The current lockdown presents a huge problem to rural-based and township students, but it is an opportunity to put into practice our pillars as the South African Students Congress (SASCO) and make renewal and repositioning of the gallant student’s movement pragmatically. The frustration of SASCO activists, the extension of lockdown had a further negative impact on the 2020 academic period, especially to the rural areas’ and township students.
Normal conditions of teaching and learning – with no pandemic rampaging the learning and teaching environments – are characterized by access to the physical infrastructure and learning materials which make learners, students, teachers and lecturers to have an interest in educational processes and to be effective in the learning and teaching environments. Clearly, the lockdown doesn’t only impact on learning as access to the usual physical school infrastructure and learning materials is also a problem to learners who are prospective students in our terrain (post-schooling and training sector) of operation which offers further education and training. Rural and township learners/students had always had problems which are exposed by the lockdown for all to see.
Prof Jonathan Jansen in the article released in Times Select newspaper on the 19 April 2020 argues that “Enter Covid-19, the code name for the disease caused by infection with the novel coronavirus, and that number is likely to fall sharply to about 100 days – if we are lucky. Now imagine you are in the 80% of disadvantaged schools in the country, and that number (100 days) we know from research would then drop dramatically to about 50 days based simply on routines of dysfunction – teacher absenteeism, non-teaching days even when the teachers are present, and just the general lethargy in most of our public schools.”
Our basic education schooling system is the victim of the triple challenges the country seeks to undo. The lockdown has certainly exposed the inequalities in this sector.
Schools in rural areas and township communities lack access to infrastructure and learning materials; sadly, the lockdown forces them to use online learning. Although few, fortunate learners have access to online resources, this proves not to be sufficient during the lockdown period. Therefore, learning doesn’t happen well as it should and there are predictions of poor learning outcomes by some education experts. The Minister of Department of Basic Education has further reported that online learning had about 20% participants of the overall 11 Million learners in South Africa. Now if we are to conduct a study and look into demographics we are probably going to find that majority of this 20% is from the historically and remain advantaged schools and some from the middle-class background.
To mitigate against the impact of the lockdown on poor, rural areas based and township students, SASCO should be guided by the Strategic Perspective on Transformation document, especially the initial three pillars: policy work, campus work and community work. The proper implementation of the aforementioned pillars would help us to also succeed in international work as other activists and organizations elsewhere in the world would learn from our work and adapt our work to their countries’ conditions. Furthermore, this will go a long way in helping us to build an inspiring, big organisation of students.
SASCO must push the current democratic government to not fail in its task of uniting the education sector and standardizing everything by, among other things, eradicating the negative effects of the past like the dent left by Bantu Education Act on old teachers and lecturers. Furthermore, activists at the branch level must help in getting rid of the inability of some teachers and lecturers in the education sector to adapt to modern conditions as part of both campus and community work.
The developing world is transitioning towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) where the developed countries are now found. Therefore, rural and township students are struggling because digitalisation and automation are dominating in this era. This is a golden opportunity for campus work and community work.
Comrades of SASCO with computational knowledge and skills should use their technological expertise to help schoolmates and learners at the basic education level. There is sadly a lack of internet access that disadvantage many poor students. The impact of this lack of access to the internet is huge on education in the learning and teaching environment as many learners cannot study effectively using online platforms and teachers and lecturers cannot teach and assess effectively because of the lack of contact with students and poorly required retraining on the use of online platforms.
We should, however, applaud SASCO for using social media to communicate with members and not neglecting its duty of providing leadership during this time of the lockdown. Also, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and other mainstream media houses should be commended for having accommodated these learners by ensuring that the mainstream media is providing the needed alternative. As part of our activism in the sector, SASCO should ensure that it continues to encourage such activities and its members should be the busiest in responding to the crisis.
Unfortunately, poor leadership; poor management and; lack of accountability and consequences for wrongdoing by either learners or students and teachers or lecturers are also responsible for the impact of the lockdown on poor schools and other educational institutions which are numerically Black-dominated. Therefore, the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and SASCO should respectively not grow tired of fighting for proper school leadership and consequent management at schools and tertiary institutions. Additionally, to avoid the negative impact of the lockdown or any similar situation, the departments responsible for education and training must ensure that there is an improvement of the online infrastructure and building infrastructure at poor schools, colleges and universities. Unfortunately, many education institutions in rural areas and townships lack proper infrastructure after almost three decades of political freedom. SASCO activists would be failing in their revolutionary task if this sad plight of the poor students is neglected because policy work demands that we give a thought to and act on leadership and management, and infrastructural issues in the education sector because they impact on students.
Although there were many facilities that were built and access to electricity for rural and township areas was improved since the democratic era, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of the provision services needed by students in the education and training institutions. Through the implementation of the pillars as stated in the SPOT document, SASCO would be able to address challenges that have been exposed by the lockdown.
The infrastructure at schools and post-schooling sector have been updated for some time; for example, chalkboards are being replaced by whiteboards, mobile phones and tablets. However, some schools and our Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are still behind in integrating modern technology into learning which allows learning and teaching to happen even when a teacher and learners/students are not in the same physical space. Equal Education and our allies, COSAS, for example, have been decrying the focus of the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) focus on curriculum change of education without improving the infrastructure of which internet and online platforms are part. Similarly, SASCO and the progressives in the sector have been making relevant noises, adding that education is supposed to be single coordinated instead of the current fragmentation.
Although the lockdown presents a huge problem to rural and township students, SASCO should see this as an opportunity to be guided by the pillars that are stated in the SPOT document and save the 2020 academic year in the interest of students.
Ngobe Lali is an NWC member of SASCO. He writes in his personal capacity.