In 2020 and 2021, pupils across South Africa missed at least a quarter of a school year due to Covid-related lockdowns and rotational timetabling. Given these disruptions, how much learning was lost across the schooling system?
A conservative estimate from the results is that pupils have fallen 40% to 70% of a school year behind earlier cohorts in language learning and much more – 95% to 106% of a school year – in maths.. This possibly stems from the more specialised nature of the subject and greater need for it to be formally taught, face to face.
Similarly, maths has its own specialised language and concepts that build progressively over grades. If pupils lose out on basic concepts and skills, their later learning will be compromised as mathematical problems and contexts become more complex.Our study found that the greatest losses on the language test were at the grade 6 level. This is probably linked to pupils being exposed less to the language of teaching and learning in the two previous years.
In “Number, Operations and Relationships”, the most fundamental content area, the average mark for grade 3 pupils dropped from 57% in 2019 to 48% in 2021. Pupils are struggling with routine addition and subtraction problems and simple fractions. They also struggle with simple word sums. In grade 9, the biggest proportion of the curriculum is spent on “Patterns, Functions and Algebra”. Yet average marks for this area dropped below 40% for grade 9 pupils in the 2021 test. Grade 9 pupils are struggling to grasp basic principles of algebraic language.It is clear that schools need to allocate more time for language and mathematics. Where feasible, time allocations for other subjects could be reduced or non-core subjects suspended or integrated into other subjects.
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