The basic education department has agreed with a study’s findings that SA’s primary schoolchildren who attended no-fee schools last year learned 50-75% less than what they normally do.
The National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (Nids-Cram), released on Wednesday, is run by researchers from the universities of Stellenbosch, Cape Town and the Witwatersrand.
The finding of the latest report was based on the results of two independent studies — the Early Grade Reading Study (EGRS) II in Mpumalanga and Funda Wande Evaluation in Eastern Cape.
A large majority of teachers who tested positive for Covid-19 got it at events, not schools.
— Elijah Mhlanga, department of education spokesperson
According to the Nids-Cram report, the EGRS II study involved children in a sample of 130 no-fee schools in Mpumalanga who were assessed on reading outcomes in their home language (HL) and English as first additional language (Efal) from 2017 to 2020.
The EGRS II study found that Grade 4s in 2020 experienced overall learning losses of 79% in HL and 52% in Efal.
“These figures indicate that pupils learned roughly a quarter of what they could have learnt for HL, and only half of what they could have learnt for Efal,” the Nids-Cram report stated.
Similar learning losses were found at the Grade 2 level for home language in the Funda Wande Evaluation study in the Eastern Cape involving 57 no-fee schools.
“Depending on the task assessed, learning losses across the 57 no-fee schools ranged from 53% to 68% for Grade 2.”
Basic education department spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said the report confirmed the negative impact of Covid-19 on schooling.
“The department has been consistent in saying that the long-term effects of the coronavirus would be devastating.”
He said the Covid-19 infections were happening and continued to take place in communities, especially where people gathered for different purposes such as funerals.
“A large majority of teachers who tested positive for Covid-19 got it at events, not schools. That position has been articulated clearly at various stages,” he said.
According to the Nids-Cram report, 43% of children received school meals in February and March.
“This is slightly lower than the reported levels of receipt in November/December 2020 (49%). The leading explanation for low school meal receipt is rotational timetables where only half the children attend on any one day in most no-fee schools,” the report stated.
Another significant finding was that teacher deaths during Covid-19 were not related to the times when schools reopened or closed; instead, they followed national mortality trends.
The report stated the World Health Organisation and other international bodies had increasingly supported emerging evidence that school access and attendance restrictions were not an effective nonpharmaceutical intervention.
“The present findings support this view.”
An analysis of the teacher payroll data estimated that 1,678 teachers out of 401,327 died from Covid-19-related complications between March 2020 and February this year.
The report stated teachers at secondary schools were not at higher risk of Covid-19 transmission. “While there have been questions about older pupils being more likely to transmit the virus, this new analysis also shows that teachers in secondary schools are not at higher risk than those in primary schools, supporting the notion that primary and secondary schools are not the primary sites of infection.”
Meanwhile, the study also found a high percentage of people in SA who identified Afrikaans as their home language were hesitant to get a Covid-19 vaccination.
Overall, the study found that 71% of adults in the country would be willing to get a vaccination. SA’s national vaccine rollout starts on Monday.
“Our estimate is the highest estimate of vaccine intention for adults in SA to date. [About] 42% of Afrikaans home language respondents were vaccine-hesitant, much higher than the national average ... and significantly higher than seven of the 11 language groups,” it found.
“The lowest hesitancy rates were found among Tshivenda, 18%, and isiNdebele, 19%, respondents, as well as isiXhosa, isiZulu and Sepedi respondents, all 25%. While many of these language groups have overlapping confidence intervals [that is their estimates are not statistically significantly different], the difference between Sesotho, 35%, and five language groups is also significant.”
People most at risk of Covid-19 – those with chronic conditions and the elderly – were more willing than the general population to accept a vaccine. The youth (18-25) and those who trust social media as an information source were more likely to be vaccine-hesitant.
Among the 29% of respondents who were vaccine-hesitant, the three leading reasons for their hesitancy were that they were worried about the side effects (31%); did not believe it was effective (21%); or did not trust vaccines in general (18%).
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