By ROD AMNER
All school learners have been ordered to return to daily attendance for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic started.
On Monday night, Cabinet announced that the rotational system had been ended with immediate effect. The regulatory provision for social distancing of one metre for learners in schools has also been removed.
However, at least one local school is not ready.
Mary Waters High School principal Alphonso Michaels reported they were “definitely not ready for the return of the full complement”.
“All our Grade 11s and 12s have been back at school since day 1. Our issue is with Grades 8-10. We overpopulated our classes for these grades because they came in groups, and this was still manageable.”
“Our two Grade 10 Afrikaans classes are both on 60, which means we will have to create another class for them.”
Mary Waters has an enrolment of 1150 in 29 classes. Since the school has only 29 educators, all are class teachers, including the principal. “With the full complement, we will have 30 class groups with 29 educators,” Michaels said.
“We need at least four more educators to make the non-rotational timetable work. There is an average of 46 learners in Grade 8, 45 in Grade 9 and 43 in Grade 10.”
However, several schools have already suspended the rotational timetable and are teaching at full complement. Some examples are: Victoria Girls, Good Shepherd, DD Siwisa, Tantyi Primary, NV Cewu, George Jacques, Fikizolo.
Ntaba Maria and St Mary’s are still on the rotational timetable until the new government regulations are gazetted.
The ministers of health and basic education will, in the coming days, issue directives on this new approach, said Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele in a statement. The country, however, remains on adjusted Level 1.
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