School inequalities widen with lockdown limitations

● Grade 8 pupils at Rondebosch Boys’ High in Cape Town are taught history for 90 minutes a week compared to their counterparts at Olievenhoutbosch Secondary in Tshwane, whose lessons are 90 minutes a month.

The grade 8s at Rondebosch, classified as a quintile five or wealthy school, attend class daily in brick-and-mortar classrooms while those at the Gauteng school, who are accommodated in mobile classrooms, come for only four days a month.

These stark differences are set to continue because of rotational teaching at most nofee schools.

High schools cannot bring back all pupils if they can’t comply with a 1.5m social distancing requirement in the classroom, while primary schools have to abide by the 1m rule.

This week primary schools returned to full-time classes amid a storm of protest from teacher unions over basic education minister Angie Motshekga’s proposal to reduce the 1m rule to 0.5m.

Despite Motshekga’s directive calling for the return of all primary schools to full-time classes, the Sunday Times has established that 1,340 out of 2,309 primary schools in total in the Western Cape, the Northern Cape and the North West have opted to continue with rotational teaching because they can’t comply with the 1m rule.

Shaun Simpson, principal of Rondebosch Boys’ High, said that while most schools run with classes of over 40, “we are lucky enough to have the ability to run, in South African terms, relatively small classes of just under 30 learners”.

He added: “With the curriculum and assessment criteria trimmed and changed for Covid, and having run full classes since February, we are in most cases well ahead of the syllabus and our learners will be wellprepared for the end of the academic year.

“Clearly, the gap between well-resourced schools and those under the huge pressures of space, infrastructure and transport has grown disproportionately through the pandemic.

“At our circuit meetings I listen with respect to my colleagues who run schools that are challenged by dire socioeconomic problems and stand in awe of their courage and commitment.”

Margie Kershaw, head of history at Rondebosch, said history was very valuable “in the greater scheme of things as we impress upon our boys the skills of critical thinking, analysis and comparative studies”.

But a senior teacher at Olievenhoutbosch Secondary, who wished not to be identified, said they were not able to cover even 15% of the trimmed curriculum in history in the first term.

“We do what we can and what we cannot do, we pour our frustration on the parents so that they understand where we find ourselves.”

The teacher said that four days a month were not enough to cover the curriculum. Pupils at resourced schools attended for 20 days a month.

He said that the senior phase (grades 8 and 9) was crucial because pupils had to choose the academic stream they wanted to follow in grades 10 to 12.

Olievenhoutbosch Secondary has 40 mobile classrooms, 1,800 pupils and 54 teachers.

“The painful part is that no one wants to underperform, but we don’t want to put some kind of an idea to the kids to say: ‘No, even when you don’t perform, we understand.’”

A teacher at St John’s College in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape said: “The coverage of the syllabus is a challenge for teachers as they don’t know how to cover it.”

The school is bulging at the seams with 2,028 pupils.

The 400 grade 8 pupils attend school on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

A teacher at Ratshepo High School in Hammanskraal outside Pretoria said their grade 8s attended class for five days in a 10day cycle.

“The syllabus cannot be adequately covered in the short time. The longer learners stay at home, the quicker they forget what they were taught.”

Jonathan Jansen, distinguished professor in the faculty of education at Stellenbosch University, said that while lockdown learning in general benefits middle-class pupils, “staggered classes is a response to the unequal infrastructures in the pandemic and simply adds to the already embedded inequalities that pandemic teaching has revealed”.

Professor Labby Ramrathan, an education expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, agreed that rotational teaching was disadvantaging pupils.

“It creates unintended outcomes to schooling on a continuous basis,” he said.

The recently released National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey revealed that since March last year as much as a year of learning may have been lost by learners in grades 1 to 9.

It found that between 650,000 and 750,000 children aged seven to 17 were not attending school by May this year.

Clearly, the gap has grown disproportionately Shaun Simpson Rondebosch Boys’ High principal