Motshekga says October holidays won’t be cancelled despite more than half of learning time lost in 2020
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Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga says the October school holidays will not be scrapped despite more than half of learning time losses last year. Picture: Masi Losi.
Johannesburg - The October school holidays will not be scrapped, despite more than half of learning time losses last year, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said on Thursday.
Motshekga held a media briefing to spell out the basic education sector’s response to the impact of Covid-19 on schooling.
Motshekga said physical distancing requirements remained a challenge in some schools with the full-time return of primary school learners.
“No one can deny the resurgence of Covid-19 cases in isolated parts of the country, which affect our schools.
For instance, the Phoenix area in the Umlazi District in KwaZulu-Natal and the Motheo District in the Free State are cause for concern. The Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal continue to record high community infections, resulting in the temporary closures of schools,” the minister said.
She added that other than this the system has remained stable and functional despite persisting learning losses attributable to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The minister reiterated that the department was extremely concerned about the learning losses observed with the sector since the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic last year.
“Research indicates that lost school days lead to foregone learning losses. International experience confirms learning losses experienced during pandemics lead to long-term adverse effects, including learners obtaining lower overall educational value and ultimately lower lifetime earnings,” she said.
Motshekga said the department has begun to measure Covid-19-related learning losses by comparing how much children learnt last year with how much they learn in an average school year before that. Professor Martin Gustafsson, a researcher with the Department of
Economics at Stellenbosch University, said that about 80% of a year’s worth of learning was lost last year, amounting to 54% contact time of the school year lost.
“With the disruptions learning does not happen as it did before. There is also forgetting that happens and these disruptions have effects on learners that go beyond what one might think, just looking at the time learners have lost,” Gustafsson said.
About half of the school year has been lost so far this year, he said. “If children are not in contact with teachers, especially children from disadvantaged communities, learning does not happen as it should,” the professor said.
Gustafsson added that the sobering reality was that the sector has reached a point where it’s virtually impossible to fully recover all of the learning losses. “We are almost certainly not going to be able to get back to where we would have been had there not been a pandemic.”
Motshekga said the first step towards addressing learning losses is to prevent further disruptions to school time and prevent other learning losses. The second step is to introduce measures to catch up on the time, as well as the teaching and learning that was lost through the pandemic. She confirmed that following a meeting with the Council of Education Ministers on Friday, the October school holidays would not be scrapped. This follows consultations regarding the already amended school calendar for the 2021 year.
The Star