A schooling dilemma
After the president announced last week that mainstream schools would be closed for a month to reduce the risk of Covid-19 infections, one private tutor alone in Mossel Bay received 35 enquiries from parents, worried about their children’s academic year.
The parents were debating whether to save the academic year or scrap it and use it for remedial purposes for their children.
“For the remainder of this year, with your mainstream schools, there is a big worry.
“It is said the academic year will end in April next year, so both 2020 and 2021 are under threat. More and more parents will seek out external exams that give their children an international qualification,” the tutor noted.
A significant number of tutor centres and cottage schools have started in Mossel Bay over the past few years, catering for children with varying requirements.
Private tuition
Mossel Bay mother of three, Annelize Shaw, said: “Government is forcing about 30% of children - whose parents can pay for it - into private tuition. For 20 years the government didn’t favour private schooling. Now it is going against what it has said all those years. It is also forcing mainstream schools to rethink funding. The poor are being squashed.”
Shaw pointed out that the problem was not only with schools. Her daughter, in first year nursing at Potchefstroom University, was sitting at home because the university had closed and Shaw and her husband had lost all the money they had paid for their daughter’s room at her residence.
Many have argued that children in poor communities are not practising social distancing or wearing masks anyway and are more at risk of catching Covid-19 in the streets than at school.
An Asla Park resident, who did not wish to be named, complained: “Learners are now in the streets, drinking homemade alcohol and robbing people.”
A KwaNonqaba parent, who remained anonymous for fear of reprisals, said: “Children do not obey Covid-19 rules and are not safe. Learners are in the streets without masks. They play together without observing social distance.
‘Unsupervised’
“Young children, who would usually be in school, are now left at home unsupervised because parents have to work. Some learners are starving without getting the food they usually get from school.
“Some parents are not educated enough to home school their children and so much of the academic year has been wasted already.”
On the other hand, in communities where families are indeed following the lockdown rules, children are being affected psychologically.
Shaw complained: “Children do not know how to interact normally anymore.”
One mother complained on a WhatsApp parents’ group that her daughter, aged seven, was showing signs of depression during the lockdown and she was advised to organise video call play dates for her child to retain some form of normalcy during the lockdown.
A parent, Denise Streicher, who is part of another home schooling WhatsApp group, said: “I took my daughter out of school a year ago because I felt the children were under too much pressure there.”
Streicher’s daughter Jesse, aged nine and in Grade 3, is now on the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum.
All religions
A few years back there was a wave of Christian parents turning to ACE because they did not want their children learning about all religions, which is part of the syllabus at state schools.
Now, many parents are against the new sex education module which will be taught at schools.
Streicher said: “What they are planning to bring into the curriculum is concerning. Besides this, children learn a lot in the state school curriculum that they do not use after school.” She said there were many who said home schooled children were too isolated, but argued: “I want to tell parents that is not the case. You can have play dates and as home schoolers we do outings together with the children. Many children don’t fit in at state schools. I would prefer my child to be emotionally strong rather than have the brain power of Einstein, but be emotionally week.
“We were taught mainstream schooling was the norm and the way you had to go, but when you home school, it opens your eyes to so much more.”