Education
With regard to the closure of schools due to the Covid-19 outbreak:
- Whether her Department has taken measures to ensure continued learner-support programmes, especially for Grade 12 learners; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details;
- whether nutrition support will be provided to learners from disadvantaged families who relied on the school nutrition programme for daily meals; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details?
- Please see attached Part 1, 2, 3 and 4 in a series I have released on Quality Learning @ home.
Part 1 addresses some of the digital resources that we have made available to learners on our e-portal. This includes free resources. A published list of free resources has also been attached
Part 2 addresses the various resources made available for Grade 12 learners.
Part 3 addresses reading at home and how parents, no matter what their circumstance, can support learners in developing their reading skills. Activities have been advised, as well as, a guide on how to assess whether your child’s reading levels are improving. This has been published in all three languages of the Western Cape.
Part 4 addresses the Curriculum and a new tool which has been developed to guide teachers, parents and learners on all subjects covered each week in the curriculum and includes resources, activities, images, stories, lesson plans and video lessons, when available.
The tool has currently been developed for the Foundation Phase and will be updated weekly. The other grades will be included as well and are being finalised.
I will soon address the issue of free broadcasted lessons to learners, as well as teacher training in distance learning using a variety of channels in upcoming parts to her series: Quality Learning @ home.
Currently, broadcasted lessons are on DSTV and SABC, with radio broadcasts on SABC, RSG and Umhlobo Wenene.
The Telematics programme is also underway. Videos and materials are available on the Telematics website and are also uploaded onto the e-portal.
In FET (Grade 10 to 12), guidelines per subject has been provided to guide learners and parents to use the extended holiday time optimally.
A revision programme was designed for Grade 12 learners in selected subjects. Similarly, a revision programme will be designed for all subjects, Grades 10 to 12, for Terms 2 and 3.
(2) The emergency school feeding programme started on the 8th of April 2020. R18 million was allocated towards the feeding by the Provincial Treasury in order to provide meals for learners.
We have been overwhelmed by the support we have received from the vast majority of our schools. Staff and volunteers have gone the extra mile to provide meals.
A standard operating procedure was provided to all schools, which included safety guidelines.
These include:
- Having sufficient adult supervision available to make sure learners are following all the safety protocols
- Ensuring an orderly queuing system, preferably in a staggered manner to reduce the number of learners arriving at the same time
- Learners must bring their own food containers from home, which are not touched by the staff/volunteers
- Ensuring that learners remain at least 1.5m apart from one another
- Providing soap and water for learners to wash their hands, or hand sanitizer
- Learners will not eat at school – they will go directly to school, collect their meals, and go directly home.
