The pandemic is, hopefully, almost behind us. With the arrival of the first consignment of vaccines and the encouraging drop in the positivity rate to below 10% (9.15%), it is time to plan for a post-Covid-19 world. Reading and listening to the stories of how teachers experienced 2020, it is now possible to extract at least seven hard lessons from pandemic teaching for the future design of instruction and learning in SA.
One, we learnt that teachers are much more effective and pupils much more disciplined when classes are smaller. The decision to halve classes of 40 into two groups of 20 meant teachers could reach weaker pupils more easily and consolidate the teaching of concepts more thoroughly. Until now, small classes have been the reality of the more privileged schools, which could afford to hire extra teachers via fee structures. This must change. The only logic for large classes in ordinary public schools has been financial, not educational. Teachers in poorer schools thrived when pandemic conditions demanded smaller classes for social distancing. Government must take heed of this and revisit teacher-pupil ratios as the pandemic fog lifts.
Two, we learnt that parents are vital partners in their children’s learning. As schools locked down, the most effective tool for poorer schools to keep studying going were not online facilities, but, in limited cases, WhatsApp groups, though more commonly, printed materials collected from schools and sometimes dropped off at homes. Here’s the bad news. Most parents in disadvantaged areas did not have enough formal schooling themselves to teach their children in partnership with teachers. As a result, when schools reopened, alert teachers immediately noticed that despite their efforts to provide printed materials, little happened at home. The policy response is not to drop parents as partners, but to strengthen that potential link in normal times. That is, invest in empowering parents as teacher support from home, much like initiatives such as Math Moms have successfully done to empower mothers to learn mathematics to help their children with after-school learning. It can be done. Lockdown made the role of parents critical for continued learning, but many were not equipped for the task. There needs to be a plan to correct this.
Three, we discovered that much of the curriculum is redundant. The decision by the department of basic education (DBE) to “trim” the curriculum given lost time had a silver lining - we can creatively reduce it to essential content only in every subject. The National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (Caps) does not need to continue to be weighed down with prescriptive content. Experts need to be recruited to fix the overloaded curriculum as a matter of urgency.
Four, we found that children were being over-assessed. The DBE decision to reduce assessments was a boon for teachers. It meant they could do more teaching and less administration. Teachers had time to attend to learning problems rather than do endless marking. The streamlining of assessments can and must be part of the post-Covid reality.
Five, we learnt what teachers already knew - that for many children school is much more than a place of learning. It is, our teacher stories tell, a place of refuge from unstable homes and dangerous communities; a place which gives pupils a degree of food security; and a place where caring adults offer emotional and psychological support in the course of the primary task of teaching. That is why lockdown swallowed up so many children as dropouts who never returned to school. What especially poorer schools with compassionate teachers do routinely as a gift of grace needs to be backed up with more social support resources at school level. For example, a full-time permanent psychologist and social worker at each school. We ignore this pandemic learning at our peril.
Teachers reported a sincere and meaningful effort by officials to help design and conduct assessments, provide teaching alternatives and offer professional development support.
Six, we heard that district officials and curriculum advisers became more meaningfully involved in teaching and learning support at schools. In pre-Covid times officials were sometimes dubbed the DBE’s post-office workers, delivering circulars and instructions to schools and little else. Now teachers reported a sincere and meaningful effort by officials to help design and conduct assessments, provide teaching alternatives and offer professional development support. It is important that in every one of the nine provinces departments ask how officials can better serve and support teachers given what they delivered so well under pandemic conditions.
Seven, we were told that teachers cooperated like never before. Shared teaching became a reality. For example, when only grade seven pupils were allowed back, teachers in other grades shared the teaching of these senior-primary children. It was an opportunity to learn how to teach outside their phase or subject. With joint planning and the sharing of resources, many teachers found the coming together to be new and refreshing. Schools must move to institutionalise such patterns of cooperation, where teachers plan and teach in closer partnership.
Needless to say, the most important lesson learnt is the need to capacitate educational institutions for online and blended learning through investments in technological infrastructure and training in every school. But there are other important insights from pandemic teaching that must not be lost as we return to some semblance of normality. If not, we would have lost a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset our education system for the better.
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