Pupils are real Covid victims

Looking at everyday life in South Africa, it’s easy to believe that we’re over the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic. People go out, they don’t bother wearing masks in public, business seems to be busy and the highways are packed with cars.

Even our schools seem to be getting back to normal.

But for many pupils and teachers in the basic education sector, that sense of normality returning is, according to experts, anything but the truth. They say we are heading for a Covid-19 crunch, as the real impacts of the months of lockdowns and disruptions because of coronavirus start making themselves apparent.

Teachers are trying to make up the time lost during the hard lockdowns and later restrictions, while at the same time battling with a lack of resources.

In many cases, this means schools must still cope with high numbers in each class, which negates any measure of social distancing and, therefore, forces them to apply rotational learning, where classes split their time between school and working from home.

And, it is no surprise that it is the schools in disadvantaged areas – which tend to have the highest pupil-to-teacher ratios, as well as the lowest access to online learning opportunities among their pupils – which are being hit hardest.

According to a director at the Independent Institute of Education, Felicity Coughlan, mathematics learning is going to be particular hard hit by the upheavals.

Maths learning, she said, “is a cumulative process and missing a step has long term consequences. If you are only at school three days out of five, or every second week, there is no consistency in the learning process”.

Even if the government did have the money, it does not have the extra teachers to throw at the problem. Though they may not have got sick, our children are still Covid-19 victims.