Cape Town - Education experts and organisations have called for proper teacher consultations and proper addressing of overcrowding as Western Cape Education Department (WCED) prepares to launch its #BackOnTrack campaign in the coming weeks.
The MEC for education, David Maynier, has confirmed that WCED will be launching a recovery programme that seeks to remedy the impacts of Covid-19 in Western Cape schools.
Maynier said the impacts of this programme were drawn from the World Bank of Education that made recommendations as to how to reverse the learning losses that have occurred due to the pandemic.
“We will be launching an unprecedented #BackOnTrack programme with a budget of R399 million this year, targeted specifically to the learners, teachers and parents in schools where our systemic test results indicate that the need is greatest.
“The programme is designed to build on the existing interventions we have undertaken, which have already been implemented and are already demonstrating good results, especially in the Foundation Phase,” he said.
Deputy dean of research in the faculty of education at UWC, Rouaan Maarman, said interventions of the recovery campaign should have an element of proper consultation with teachers and school principals, as they are the people who know what has happened and what is currently happening to learning losses.
“It will be a mistake to just impose a programme on teachers without their voices being heard. Secondly, there must be innovative ways to address the issues at hand, so it should not only be about 'more' working hours but about quality teaching and learning. The basics of subjects need priority, and the most life worthy content need to be covered per subject,” he said.
Maarman said that the pandemic exposed inequality in the education system as the privileged schools ascribed to online teaching methods, while disadvantaged schools took the normal time table approach.
“Some learners, depending on which school they attended, may have more social challenges than others. Also, depending on the community they are from exposed them to varying social ills, while others dropped out of school altogether. I believe that the lockdown schooling exposed and reaffirmed what we already knew about the challenges of our youth and schools,” he said.
Maynier said special emphasis would be placed on mathematics and languages to grades 4, 7, 8, and 10 in 200 schools, closing the content gaps from previous grades.
“And we plan to implement a specific mathematics intervention for 4 000 grade 10 learners at 140 schools, based on the grade 9 mathematics performance in last year’s systemic tests. The grade 10 intervention will include addressing content gaps from previous grades, structured tutoring, residential #BackOnTrack camps, and providing each of these learners with a package of resources they need to succeed,” he said.
Maarman said the decision to prioritise mathematics and languages was important but called for subjects like life orientation to be a priority in the programme.
“Subjects like life orientation are now imperative to socially and psychologically stimulate learners to deal with the last three years as well as reminding teachers, parents and learners what is important for their futures,” he said.
Katherine Sutherland, a legal researcher at Equal Education Law Centre, said the WCED’s recovery plan is a welcomed intervention after the devastating learning losses brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. She said it is also promising that there is an acknowledgement that any effective intervention needs to be a holistic one.
Sutherland said the programme should look into the way in which school overcrowding is measured and subsequently, how school resources are distributed, as she believes the current way of measuring is flawed.
“Provincial Education Departments (PEDs) use a simplistic understanding of school overcrowding and school capacity that largely only look at the number of learners in a class using school-wide averages instead of actual class sizes, the context that learners learn in and the relation between the number of learners and other school resources like bathrooms and libraries.
“Without a comprehensive way of measuring school overcrowding and school capacity, even if provinces had sufficient resources, it is unlikely that they would know where to direct those resources to best ensure effective learning and teaching environments.
Sutherland said that in the absence of norms and standards for school capacity or a uniform way of measuring school overcrowding, it is important when deciding which schools to add more classrooms to, and that the WCED understand overcrowding holistically and ensure that as more classrooms and more learners are added to a school, other resources increase proportionately.
“We also hope to see the expansion of not only under-resourced schools but well-resourced former model-C schools. In addition, the WCED calls on the private sector to increase its funding in public schools through collaboration and donor-funded schools. This is extremely concerning as these schools undermine the principles of democratic governance and accountability by giving donors and often profit-driven private entities significant control over public schools.
“Increased funding in the basic education sector is vital, but in the absence of the regulation of private sector involvement in public schools, there is the very real danger that increased financing may be at the expense of the promotion and fulfilment of the equitable access to free and quality basic education,” she said.