Poorer pupils lose more learning time
Most SA school children will lose half their learning time over 2020 and richer children will lose less than poorer ones, a survey released on Wednesday has found. It also found that the return to school did not lead to an increase in infection rates, with less than 2% of schools reporting more than two Covid-19 cases, despite fears of parents and teachers.
Most schoolchildren in SA will lose half their learning time this year and richer children will lose less than poorer ones, a survey has found.
The National Income Dynamics Study — Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, carried out by 30 researchers across six universities, also found that the return to school did not lead to an increase in infection rates, with less than 2% of schools reporting more than two Covid-19 cases, despite the fears of parents and teachers.
While grade 12 and grade 7 pupils, for whom school opened earlier, lost 17% of schools days, children in grades 1 to 5 and 8 to 10, who had the least time at school, lost about 40% of school days. As the ratio of teaching time to school is 1:2, researchers say that 50% of teaching time has been lost for most grades.
However, schools were able to apply to education authorities to open additional grades under the lockdown. Many wealthier suburban schools did so and reached attendance of 50% for all grades; schools servicing the poorest 80% of the population had rates of attendance for other grades of 15% to 20%. Wealthy children were thus twice as likely to attend school when their grade was “closed ” than in no-fee schools.
Monitoring by the department of basic education of 611 schools showed that 95% of schools in the sample reported zero confirmed cases of Covid19 among pupils, while almost 90% of schools reported zero cases among teachers.
There were 17 schools that reported a single case of Covid19 among pupils, and 35 schools that reported a single case among teachers.
Only three schools reported more than two pupil cases, and eight schools reported more than two teacher cases.
“The encouraging thing about these statistics is that there does not appear to be any schools with mass spread of the coronavirus. If schools were significantly contributing to the spread of the virus, one might expect to see some schools with large numbers of infections,” the survey says.
The findings support the approach of keeping schools open and dealing with cases as they arise.
The survey included a paper on the early childhood development sector, which has been devastated by the lockdown. There has been a huge decline in attendance at early childhood development centres, which are mostly privately owned and funded by fees paid by parents with some receiving a minimal amount of support from the state. While 47% of children under seven attended preschool or crèche in 2018, in July and August that figure dropped to 13%.
The reasons for the dramatic decline include the inability of centres to afford the necessary health and safety measures needed to be implemented due to the loss of income by parents, who are taking care of children within their households.