Parents, associations concerned over adverse consequences of school closures

When COVID-19 began to spread in the country in March 2020, forcing the country into a nationwide lockdown, no one knew how long it would last or the impact it would have on children’s learning.

Since then only a handful of the more than 4, 6 million learners have accessed continuous learning online, leaving a majority of school going children without access to education.

In Zimbabwe and most of the world, face to face learning was suspended for the greater parts of 2020 and 2021 and experts say these disruptions have fuelled school drop outs and are likely to affect the country’s literacy rate.

During    recent nationwide outreach campaigns targeting 72 districts it emerged that some boys of school going age had resorted to illegal gold panning while girls had fallen pregnant during the prolonged school breaks.

The introduction of online lessons to help learners catch up left millions of underprivileged children with no access to education as data costs and lack of smart phones and gadgets limited their ability to access lessons.

In an interview with the Zimbabwe Teachers Association Chief Executive Officer Dr Sifiso Ndlovu, he said the disruptions did not only affect learners but teachers as well who have never been trained to deliver lessons using online platforms.

He said the Zimbabwe Government should consider continuing with face to face physical learning so that a majority of learners in rural areas can have a chance to catch up on their studies.

“Virtual learning has not shown any progress and our teachers are not able to all deliver in a manner that is likely to lead to the achievement we look forward to. Delaying the opening of schools is likely to affect us since we were looking forward to having smooth physical learning as opposed to the previous years,” said Dr Ndlovu.

“The decision to continue closing may be noble but we need to review our statistics from last year and consider strategies that will enable us to teach physically without putting learners, teachers and community members at risk of Covid-19.”

He said virtual learning had affected learning in areas where teachers and learners had no access to information and communication technologies.

“We need to review and reconsider living alongside the virus especially when we consider how many learners were affected during the past term. This should help us plan properly so that children continue physical learning,” he added.

According to Dr Ndlovu, the drop in pass rates was proof enough that online lessons were not working but detrimental to the welfare and performance of learners.

Rural Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe president Obert Masaraure blames the government for the continued onslaught on education.

“Coronavirus has forced the government to focus more on examination classes at the expense of infant classes. Learners who were due for Early Child Development in 2020 completely missed out and again they failed to learn in 2021 when they were due for Grade One,” he said.

“If this persists, literacy will drastically drop. Learners are also dropping out of school, with almost a million since the first COVID-19 lockdown,” Masaraure added.

Local psychologist Jacqueline Nkomo said the extended school calendar disruptions have caused confusion and discouragement on learners.

“Grades are going to be low for these learners because for starters online learning is not for every child, some have the resources but cannot follow through or concentrate fully compared to face to face. Many homes are not conducive for online learning and learners are likely to be easily distracted while studying,” she said.

“Online lessons do not capture individual weaknesses of learners which teachers usually notice doing physical learning and this means understanding is not guaranteed.  As for learners in rural areas, this set up is likely to discourage them from being in school as they cannot afford the data and have no network coverage to connect to the online system.”

One of the affected parents said her two children have not been in school for the past two years.

“My eldest daughter started Form One in 2020 and could not attend school after the first lockdown was announced. When schools opened briefly she went for two weeks before they closed as we were encouraged to ensure they access radio lessons so that they catch up with their peers who have access to the internet and smart gadgets,” she said.

“The year 2021 was worse, she didn’t have teachers to take her through subjects as some were in isolation and the 2 or 3 days set up for attending school made things worse. Now she is supposed to start on a new syllabus to prepare for her O level exams but I cannot confidently say she got the foundation during the past two years.”