Following the successful “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child” community engagement programme, which included over 40 community meetings and school visits across the Gauteng Province, Minister of Basic Education, Ms Siviwe Gwarube, Gauteng Education MEC, Mr Lebogang Maile and his senior management team from the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE), met on 28 July 2026.
 
Discussions took place on the challenges identified through these community consultations and school visits as part of ongoing efforts to ensure that practical interventions are implemented to deliver measurable outcomes and lasting improvements for learners across the province. Deliberations on conceptualising different models of blended financing for the province also followed. It was agreed that a fiscally constrained environment calls for creativity, and making the funds stretch further to build more schools, feed and transport more learners.
 
Minister Gwarube also met with various other corporate partners. “The DBE is working on an important programme that targets hunger for children between 0-5-year-old in Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres. Child malnutrition and stunting is an absolute indictment. It affects children’s ability to learn in any meaningful way. There is an important role to play here. That is why our partnerships in the nutrition space are key,” she said.
 

In stressing the theme of Strong Foundations for Strong Futures, the Minister again said that reading is the gateway to learning, whilst learning is the gateway to dignity, opportunity and economic participation: “If we want to change the trajectory of South Africa, we must start where inequality begins, in the early years of learning. We have strategically reorientated the basic education system to strengthen the foundations of learning, with early reading at the centre of our reform agenda. Through teacher training, provision of books, mobilisation of parents, and support to early literacy instruction, the foundation strengthens reading where it matters most, in classrooms and communities”.