The coronavirus pandemic has reversed years of steady gains in maths and language skills, according to the latest systemic tests conducted by the Western Cape education department. The results lay bare the devastating results of the government’s response to the virus, which saw huge disruption to face-to-face teaching.
The Western Cape has been administering systemic tests annually since 2002 but did not do so in 2020 due to the pandemic. The results from the 2021 tests, released on Sunday, reveal pupils fared significantly worse than their peers in 2019, with the most acute losses among grade 3 pupils. They scored an average of 38.9% for language in 2021, down from 44.2% in 2019, while their average maths score plunged to 46.7% from 54.5% previously.
A similar trend was seen in grades 6 and 9.
“The 2021 systemic tests provide the clearest, internationally benchmarked and independent analysis of learning losses suffered by the learners in our province. While we are the only province to conduct such tests, it is an indication of what the effects of this pandemic are on learners across SA. Unfortunately, the results are dire,” said Western Cape education MEC Debbie Schäfer in a statement.
“The greatest learning losses can be seen in the foundation p hase. We have always maintained that the loss of contact (face-to-face) teaching time would affect our youngest learners the most as they do not have the same self-discipline, maturity or structure that our older learners would have to cope with rotating timetables and learning at home,” she said.
Education has been hugely disrupted by the pandemic, which prompted the government to close all schools on March 17, less than two weeks after the first case of Covid-19 was identified in SA. When schools reopened several weeks later, most pupils were permitted to return to class only on alternate days to comply with regulations on social distancing. Rotational learning ended in February this year.
Western Cape pupils had fallen up to 70% of a year behind previous cohorts in language and up to 106% of a year behind in maths, said Schäfer.
While the education of younger children was hit particularly hard, older pupils also suffered. The average maths score for pupils in grade 6 was 44.5% in 2021, compared with 48.2% in 2019, while their language score averaged 42.7%, down from 45.6% previously. Grade 9 pupils scored on average 30.5% for maths in 2021, compared with 38.1% in 2019, and scored 48.9% for language in 2019 compared with 51.9% in 2019.
“Ultimately, the most important way to claw back these losses is to ensure that every child is at school every day, that teaching and learning time is maximised, and that every effort is made to promote a learning culture beyond the school. Our administrative data from temporary revised education plans show that between closures and rotating timetables, 155 school days were lost in 2020 and 2021 in our province,” she said.
Schafer said the department is planning to update its learning recovery plans to take account of these results and is looking at ways to incorporate extra time for reading, writing and maths in the foundation phase, which goes up to grade 3.
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