EDITORIAL | Schools must go the distance before they reach full capacity

Estimates suggest that most primary schoolchildren lost between 70% to a full year of learning since March last year. It is the same as saying the average grade 3 child in June 2021 has the same learning outcomes as the average grade 2 child in June 2019. In May 2021 the total number of seven- to 17-year-olds who had not attended school once this year was between 650,342 and 753,371.

These worrying statistics are contained in the latest National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS)-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (CRAM). It is against this backdrop that the move to bring back all primary school pupils and those attending special-needs schools on a full-time basis must be roundly applauded and welcomed.

Education experts agree that having pupils attend class on alternate days and even alternate weeks has been a disaster. Basic education minister Angie Motshekga has also expressed the strong desire to “curtail” rotational classes in primary schools “so that we can consolidate and give them the necessary foundation because if things go wrong, then it’s going to be very difficult to recover in later grades”. She acknowledged that “the damage happens in primary school and if we can’t save that, we have a big problem”.

But the drive to bring back all primary school pupils should not be done at all costs and it should certainly not compromise Covid safety regulations. It should be remembered that rotational classes were implemented in the first place because schools could not accommodate all pupils as they had to be at least 1.5m apart from each other in the classroom.

However, despite the social distancing requirement being reduced from 1.5m to one metre last Friday, some schools, especially in Gauteng, have been flagrantly ignoring the one-metre rule by catering for up to 48 pupils in some class. This is because principals were told by a Gauteng education official during a virtual meeting on July 22 not to “strictly enforce” the one-metre rule.

Advice by the ministerial advisory committee (MAC) to the basic education department that “full capacity schooling should still be commenced” even if the one-metre social distancing requirement was not possible, has also not helped matters. But some provincial education departments, most notably North West, Western Cape and Northern Cape, have admitted that with the one-metre rule in place, a large number of their primary schools will not be able to return to full capacity. Their honesty and transparency is admirable. But the worrying concern is that many schools will flout the one-metre rule citing the advice given at the Gauteng principals’ meeting.

The country’s largest teacher union, the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), has told members that whatever was communicated in the principals’ meeting was a violation of the World Health Organisation’s guidelines on social distancing. It advised members to report violations of the one-metre rule to its Sadtu offices, the department of employment and labour or the SA Human Rights Commission. Sadtu needs a pat on the back for that.

Other teacher unions share similar views and have warned that the return of all pupils must be accompanied by the hiring of more teachers and the provision of additional classrooms as well as adequate water and sanitation.

While “the biggest prize is to get primary schools getting daily tuition”, as Motshekga puts it, schools should desist from flouting the one-metre physical distancing rule. There should be a clear and unambiguous message to schools from both basic education and its provincial counterparts that the one-metre rule is sacrosanct and must be rigidly followed.