2020 SCHOOL RECOVERY PLAN FOR POST COVID 19 LOCKDOWN. 1 1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND In December of 2019 the world was invaded by a deadly virus (Coronavirus) leading to quick deaths in East Asia, in particular in China, in the city of Wuhan. The speed at which people contracted the disease and died elicited drastic and radical measures from the Chinese government of shutting down the city in an attempt to stop the spread of this disease to other cities in China and eventually to the rest of the world. On 5 March 2020 South Africa registered its first corona virus case. Thereafter, the rate of infection escalated rapidly that necessitated President Cyril Ramaphosa to announced drastic measures on 16 March 2020, to curb the spread of the virus that included exercising healthy living practices as well as social distancing. Schools were seen as high risk centres and had the potential of exposing both learners and teachers to opportunities of spreading the virus. The President’s announcement included the closure of schools from Wednesday, 18 March 2020 and that they would remain closed until after the Easter weekend to reopen on the 14 April 2020 to protect the learners from contracting the virus. Initially this closure resulted in 9 teaching days being lost. On Monday, 23 March 2020 the President announced the National Lockdown starting midnight of 26 March 2020 for a period of 21 days ending 17 April 2020. Another announcement was made on 9 April 2020 by the President, that extended the lockdown to a further 14 days, which ended on 30 April 2020. The country is still under National Lockdown which is now dropped to a Level 4 Lockdown, based on the Risk Adjusted Strategy (RAS), which implies that there are relaxation of certain limitations which will allow the economy to be kick-started. Based on the spread of the infection, which is the basis of the Risk Adjusted Strategy, the lockdown restrictions will be lifted across the national, provincial, and district level. 2 COVID-19 is spreading across the world at an alarming speed. This is an unprecedented crisis and calls for unprecedented measures. It is affecting the global economy, hitting manufacturing and service sectors alike, with huge impact on vulnerable individuals and households who are already bordering poverty and may widen inequality gaps and even entrench people in poverty. COVID-19 has significantly threatened people’s lives and the world’s economic outlook. It requires economic and educational responses that are extremely innovative with out of the box solutions, but these short-term solutions should always be in line with the President’s call on the nation to prioritize people over economic recovery. The national lockdown, which has extended into its sixth week, has resulted in the loss of teaching and assessment time which will have a serious effect on curriculum coverage unless measures are put in place to circumvent the loss of teaching time. As we consider solutions for the education sector, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the enemy we are fighting is the corona virus. It is the virus that determines when we can normalize schooling and we will constantly have to make plans bearing this fact in mind. We will not be able to concretise plans that risks the lives and safety of our teachers and learners, therefore much as we develop plans going forward, the well- being and safety of the education sector will remain the highest priority for the country. 2. THE MANAGEMENT OF THE SPREAD OF COVID19 IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE FLATTENING OF THE CURVE Countries across the world including South Africa, have taken drastic measures to curb the spread of the virus and reduce the extent to which infections are increasing. Some of these measures included promotion of healthy hygienic practices, social distancing, prohibiting gatherings in every sphere of the life of people that are more than 100 in number, 3 closing of boarders and prohibiting non-citizens to enter the country, screening and testing of South Africans coming back home from other parts of the world, promoting self-isolation and quarantining of those who present with symptoms. To further manage the spread of Covid19 and the flattening of the curve and to comply with regulations and guidelines developed by the World Health Organisation, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, and the Department of Health (DoH), which are directed at reducing the impact of the pandemic on the schooling system the Basic Education Sector plans to do the following: Develop a robust Curriculum Recovery Plan and plans to manage Examinations and Related Activities. Develop Standard Operating Procedures, to guide National Department, Provincial Departments, Districts and schools on the management of the spread of the infection. Developing strategies for Deconcentrating and promoting Social Distancing in Schools and Offices Promotion and embarking on Sanitation and ensuring safe and Hygienic school environments. Creation of Substitute Posts for Teaching and Non-Teaching Staff in the event a need arises Provision of Psychosocial Support Service for Learners and Staff Some of the biggest challenges the sector has to deal with is compliance with the 1.5m distancing within the 350 000 classrooms in our schools which will require innovative ways of managing the return of learners back to school, provision of masks and sanitisers to all schools, screening but not testing of all teaching, non-teaching staff as well as all learners in our schools. Provision of water to schools in the remote and underserviced areas, will also be another challenge. The Department of Basic Education will take direction from the Department of Health (DoH) regarding the re- opening of schools and the model to be followed. The Department of Basic Education will not in any way expose its learners and teachers to any element of risk. 4 In order to address food insecurity and vulnerability at this time the Department of Social Development (DSD) will make food parcels available to vulnerable families through the national network of food centres operated by the DSD. Direct school feeding has been terminated to comply with the regulations of the lockdown and to ensure the safety of both learners, teachers and food handlers. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) will work with key Psychosocial Support (PSS) resources within the sector to support learners and teachers during this time. The DBE will ensure that simple, age appropriate information is made accessible to all children and that boys and girls are aware of the risks of sexual abuse and exploitation at home, school and in the community. It is planned that existing call centres and online facilities will be geared to provide additional support to learners, teachers and parents at this time. The reopening of schools will be implemented in line with the provisions of the Risk Adjusted Strategy (RAS) that pronounces on the management of the lifting of restrictions in the country, based on five different risk levels. The risk levels are as follows: Level 5: High virus spread, and/or low health system’s readiness to care for those requiring health care. Level 4: Moderate to High virus spread, moderate health system’s readiness to care for those requiring health care. Level 3: Moderate virus spread, moderate health system readiness to care for those requiring health care. Level 2: Moderate virus spread with high health system readiness to care for those requiring health care. Level 1: Low virus spread, high health system readiness to care for those requiring health care. Areas at Level 5 are to be in total Lockdown and areas under Level 1 to return back to normality under strict regulations. With schools being located in all provinces, and districts as well as cities, townships and villages, there will be some schools that are in total lockdown while others 5 would be in areas that have returned to normality. Compliance with RAS in the sector places responsibility on management at all levels to ensure that before schools re-opening the mandatory preconditions are met to protect lives of staff as well as learners and to curb any new infections as a result of reopening of schools. 3. THE PROBLEM STATEMENT With the closure of schools, face to face, teaching and learning cannot take place, and learners entering Grade R are expected to engage meaningfully with the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) over a thirteen year period, and the loss of any time over this thirteen year continuum must be addressed. It is imperative, given the sequential ordering of the curriculum, that learners complete the requirements of the curriculum of the current grade before they can be considered to be ready for the next grade. Any deficits in the current grade will have a compounding effect in the next grade and in subsequent grades. Therefore, the core requirements of the current grade must be completed to ensure that leaners are ready for the next grade. Learning cannot be concertinaed or microwaved in the schooling context given the building block nature of teaching and learning. Therefore, in recovering lost time, every effort must be made to make-up the lost time by extending the number of school days or adding additional hours to the school day. If the time cannot be recovered then, an identification of the core content must that must be covered will be made, by the subject specialists. This identification must be done judiciously to ensure that the content that is excluded does not contribute to the foundational knowledge of the next grade. The other major challenge is that it may be too early to define the lifespan of the COVID-19 pandemic.