Children in impoverished settings face a multitude of risk factors that may impact early childhood development (ECD). Poor ECD can lead to negative outcomes and the continuation of the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Early stimulation from caregivers can counter the effects of risk factors. Increased developmental literacy supports positive…

Background: Information Communication Technology (ICT) holds the promise of enabling low-cost teacher professional development at scale. An expert coach, for example, could reach far more teachers virtually, thus reducing salary and transport costs. But the benefits of in-person interaction--such as developing relationships of trust and…

Background: This article examines the development of early childhood development (ECD) home-visiting services in South Africa. Aim: To examine the factors that could support the success of home-visiting programmes as well as to explore the experiences of bachelor's-level home visitors rendering such services. Setting: This study was conducted in…

Teachers working in under-resourced contexts struggle to provide psychosocial support to learners. In this article, we focus on 10 teacher participants' reflections of how a transformative action research process enhanced their collective capacity for initiating sustainable learner support. A linked participatory action learning and action…

Key policies on teacher development emphasise the necessity of a teaching force that is competent to apply learner-centred practices. Barriers to learning, like poverty, present huge classroom challenges and have implications for in-service programmes intended to develop learner-centred practices. This study endeavoured to determine factors that…

This article reports on the effect of a community-based social support programme offered through a government-linked centre that works on the resilience of children of families from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Purposive sampling was used to select four parents (mothers) and nine school-going children (N = 13) who all benefit from and attend a…

Since the advent of democracy in 1994, access to quality and equitable education still remains a challenge in the Gauteng province. As an intervention to improve access and quality of learning in all schools, especially township schools, the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) declared schools across Quintiles 1 to 3 throughout the province to…

This article outlines the results of a qualitative study, which investigated the adult non-formal education and education (NFET) centre linkages with external role-players in providing post-training support for the employment of graduates. The concern that informed this article is that adults who face long-term unemployment remain unemployed after…

Background: Dialogic book-sharing is an interactive form of shared reading. It has been shown in high income countries (HICs) to be of significant benefit to child cognitive development. Evidence for such benefit in low and middle income countries (LMICs) is scarce, although a feasibility study of our own produced encouraging findings.…

Non-formal adult education and training (NFET) in South Africa is instrumental in breaking the high level of poverty and decreasing the social inequality the country continues to face as a post-apartheid democracy. Public and private NFET centres in South Africa aim to meet the training needs of adults who have been deprived of formal education…

The low rates of child literacy in South Africa are cause for considerable concern. Research from the developed world shows that parental sharing of picture books with infants and young children is beneficial for child language and cognitive development, as well as literacy skills. We conducted a pilot study to examine whether such benefits might…

This article reports on a reading intervention project undertaken in a high poverty primary school in Gauteng where reading levels in both the home language, Northern Sotho, and in English were very low. Some of the factors associated with school effectiveness (SE) are first examined and thereafter the nature of the reading intervention programme…

The new public sector community development workers (CDWs) programme was established in 2004 following ineffective service delivery through chronic under-spending on annual budgets in post-apartheid South Africa. CDWs receive training in learnerships within the National Skills Development Strategy to ensure access to and spending of local…