Schools have taken a hit, and it’s going to get worse Motshekga
● Many more teaching days expected to be lost in weeks to come, basic education minister warns
Dozens of teaching days have already been lost to Covid-19 and more are going to be lost in the weeks to come — and the full impact of this is not yet known.
This is according to basic education minister Angie Motshekga, who was updating SA on the situation in schools as the coronavirus continues on a rapid march through the country.
She was speaking in the wake of a decision last week that pupils — known as the “second cohort ”— who were meant to return to school from Monday would no longer do so.
The department gazetted regulations on June 29 that would allow the following grades to return on July 6:
● Grades R, 1, 2, 3, 6, 10 and 11;
● Schools of skill: years 2 and 3, schools for pupils with severe intellectual disabilities (SID): grades R, 1, 2, 3 and final year (occupational);
● Schools with pupils with severe and profound intellectual disabilities (LSPID): years 1-3; and
● Schools with autistic pupils: junior group (below 13 years) and final year (18 years and above).
However, instead only grades 6 and 11 pupils would be back in the classroom, with the provinces given the freedom to decide whether grade R would go back.
Motshekga said the Council of Education Ministers had met last week and “considered a number of variables”, including the rising Covid-19 infections across SA, and a decision had been made to further stagger the planned return to school.
“What is critically important is that all grade R and pregrade R learners who have already returned to schools must remain in schools; and those schools that meet the health, safety and social distancing protocols can reopen for their grade R and pre-grade R learners,” Motshekga said.
She stressed that all those who were meant to return today must do so “not later than the end of July 2020”.
But when they did go back, it would be a far from normal situation.
“We are still constrained by Covid-19-related challenges, that we cannot afford to have all learners returning to school at once.
“When the grade 7 and 12 learners returned to school on June 8, we did not have challenges related to spacing and school furniture.
“However, our monitoring of schools has indicated that many schools may have spacing challenges once more grades return to school.
“Almost all schools are going to have to adopt innovative approaches with respect to timetabling and classroom management.”
Motshekga admitted that exactly how badly the year had been affected was not yet known. She said she was “painfully aware” that a lot of days had been lost, and more would be lost in the weeks to come.
“The international and local evidence around the typical impact of losing school time, due to disasters, strikes, etc, suggests strongly that learning losses may well be greater than what is suggested by actual days lost.
“This is in large part because disruptions result in learners forgetting some of what was previously learnt,” she said.
But perhaps of greater concern was how being away from class had affected individual children.
“It takes a village to bring up children; therefore we implore our communities to support our children at home.”
She said that since grade 7 and 12 schools went back a month ago, 968 of the 25,762 that opened had been forced to close and then reopen.
“Again, since the return of the grade 7 and 12 learners on June 8, 2,740 teachers, of the total number of about 440,000 teachers, were infected by the virus.
“This is equivalent to less than 1% of the entire teacher population in our country.
“In the same period, 1,260 learners were infected by the virus.
“This implies that 0.01% of our learners were infected by the virus.
“We, unfortunately, lost the lives of 11 teachers and four non-teaching staff in the Eastern Cape to the virus, as well as three learners who are reported to have succumbed to Covid-19.” —