- Title: Two girls' lockdown learning underlines South Africa's educational divide
- Date: 4th June 2020
- Summary: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA (FILE - OCTOBER 18, 2018) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF SCHOOL LEARNERS OUTSIDE SCHOOL PREMISES CARS DRIVING
- Embargoed: 18th June 2020 12:02
- Keywords: Corona virus Covid-19 South African education system curfew schools lockdown unequal access to education virtual learning
- Location: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
- City: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
- Country: South Africa
- Topics: Education,Society/Social Issues
- Reuters ID: LVA002CGYGTP3
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: When Zinzi Lerefolo was sent home from her fee-paying girls' school in a leafy Johannesburg suburb in March, her family set up a virtual classroom that allowed her to continue studying uninterrupted.
The 13-year-old has access to the internet and her school has the means to provide online teaching during the coronavirus lockdown.
"It wasn't really an issue, it was more like they were really prepared so kind of knew it was coming so they sent us work before we actually started," she told Reuters, taking a break in her lounge with a view of the pool outside, before positioning her phone for a virtual art class.
For Phuti Ngoetjana, 14, it has been a different story. Her state school has no resources to make the leap to cyberspace, and even if it did her family could not afford the
data to access lessons in the one-room brick home in the east Johannesburg township of Tembisa where she lives.
"Since the lockdown, I feel like we didn't, I didn't learn much because I was not connected online, I don't have any online activities that I'm learning with," she said.
The contrast between the black girls' education during the pandemic has played out the world over. In South Africa, it is especially acute and sensitive. Although elite schools that were open only to white South Africans under apartheid are now integrated, most black pupils
can't afford them, and the country has struggled to bridge huge inequalities 26 years after the fall of white minority rule.
The country remains one of the world's most economically divided, with the top 10% of households owning 71% of the wealth, according to World Bank data from 2018.
As schools prepare to partially re-open from Monday (June 8), the educational gap risks widening, and government ministers, teachers' unions and parents are worried.
Those institutions built under apartheid in predominantly black townships and rural areas are the least well equipped to cope with the pandemic, with poor internet access, crowded classrooms and sparse amenities.
"COVID-19 has actually exposed some of the divide that we have in our country," said Lerefolo's father, Simon, now a church pastor who escaped the townships to a top university in 1994 and who was able to pay for an elite education for his daughter.
"It's taking us back to thinking, what have we done, not blaming all of it to the government but what have we done as a society, even some of us who are privileged to actually reduce this divide that we have."
Schools were supposed to have resumed this week, but some teachers and unions argued it was not safe to do so until the government did more to ensure employees were safe from COVID-19.
Government officials have countered that a generation of school children risks losing a key part of their education, and the future opportunities it brings, even though the virus affects them far less than the sick and elderly.
South Africa's education system has left millions of children without basic skills.
Literacy tests carried out by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement in 2016 found that 78% of South African pupils could not read for meaning by the
age of 9 or 10, compared with 64% in Morocco and 4% in the United States.
Of 100 students who start school, 40-50 will pass their final high school exam, and only 14 will go to university, Amnesty International said in a report in February.
Under lockdown, these inequalities are being enlarged by disparities in digital access.
International Telecommunication Union data shows just 22% of households have a computer in South Africa, while 60% have internet access.
Since the end of apartheid, the governing African National Congress has brought electricity and piped water to millions and slashed poverty by a third.
Zinzi Lerefolo has used the dining room in her spacious family home to attend classes held via videolink and do homework handed out using social media.
However, about 35 km (20 miles) away, Ngoetjana sat in her parents' single room - where they rest, eat, wash clothes and dishes - trying to study. Noise from traffic and people talking outside
was ceaseless.
"The teachers didn't give us homework or questions that we need to do during this time or period but if I don't understand something, I just leave it like that and wait for a hope that maybe schools will reopen and ask my teacher," she said.
Most black South Africans depend on cash-strapped free schools like hers. Under the former apartheid system, they were designed to provide only limited education: their role was to prepare black children for lower-paid jobs and keep them subservient to whites.
But the all-race democracy introduced in 1994 was supposed to change that.
Whether Ngoetjana's school resumes on Monday, when classes are meant to restart for the crucial last years of primary and secondary school, is unclear.
Teachers' unions are adamant they will not go back until all schools are equipped with masks, hand washing facilities and sanitiser.
Unlike Lerefolo, the fortunes of Ngoetjana's father, Julius, have not changed much since apartheid ended. He said in some ways his daughter's school reminded him of his: 60 kids jammed in a classroom making learning challenging. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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