sotho poster
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Afrikaans poster
Campaign logo
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Other versions
People's Manifesto for ECD
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ECD Manifesto Explainer
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ECD Manifesto Campaign Poster
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ECD Manifesto Recommendations
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ECD Manifesto Whatsapp story banner
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ECD Manifesto Whatsapp profile picture
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ECD Manifesto Facebook banner
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ECD Manifesto Twitter banner
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ECD Manifesto LinkedIn banner
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The Children’s Amendment Bill (B18-2020) proposed amendments in relation to a wide range of issues impacting on children, including amendments regarding partial care and ECD. The Bill did not address the Five Reforms needed for strengthening the ECD sector. It had the potential to create additional burdens and challenges for ECD providers. Challenges with the Bill included:
The most relevant law, regulations and policy documents can be accessed here:
We are a broad-based alliance made up of dedicated elected representatives who form the Steering Committee to lead Real Reform’s work, supported by over 200 organisations .
Representatives: Rina (Mehlomakhulu) Mato (Ilifa Labantwana), Tatiana Kazim (Equal Education Law Centre), Kayin Scholtz (Umncedi), Tess Peacock (Equality Collective), Hopolang Selebalo (SmartStart), Nonhlanhla Dzingwa (Sisonke ECD forum), Mandla Nkosi (Greater Soweto Forum), Boipelo Lekwane (individual capacity), Carol Dlamini (individual capacity), Mmatsetshweu Ruby Motaung (Tree-ECD), Sheniece Linderboom (Legal Resources Centre)
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