SCHOOLS, some hardest hit by riots and looting in the country’s first devastating civil unrest since the 1990s changing of the old guard to democracy, will reopen in the final week of July according to the rotational timetable basis in line with the Covid-19 pandemic protocols, education officials said today.
In Pinetown, seven schools were looted and vandalized including one set alight and razed to the ground, and 32 schools altogether were attacked, vandalized and looted in KwaZulu-Natal since the start of the runaway unrest last Friday. However, schools in Westville are being protected by community activists and neighbourhood watch groups, vigilantes and volunteers who set up concrete and wood blockades next to the Westville Girls High Schools and Westville Senior Primary School. Amidst the brutal unrest, the Department of Basic Education has gazette the re-opening of all schools for Grade R to matric learners on 26 July. The rescheduled dates were published in the Government Gazette today. ‘’All learners from Grade R to 12 will return to school on the daily or weekly rotational timetable model,’’ Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said. However, the principal, teachers, school management team and non-teaching staff will return to school four days earlier on 22 July to ‘’prepare for the return of learners to school on 26 July.’’
Meanwhile, the government does not prescribe opening dates for private and independent schools, but the gazette states that this sector schools must remain closed for contact classes until 26 July. In the timetable change, the minister stated that the DBE had originally planned for the full return of students to daily attendance schedules, as opposed to the current daily or weekly rotational timetable model. ‘’For much of the last year, most students in South Africa are learning in a ‘shift system’, with a large amount of learning and coursework still expected to be done at home in an effort to increase social distancing,’’ the DBE said. ‘’While this has helped reduce Covid-19 infections, it has also had a notable impact on teaching and learning time, with concerns that learners may be almost a year behind on the curriculum.’’
The minister further stated that primary schools (learners in Grades R to 7) must return to the traditional and daily attendance timetabling model from 2 August, and also applicable to schools for learners with special education needs across all grades, she said. Mothsekga said that principals, school management teams, and non-teaching staff in primary schools are expected to utilise the week commencing on the re-opening date to finalise the preparations for the return to the traditional and daily attendance timetabling model on 2 August. On the question of lost teaching time, the minister said projections indicates that between March 2020 and June 2021, most primary school learners had lost 70%-100% (a full year) of learning relative to the 2019 cohort, data from the latest National Income Dynamics Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) showed.
The NIDS-CRAM is a study conducted by a national consortium of 30 social science researchers from local universities, as well as groups like the Human Sciences Research Council and the Department of Education. Researchers said the survey is a comprehensive and nationally representative survey of how the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown impacted South African households, with a particular focus on income and employment: in 93 days of schooling have occurred between 15 February 2021 and 30 June 2021: ‘’Assuming contact learning for 50% of this time, best estimates suggest that most primary school children have lost between 70% to a full year of learning since March 2020. To put this in perspective, this is the same as saying that the average Grade 3 child in June 2021 would have the same learning outcomes as the average Grade 2 child in June 2019.’’ “However, the international evidence points towards additional effects of ‘forgetting’ or regression that could hinder current learning, particularly if teaching occurs as if the content of the previous year’s curriculum has been mastered, let alone learnt. Therefore, cumulative learning losses could exceed a full year of learning as learners move through the school system.’’
- MARLAN PADAYACHEE, our freelance senior correspondent and group columnist, is monitoring the crisis of the looting, arsons, chaos and racial tensions on a 24-hourly basis, and can be reached on: marlan.padayachee@gmail.com
