More changes planned for South Africa’s schools
Basic Education minister Angie Motshekga says that her department will make further changes to the country’s schools as it continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
Motshekga told the SABC that key among these changes will be a review of the social distancing rules in classrooms.
The minister indicated that the current ‘rotation system’, where students alternate days at school, meant that too much learning time was being lost.
Instead, her department is looking at other measures, such as body screens, to get more children into classrooms safely.
“We are looking also at other measures. Other big schools for instance are using body screens not distancing because physical distancing is very expensive for us because it means we have to cut classes in half,” she said.
Motshekga said that schools had to cut out some parts of the curriculum because of the reduced contact time.
To make up for the teaching time lost to the coronavirus lockdown, the department has already trimmed the curriculum nationally. Parts of the 2020 curriculum will be carried over into 2021.
In August, Motshekga said that this curriculum would be covered in subsequent grades over a number of years.
“What we have done for the internal grades is to take parts of the curriculum of 2020 into 2021 so we are going to only teach and assess them on only 70% of the curriculum.
“We are not going to dump the work we missed, we are going to factor it into 2021,” she said at the time.
Having carried over parts of the 2020 curriculum into 2021, the minister said it is unlikely that schools would be able to complete the 2021 curriculum.
“So it is going to be a three-year programme to see if we can claw back what we have lost. Every school is looking at its own situation with the curriculum, and what are some of the available resources.
“What remains for the Grade 12 is that their paper has been set. They are writing a paper that has been set since two years ago. Because the cycle for the paper is 18 months.
“That is why we pushed the exam to December and we are not giving them a break to allow them to finish,” she said.
By pushing back the 2020 Grade 12 examinations to conclude by 15 December, they would have made up the lost time due to the pandemic.
Updated school calendar
The Department of Basic Education published its updated 2021 calendar for South African public schools at the beginning of October.
Schools will reopen later than planned in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, with teachers set to return on 25 January and pupils set to return on 27 January.
“We are fully aware that the country needs the school calendar for effective planning purposes; and we have worked hard to ensure it is done properly; taking into account the disruptions that have occurred in 2020,” said Motshekga.
“We will need to carry over some of the curriculum work into 2021 and we have done our best to accommodate the interests of everybody. But our priority, is the learner.”
The later start to the year is partly due to the later matric examinations which were rescheduled to accommodate the disruptions caused by the pandemic.
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