Johannesburg - Despite vociferous opposition from some sectors, over 2 million more learners will on Monday join their grade 7 and 12 counterparts as the Department of Basic Education continues with its phased reopening of schools.
However, what raised eyebrows was the announcement by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga that some Grade R learners would also return to schools when it was initially announced that they may not.
Justifying the department’s decision to add three more grades, Motshekga said while Covid-19 infections are on the rise in the country, they are a drop in the ocean for the basic education sector.
She based her sentiments on data collected since June 8 when schools reopened for Grade 7 and 12 pupils. Motshekga said the data showed that only 4% of schools had Covid-19 infections and had to close down while more than 20 000 schools were not adversely affected.
She also said that through this period, only 11 teachers and three learners had lost their lives due to Covid-19. According to Motshekga, most of the infections were due to people failing to comply with health, safety and social distancing protocols.
She said what was currently happening in communities (rate of infections) was also manifesting in schools.
“Since our Grade 7 and 12 learners returned to school on June 8, 968 of the 25 762 schools were closed and reopened.
"This is almost 4% of the total number of public and independent schools in our country. Even the survey conducted by teacher unions, confirms that between 4% an 8% of schools had to close due to infrastructure challenges or the inability of the schools to fully comply with the Covid-19 protocols,” she said.
Motshekga further added that since the return of the Grade 7 and 12 pupils, 2 740 teachers out of a total number of 440 000 teachers were infected by the virus.
“This is equivalent to less than 1% of the country's teacher population being affected by the virus. This implies that 0.01% of our learners were detected infected by the virus.
"So, the highest number of infections, as I have said, mirrors the infections nationally. The majority of these infections were in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Gauteng,” she added.
In an attempt to justify the government’s decision to reopen schools while Covid-19 cases are on the rise, Motshekga said the country will, in future, pay a heavy price should learners continue to stay at home.
“On the first issue, it should be emphasised that temporary closure of the less than 4% of schools after the reopening in June, is much better than a system-wide closure over the same and even longer period of time. This would come at an unacceptable cost of lost learning and school feeding for an entire generation of children, with a consequent worsening of social and economic inequalities for years to come,” she said.
To bolster her argument, she quoted a survey which found that some learners, as they sit at home, have become vulnerable to hunger and forgetting what they have learnt.
“Preliminary results from the first wave of data collection, indicate an alarming increase in child hunger since the national lockdown began.
"The survey is also suggesting a significant increase in child care responsibilities, with an increased burden falling most heavily on women,” she said.
While most of the provincial education MECs told the public that their provinces are ready to accept the learners on Monday, Godwin Khosa, the chief executive of the National Education Collaboration Trust expressed concerns regarding the state of four provinces. The provinces are KZN, Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga.
“We expressed concerns to the DBE (Department of Basic Education) on the basis of the data that we collected on Wednesday about the pressure of returning all the targeted grades.
"We also expressed concerns about the state of readiness in five provinces. We alerted DBE to pay attention to a number of aspects which were pulling down from the risk profile,” Khosa said.
More learners are expected to return to school next month.
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