Most pupils at SA public schools are languishing a year behind where they would have been if it were not for the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new study that lays bare its devastating impact on education.
Government responses to Covid-19 brought schooling to a halt around the world, but the learning losses are particularly worrying for SA because it was performing poorly by international standards even before the pandemic struck.
Despite modest gains in the decade preceding the pandemic, SA was still near the bottom of the league for international tests in maths and reading.
The pandemic’s blow to education, felt most acutely in the poorest schools, is likely to have a long-lasting effect on pupils’ job prospects and hopes of further study.
Schooling in SA has been hugely disrupted during the past two years, with pupils losing an estimated 155 school days in 2020 and 2021, equivalent to three-quarters of a school year.
Schools were closed in March 2020 as part of a stringent lockdown imposed by the government shortly after it
identified SA’s first Covid-19 cases. Schools reopened in June that year, but permitted pupils to attend only every second or third day to comply with social distancing regulations, an approach that ended in February this year.
Using data from the Western Cape education department’s systemic test results for 2019 and 2021, a team of researchers led by University of Stellenbosch economist Servaas van der Berg found the learning losses were most acute in maths, which saw performance plummet in all the assessed grades. The average grade 3 score fell from 59.5% to 50.7% between 2019 and 2021, while the average score for grade 6 fell from 55.7% to 47.3% and the average grade 9 score fell from 37.7% to 31.5%.
These figures differ slightly from the Western Cape education department’s analysis, released earlier this year, as the researchers focused on schools and questions that were the same in both years.
The study is the largest of its kind to date. It included almost 80,000 Western Cape public school pupils and is broadly applicable to the rest of SA, said the researchers.
They found a substantial increase in the proportion of pupils who failed to achieve a 50% pass mark for maths in all three grades. The change was most stark in grade 6, with the proportion of pupils who failed to reach this benchmark rising from just over a third (36%) in 2019 to more than half (52%).
Average scores for language plunged for all three grades assessed, with the worst decline in grade 6, reflecting the challenge confronting children who transitioned from learning in their home language in the foundation phase to learning in either English or Afrikaans from grade 4 onwards, said Van der Berg.
Pupils in schools that switch the medium of instruction fared particularly badly in language and maths in grades 6 and 9. About a quarter of schools teach children in their home language to the end of grade 3 and then switch to English or Afrikaans.
The average grade 3 language score fell from 42.4% in 2019 to 38.7% in 2021, grade 6 fell from 50.5% to 45%, and grade 9 from 59.1% to 56.2%.
Researchers recommended adjusting the curriculum to allow pupils and teachers to focus on regaining lost ground in maths and language, and spending less time on other subjects.
“Additional time really is needed for these gateway subjects. If learners don’t master them in early grades, their whole schooling is compromised,” said Ursula Hoadley, associate professor of education at UCT.
Extending the school day may not be feasible, but schools could consider trimming the amount of time spent on assessments, homework and projects for other subjects, she said.
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