{"id":485669,"date":"2021-04-23T12:30:47","date_gmt":"2021-04-23T10:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=485669"},"modified":"2021-04-23T12:30:47","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T10:30:47","slug":"new-lockdown-rules-for-schools-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/485669\/new-lockdown-rules-for-schools-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"New lockdown rules for schools in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Basic Education minister Angie Motshekga gazetted updated lockdown regulations for South African schools, further relaxing the rules around sports and extra-mural activities.<\/p>\n<p>The gazette, which was published on Friday (23 April), states that the following activities are permitted and may resume, <strong>without any spectators<\/strong>, subject to compliance with hygiene and safety measures to prevent and combat the spread of Covid-19,<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All school sport matches, which includes contact and non-contact sport;<\/li>\n<li>Physical education;<\/li>\n<li>Extracurricular activities; and<\/li>\n<li>Inter-school, district, provincial and national school sport tournaments.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The gazette also increases the number of persons which are allowed to attend events at schools.<\/p>\n<p>This includes participants, referees, adjudicators, technical officials, volunteers, medical team, media or broadcasting team, and stadium workers.<\/p>\n<p>The new limit is a maximum of 250 persons, for indoor venues and a maximum of 500 persons, for outdoor venues.<\/p>\n<p>If the venue is too small to hold 250 persons indoors or 500 persons outdoors, observing a distance of at least one and a half metres from each other, then not more than 50% of the capacity of the venue may be used &#8211; subject to strict adherence to all health protocols and social distancing measures.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Schools-23-Apr.pdf\" width=\"100%\" height=\"600\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Other changes expected\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Department of Basic Education is also expected to make a decision in the coming week in the return of learners to schools on a full-time basis.<\/p>\n<p>A departmental meeting this week showed that the pandemic has had a greater than expected impact on the country\u2019s learners, with experts week warning that schools would only catch up on the curriculum in 2030.<\/p>\n<p>A large number of South Africa\u2019s primary schools currently work on a rotational system, where pupils only come in on certain days of the week, in an effort to reduce crowding.<\/p>\n<p>On the days that learners don\u2019t physically go to school, they typically learn online from home. However, education experts have warned that this system is not sustainable in the long term.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt this workshop there were two presentations about the learning losses. Experts are telling us that the impact is dire, it is more than we expected,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExperts are telling us that we will only recover in 2030. In fact, we will never catch up and we have to reconstruct the whole curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added that the recovery plan for schools will have to be reworked to ensure that more time is not lost. This will include the possible full-time return of learners.<\/p>\n<p>However, he said that this decision would only be made after consultations with unions and would be guided by with health and safety procedures.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/485537\/south-africa-to-use-private-companies-to-bring-in-and-distribute-covid-19-vaccines\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">South Africa to use private companies to bring in and distribute Covid-19 vaccines<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Basic Education minister Angie Motshekga gazetted updated lockdown regulations for South African schools, further relaxing the rules around sports and extra-mural activities.<\/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-485669","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\/485669","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=485669"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485701,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485669\/revisions\/485701"}],"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=485669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}