3,300 teachers have died from Covid-19, says Motshekga

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has revealed that the sector has lost 3,300 teachers to Covid-19 in the public service as at 31 December 2021.

According to Motshekga, this represents almost 1% of the sector’s workforce, she revealed during the basic education adjusted budget vote speech for the 2022/23 financial year on Thursday, where she outlined the impact Covid-19 has had on the sector.

“One of the traumas suffered by children has been to lose their parents, care-givers, and teachers to Covid-19. The DBE’s ongoing monitoring through the PERSAL’s data, shows that as on 31 December 2021, around 3,300 teachers in just the public service, had succumbed to Covid-19 since 2020.  This almost represents one per cent of of our workforce.  We continue to pay tribute to the educators, as well as our education executive and management leaders, who lost their lives to Covid-19,” said Motshekga.

The department of basic education has been allocated a budget of R29.6 billion for this financial year, an increase of 4.9% from the 2021/22 overall allocation. 

The sector created 596,000 job opportunities for young people through the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative (PYEI), with a total budget allocation of R13 billion, since 1 of December 2020.

“This contributed significantly to the government’s role of alleviating poverty, redressing the past imbalances, protecting livelihoods, especially among the most vulnerable people, especially among the youth, women and the people with disabilities,” said Motshekga.

Reading in the early grades

According to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), prior to Covid-19 there was progress in the reading abilities of children. The study revealed that reading in Grade 4 improved substantially between 2006 and 2016. Between 2011 and 2016, South Africa saw the second-fastest improvement among all PIRLS participating countries, after Morocco.

By the end of 2021, the average Grade 4 pupil could read as well as the average Grade 3 pupil before the pandemic – a loss of one year of learning. 

“Put differently, we slid backwards in terms of our PIRLS progress by a few years. These losses are similar to what has been witnessed around the world,” said Motshekga.

The sector does not expect that the PIRLS 2021 results will show any improvements.

“If we do see improvements, we would welcome such, but we have to be realistic,” said Motshekga.

She further said reports claiming 500,000 children did not return to school were false.

“The evidence we now have, and researchers are in agreement on this, is that there was no massive worsening of the dropout patterns, compared to what we saw before the pandemic.  There have been some problems, such as Grades R to 1 enrolment, being around 25,000 lower than expected in 2021, due parents delaying first enrolment of their children.  But, compared to the initial half-a-million estimate, this is a relatively small and a manageable problem.

“In fact, participation rates in schooling, rose during the pandemic.  According to recently released enrolment data, there has been substantial growth in enrolments in our schools, beginning already before the pandemic, in 2019; and this growth did not slow down during the pandemic.  In actual fact, enrolments increased by half-a-million between 2019 and 2021.  This was mainly due to less learners dropping out.”

Compiled by Vhahangwele Nemakonde