DA welcomes schools reopening, calls for scrapping of state of disaster

The DA in Gauteng has welcomed cabinet’s decision to scrap rotational schooling under lockdown alert level 1, but criticised the continued national state of disaster. 

The presidency announced the return of full-time schooling on a daily basis and scrapped the 1m social distancing requirement for pupils.

DA basic education shadow minister Baxolile Nodada said government needs to adopt a normalised approach to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic by ending the state of disaster to allow it to focus on unemployment and recovering schooling time lost at the height of the pandemic, lockdowns and rotational teaching and learning. 

Last month co-operative governance and traditional affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma extended the national state of disaster to February 15. It was introduced on March 15 2020 in response to the pandemic. 

Nodada said the party will withdraw its complaint to the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) after the new regulations have been formalised. 

“The regulations necessitating rotational schooling in poor schools have severely impacted curriculum coverage, pupil dropouts, learner pregnancies, learning outcome and the wellbeing of both poor schoolchildren and their parents. About 90% of all schoolchildren have been affected,” said Nodada.

The DA said reopening, tracing school dropouts and making up for lost teaching and learning time should be high on the list of priorities for the department. 

“Work with educational experts to urgently develop and implement a plan to recover the immense learning losses of the past two years. The department must clearly communicate its plans to address lost learning time,” said the party. 

TimesLIVE ran a poll asking readers whether they support calls to end the state of disaster.

Most (64.11%) said it should be scrapped because “things are looking up”, 27% said SA had a long way to go before it is back to normal, and 9% said they were not affected as they didn’t adhere to lockdown regulations.