{"id":389041,"date":"2020-04-12T07:40:15","date_gmt":"2020-04-12T05:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=389041"},"modified":"2020-04-12T07:40:15","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T05:40:15","slug":"south-africa-considering-options-to-save-the-school-year-including-scrapping-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/389041\/south-africa-considering-options-to-save-the-school-year-including-scrapping-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa considering options to save the school year &#8211; including scrapping holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Basic Education is considering a number of options to help salvage South Africa&#8217;s school year after the country&#8217;s lockdown was extended by a further two weeks, the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/sunday-times\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sunday Times<\/a><\/strong> reports.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the possibilities being considered include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Earlier starts to the school day;<\/li>\n<li>Evening and weekend classes;<\/li>\n<li>Scrapping \u201cnonessential\u201d parts of the curriculum in certain subjects;<\/li>\n<li>Scrapping the June and September school holidays.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Education minister Angie Motshekga will make the final proposals to a special cabinet meeting scheduled for this week.<\/p>\n<p>A committee is also looking at whether the writing of the June exams by pupils in grades 1-12 should go ahead or be postponed, said departmental spokesperson, Elijah Mhlanga.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The entire school calendar has now shifted, so anything is possible,&#8221;\u00a0 he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The breaks could be shortened. Teachers could teach until the afternoon and maybe learners could go home and come back and lessons could go on into the evening.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>School calendar<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>All of South Africa&#8217;s schools were <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/381947\/south-africa-makes-changes-to-the-school-calendar-as-coronavirus-restrictions-hit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">closed<\/a> <\/strong>on 18 March as part of social distancing measuresd before the lockdown was even announced.<\/p>\n<p>Motshekga had originally said that schools should resume again on <strong>14 April 2020<\/strong> \u2013 unless determined otherwise. This meant that 10 school days would be lost as a result of the school closures.<\/p>\n<p>With South Africa&#8217;s lockdown now extended until the end of April, government and has had to look at other options to save the school year.<\/p>\n<p>One of these measures is the broadcasting of school lessons on the SABC. Programmes <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/media\/388333\/sabc-to-air-school-lessons\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">started<\/a> <\/strong>on Thursday (9 April) and are broadcast across three SABC TV channels and 13 radio stations, with online support.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The series will provide curriculum support lessons to learners in Grades 10, 11 and 12 and Early Childhood Development (ECD),&#8221; the Department of Basic Education said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some of the subjects covered include Maths, Physical Sciences, English First Additional Language, Life Sciences and Accounting. A variety of African languages are also covered under the early childhood development basket,&#8221;\u00a0 it said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/388941\/2028-confirmed-coronavirus-cases-in-south-africa-as-deaths-rise-to-25\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2,028 confirmed coronavirus cases in South Africa, as deaths rise to 25<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Basic Education is considering a number of options to help salvage South Africa&#8217;s school year after the country&#8217;s lockdown was extended by a further two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":239537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-389041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389041"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389071,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389041\/revisions\/389071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}