Students have had to adapt to new ways of learning as many learners endured major disruptions within their curriculum such as at-home distractions and changes of schedule leading to students experiencing learning gaps in their education.
The South African educational system has approximately 13-million learners. Though the education system is improving, it is still very fragile and susceptible to shocks. Post-Covid 19, according to UNICEF South Africa lost almost 500 000 learners as students dropped out of school. There was also an estimate of a 60% loss of school contact in 2021 creating a gap for these learners in 2022, which now has to be addressed.
It has been further estimated that the loss of learning re-shaped the education system in a negative way as the gaps were widened not only in acquiring knowledge but in critical skills, communication, and motivation the education system backward by five years and learning losses were higher in mathematics than reading.
Closing the gap
The learning loss should not be underestimated and though there is not a clear playbook on how learning recovery should happen, South Africa should consider increasing the instruction through edutech platforms as well as revising and shortening the curriculum.
Ronald Zambasa, the operations director of EvoMe, a multi-educational platform, believes that to enhance learning, children have to be in stimulating environments that not only focus on language development but also on basic computational skills because it is important that learners can demonstrate proficiency in writing, computation and reading.
“The EvoMe platform can be part of schools curriculum as it is a learning ecosystem that facilitates lifelong industry aligned skill services from as young as 3-year-olds as it identifies one’s talent meaning a child or a teenager is not limited to a specific traditional educational system. So basically, a child will not feel the pressure of being top 10 of the class, but rather will focus on their identified talent which helps them be innovative and grow,” says Zambasa.
To bridge the gap created by Covid-19, schools should no longer focus on only the traditional educational system, as there are different ways for one to develop and improve their critical thinking skills, according to Zambasa.
Among other things, curricula should shift their focus towards talent management, coaching, and mentoring. This will also be only effective if every child is kept in class rather than rotation learning, which decreases the learning capability of the child.
“Gaps are often widened by rotation learning, and a child falls behind so schools may have to consider edutech, helping unleash children’s natural talent as a supplement to their current.”