The pandemic derailed schooling. Let’s get it back on track
With the school year ending and pupils across the country receiving their academic reports, many parents are rightly concerned about the continuing impact the Covid pandemic is having on their children’s education. The school closures and timetable disruptions necessary to slow the spread of the virus decimated learning outcomes.
South Africa’s results from the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) announced earlier this year were dismal. While 78% of our country’s grade 4 pupils could not read for meaning in 2016, that figure has now risen to 81%. Our annual Western Cape systemic test results revealed a similar drop in mathematics and language scores across grades 3, 6 and 9, indicating that a decade of progress in improving learning outcomes had effectively been reversed.
But we are not willing to accept that they have been irreparably damaged by the pandemic and that it will take another decade to get back to where we were before the lockdowns began. We simply cannot afford to wait that long, so earlier this year we announced a huge R1.2bn, three-year #BackOnTrack programme to reverse learning losses, which is the largest recovery programme in the country.
In the foundation phase, 310,000 pupils and 2,600 teachers have received extra resources and support to improve reading and numeracy in the early grades. In addition, 333 schools have been selected to receive targeted support based on the systemic test results.
Grade 4, 7, 8, 10 and 12 pupils are being supported through extra classes every second Saturday, taught by tutors rather than their own teachers. The tutors are all current and retired teachers, or subject experts, and bring a fresh approach to the content. These tutors also taught classes during the winter and spring school holidays. Teachers in grades 4, 7 and 8 are participating in the 1+9 intervention, where intermediate and senior phase teachers are taken out of class every 10 days for dedicated professional support. And a just-in-time (JIT) teacher training intervention is designed for grade 10 and 12 teachers from identified schools to receive subject-specific training on the content to be taught in the weeks ahead.
So far, an average of nearly 11,000 pupils have been in class on any given Saturday, and more than 2,700 teachers have participated in extra training in these grades. The response we have received from schools, teachers and pupils has been most rewarding.
Pupils at the grade 10 mathematics camp during the midyear holiday spoke of the new understanding they had gained of the subject, and of how much they look forward to the extra classes during the school term. In my engagements with teachers at their training sessions, they spoke of the value of a fresh perspective on teaching the content in the curriculum, and how they were taking new methods back to their schools and sharing these with their colleagues.
The national department, too, has been receptive to the programme, and we look forward to sharing our experience and results from implementing #BackOnTrack with our colleagues across the country. While we will have to wait for the full analysis of results next year, and specifically the systemic test results, we do already have positive indications.
In an analysis of grade 7 results in some of our participating schools, for example, the majority have seen an increase in results from terms two to three, while the others have largely stayed stable. Some of the schools in the sample group have reported an increase of up to 24 percentage points in average mathematics or language results.
This is not to say that we have not had challenges implementing the programme. Like all interventions, school leadership makes the difference in the level of success of the programme.
We will have to make improvements as we go. This is vastly preferable to waiting to design the perfect programme before getting down to business. We must start somewhere.
There was some hesitation when we decided to implement our first learning recovery intervention, which increased the amount of time allocated to reading and mathematics for foundation phase pupils in the third term last year, because it was considered a departure from the national curriculum. This caused some turbulence, but once we presented the data showing an improvement in scores after the intervention, the national department recommended it to all provinces, which moves us forward as a country together.
Unfortunately, we now find ourselves facing a national fiscal emergency, giving rise to a huge R716m blow to our provincial education budget in the form of a partly unfunded wage agreement and cuts to our conditional grants. The cuts made by the National Treasury are in-year and take immediate effect, which is unprecedented.
This has had a devastating effect on our major programmes, and we will have to cut R143.5m from the #BackOnTrack budget this year. This will put an end to our plans to expand the number of, and resources for, pupils in grades 8 and 10, and to roll out the parent programme.
But we won’t give up. Despite the cut, we will continue with this vital programme and we have committed to reaching the same number of pupils with extra classes and teachers with extra training next year. Because the #BackOnTrack programme is not just about learning outcomes.
It is about demonstrating that a government is willing to adopt new programmes based on sound expert advice, and to do so at scale. It is about proving that with the political will and allocation of funding we can improve learning outcomes and give our children a better future. And it is about showing our pupils that they matter, and giving them hope.
In a country that is battling poverty, corruption, service delivery failure and load-shedding, what could be more important than this?
We will have to make improvements as we go. This is vastly preferable to waiting to design the perfect programme before getting down to business. We must start somewhere