1. The importance of the program

• Early childhood development (pre-primary education) is world wide acknowledged as a cornerstone for later achievement in education.
• A severe shortage of qualified teachers will make it impossible for the Department of Education to reach the 2010- targets for preschool education.
• Apart for the huge number of private pre-primary schools without qualified teachers, there is about 80 000 registered daycare groups (with about 12 – 15 preschoolers per group) in South Africa. The majority of these functions without a quality preschool education program.

2. The nature of the program

eCindi was developed to provide a high-level technology-based program in an affordable and sustainable manner to preschool children. It was proven through research that the program supports a dramatically improvement in academic achievement, enables quality education in the home language and that it can, according to the principle of economy-of-scale, be delivered much cheaper than present programs in early childhood development. The eCindi program is implemented at registered private pre-primary schools and daycare centres around the country and it complies fully with the requirements National Curriculum Statements for Grade R and the standard norms included in the Childrens’ Act (2007). As soon as the regulations of the Act are finalized for implementation, the eCindi program will be presented to provincial Departments of Social Development for accreditation and registration.

The characteristics of the program further include to following:

• The program uses modern and affordable DBD-technology. The daily lessons are video-taped by quality teachers. The teachers at the pre-primary schools/creches or the daycarers at the daycare centres support the learners to complete the program.
• The program is delivered per private pre-primary school/creche or daycare group. The program provides 4 lessons per day, five days a week and 32 weeks per year, organized in 16 themes. Education Expert provides the DBD’s (1 per week), DBD for the teacher/daycarer (1 per 2 weeks), work book (1 per theme/ 2weeks), 2 packets of crayons and colour pencils as well as a scissor per year.
• The private pre-primary school teacher or daycarer provides the minimum facilities, TV and DVD-player as well as the required physical facilities for the ECD education.
• Quality assurance: Final assessments of the children will be done by qualified personnel of Education Expert or accredited individuals. Different people in the community such as churches will be allocated to support the caretakers with their new responsibility.