Despite the recent easing of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, rotational timetables remain in place in many Cape Winelands schools.
At Stellenzicht Secondary School (SSS), a quintile three school, a rotational timetable has been in place since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, whereby grade eights, nines and tens attend one day of school a week, and grade elevens two days of school a week. This was according to Vivian Hearne, acting principal of the school.
“You can imagine – you need to cover the curriculum […], but you will only see your grade eights and your grade nines four times a month,” said Hearne.
Klapmuts Primary School (KPS), a quintile one school, is also operating under a rotational timetable, according to Juju Mbikwana, chairperson of the Klapmuts Development Forum.
Juju Mbikwana, the chairperson of the Klapmuts Development Forum, explains the difficulties that Klapmuts Primary School (KPS) has faced in bringing all students back to school full time under the Covid-19 lockdown. Currently, KPS is operating under a rotational timetable for students. AUDIO: Tamsin Metelerkamp
“My children also go [to KPS]. It is still a challenge for [the school] to accommodate each and every one,” said Mbikwana.
The problem of space, when it comes to Covid-19 physical distancing requirements, is not unique to Klapmuts or the Cape Winelands, according to Kerry Mauchline, spokesperson to Debbie Schäfer, Western Cape provincial minister of education.
“[T]he majority of our province’s schools have had to continue with rotational timetabling to comply with national directions,” said Mauchline. “It is a concern for us as we are seeing the impact of only attending school on certain days on learning. However, until the national directions are changed, this arrangement will unfortunately have to continue.”
Impact on learning
It is important to engage with learners in order to teach effectively, according to Hearne. He added that he has also seen a rise in the dropout rate of SSS learners during the lockdown period.
“We, at present, have 630 learners, and we started off at the beginning of the year with 680,” said Hearne. “I think fear is one of the biggest factors. And parents kept their children away for a very long time because of the uncertain times that you were living in.”
A graph showing data collected for the Wave 5 National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, The impact of COVID-19 in education – more than a year of disruption, released on 8 July. The graph shows the average ⃰adult-reported household weekly school attendance rates for the Western Cape in 2018, July 2020, November 2020 and April 2021. In the Western Cape, the 95% average attendance rate for April 2021 was 2% lower than in 2018, and 4% lower than in November 2020. ⃰The data in this study was provided by the adult guardians within households, rather than the children themselves. GRAPH: Tamsin Metelerkamp
Factors such as large class sizes and a lack of online resources have meant that students from quintile one, two and three schools, in informal urban spaces, are currently most impacted by a lack of school attendance under lockdown, according to Dr Debra Shepherd, a senior lecturer in the department of economics at Stellenbosch University.
“One day not in school is actually equivalent to one-and-a-half days of learning. So for every day a child misses school, they’re roughly missing out on one-and-a-half days of cognitive skill or development,” said Shepherd, who was a researcher for the Wave 5 National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, released on 8 July.
Dr Debra Shepherd, a senior lecturer in the department of economics at Stellenbosch University and a researcher behind the Wave 5 National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, explains how the current lack of school attendance under the Covid-19 lockdown – either due to learners choosing to miss school or being unable to attend school full time under rotational timetables – is impacting learning quality. AUDIO: Tamsin Metelerkamp
The path ahead
Boosting the morale of learners through motivational speakers and alternative methods of learning is one way of improving the current learning quality and attendance rates in schools, according to Hearne.
An intervention that can allow for the retention of learners across grades is the “identification of learners who would be more suited to a technical and vocational stream than an academic stream”, according to Mauchline.
There are plans to introduce vocational agricultural courses at SSS in 2022, to better engage learners, according to Hearne.
A factor that impacted the attendance of students at Stellenzicht Secondary School (SSS), even before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, was students’ struggles with academic classes and their perception that such courses would not serve them well after school, according to Vivian Hearne (above), acting principal of the school. Through the introduction of vocational courses in agricultural management and technology in 2022, Hearne aims to improve class attendance and learning quality, he added. PHOTO: Tamsin Metelerkamp