The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has said students will be given extra-time to catch up on the hours of maths and reading they lost during the Covid-19 pandemic which had significant impact on both learning and teaching and that will give students in the foundation phase of Grade one to three extra time for the two subjects every week.
The early foundation phases of education are important as this is the period when the brain develops the quickest and has a high capacity for change. However, we cannot overlook the economic inequality in South Africa that affects the ability of parents to provide their children with quality Early Childhood Development (ECD) education.
In April 2021, Reading Eggs released research that indicated at least 78% of children cannot read for meaning which may slow their learning process.
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Grades one to three were the most severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the Systematic tests for 2019 and 2021 Grade three pass rate, Maths dropped by 13.8 percentage points and the pass rate in Language dropped by eight percentage points between 2019 and 2021 in the Western Cape.
Let’s #lead by example and teach our #children the importance of reading and learning! 🙂
— Dr. Amy Cooper Hakim (@AmyCooperHakim) July 31, 2022
The Western Cape Education Department has promised an extra two hours of reading lessons every week with an extra hour of Maths after adjusting the amount of time allocated to Life Skills resulting in an additional sixty learning hours.Â
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What maths researchers learnt from the mistakes made by pupils in ‘top’ South African schools
Picture: Cape Town etc {Gallery}
