The South African government has delayed the reopening of schools until the 15 February 2021 and plan to revise the school calendar to recover lost time.
This decision comes due to the increase in new variant COVID-19 cases in the country.
The South African Department for Basic Education has imposed learning initiatives to support students through this time.
Elijah Mhlanga, from the Department Basic Education, said COVID has caused a “huge blow to the progress of addressing the inequalities that were brought on by the apartheid regime”.
Learning initiatives include broadcasts on 123 radio stations and 6 television channels.
These broadcasts reach up to 35 million people.
Mr Mhlanga, said:
“The initiative was put in place as an intervention to bring curriculum lessons to households across the country to assist learners as schools remain closed.”
The decision was made in bid to minimise the impact of the Coronavirus on basic education.
Thirteen radio stations of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) broadcast educational content in all official languages.
A further 110 community stations are involved in providing curriculum content on a daily basis.
The radio lessons cover a range of subjects including Maths and English for all grades.
Learning resources were also made available online.
However Mr Mhlanga said this did not have the intended impact.
Mr Mhlanga said the South African Department of Basic Education acknowledged that all these efforts are not perfect.
He said: “However, we needed to put in place measures to close the vacuum that would have existed as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown.
“The impact of COVID-19 will be felt for a long time to come.”
South Africa reported a total of 12,710 Coronavirus new cases on Wednesday 20January 2021.
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