South Africa’s new 2021 school calendar will come at a big cost

The extended closure of schools in South Africa could have serious long-term ramifications for learners – especially in the earlier grades, says the Department of Education’s director-general Mathanzima Mweli.

In a briefing to parliament on Wednesday (20 January), Mweli said that younger students are particularly at risk of forgetting about skills and knowledge acquired at school if they stop learning for extended periods of time.

“This creates a challenge of ‘accumulated gaps’ as they continue into further grades,” he said.

At the other end of the scale, Mweli said that the department was concerned about the Grade 12 cohort of 2021 which lost significant teaching time as Grade 11 pupils in 2020.

“We have narrowed the curriculum as part of a process known as ‘trimming’ which means that these students were not exposed to the full curriculum. However in matric, they will be examined on the full contents of Grades 10, 11 and 12.

“The further delay of teaching this year places a huge burden on the system as we now not only have to catch up on Grade 12 content but also on the Grade 11 content which was lost last year.”

“It is going to be extremely difficult for the education system to recover the learning losses.”