This comes after, the Minister of Basic Education released a statement indicating that there are no plans in place to change the current directions made by the department in terms of the Disaster Management Regulations, the one-meter social distance rule being one of those.
According to the data from WCED, approximately 88% of Western Cape primary schools indicated that they could not adhere to the one-metre social distancing rule, whilst only 12% of schools have got full-time attendance.
"We simply cannot go on like this because we do know that it is affecting our education outcomes severely,” said WCED Spokesperson Bronagh Hammond.
The Department aims to reverse the negative implications and there’s a recovery plan at hand already.
Hammond has expressed how the department is hopeful that 2022 would bring about a new era in terms of the pandemic.
Western Cape Education Minister, Debbie Schafer said all teachers have had access to the vaccine, and the number of hospitalisations has been much lower than in previous waves, and the number of deaths even lower.
As there is not much face-to-face time for learners in the foundation phase, this is worrisome as no one knows what happens back at home, Bronagh shared more:
We cannot monitor that at-home learning and many of our learners are also left unattended then the other thing is the safety concerns in terms of those learners that are left unattended because their parents are naturally at work.
