THE CONVERSATION: Read and weep – Covid lockdowns leave South Africa’s pupils far behind in maths and language

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Conservative estimates from a study in the Western Cape are that pupils have fallen 95% to 106% of a school year behind earlier cohorts in maths skills. Language learning is not much better.

Learning to read, write, count and calculate forms the basis for all other learning in school and beyond. Children start to learn these basic skills in the first three years of schooling. Their learning continues throughout their time in school as the content becomes more complex.

The size and range of the sample means the results are likely to generally hold for South Africa as a whole and for pupils in all grades. 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.

Declines in vocabulary were particularly acute at the Grade 6 level. This could partly be attributed to a lack of exposure to print material and vocabulary instruction. It would be worse for those who had changed to a different language of instruction in Grade 4. Learning losses in “Number, Operations and Relationships” were apparent in grades 6 and 9 as well, and evidently led to poor performance in other areas, most notably in “Measurement”, where basic number knowledge is applied.

Source: Education Headlines (educationheadlines.net)

 

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