The devastating effects the Covid-19 breakout had on schools across SA inspired NGO National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) to launch the Remote and Digital Learning (RDL) programme.
RDL focuses on matriculants and all other grades – with two separate support programmes, Woza Matric and the Tswelopele campaign, seeking to promote learning continuity, curriculum catch-up, care and support, revision and exam preparation via multiple digital and non-digital platforms for pupils, teachers and parents.
NECT CEO Godwin Khosa told Sowetan the Woza Matrics campaign seeks to provide a multipronged support system for pupils, parents or guardians, circles of support and teachers.
“As a supplementary education broadcast support campaign, it offers academic support through the broadcast of curriculum-aligned video content on television and radio. It further makes use of digital platforms to extend the reach of this content, namely, a dedicated YouTube channel website.
“It also partners with platform-owning organisations like Siyavula Education, Matric Live [a mobile app] and Velle [Telegram-based virtual tutoring] to reach more learners through educational resources, exam practice and tutoring support,” said Khosa.
He said the systemic problem that emerged in the face of the pandemic manifested as structural and unequal learning loss, defined as any specific or general loss of skills and knowledge and reversals in academic progress.
“Intersecting vulnerabilities experienced by children and youth including the rise in teenage pregnancies, rising child hunger, the increase in the number of children dropping out of school, and the rise in mental health challenges among children, young people and adults. These intersecting vulnerabilities deepen prevailing systemic learning challenges that have been in existence before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Thus the problem that the RDL campaign sought to address, since 2020, centres on the evidence provided by the department of basic education [DBE} and the successive waves of the National Income Dynamic Study, Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, which found that between 70% and 100% of lost curriculum learning was experienced between March 2020 and June 2021 compared to 2019.”
With a deliberate twin approach to support pupils academically and provide them with care and support (psychosocial support), the programme aims at destigmatising the rewriting matric exams.
“From 2021, [we began] a direct focus on supporting second chance matric learners in their efforts to either reverse total failures experienced before or simply improve their previous results to pursue further study or increase their chances of securing learnerships and so forth,” said Khosa.
“To further assist them beyond the offerings outlined above, in collaboration with the DBE, the new Matric Study guides have been designed and edited for 13 high enrolment subjects and home languages, particularly because these are positioned as self-study guides. The programme is now developing more guides for a further nine subjects, which will be ready by the end of June,” he said.
The study guides are available for download on the Woza Matrics website (www.wozamatrics.co.za).
This year, the programme aims to extend the support to up to 600,000 matrics and second chance matric pupils through the various platforms – television, radio, digital and mobile platforms.
In 2021, NECT reached 5.89-million viewers on SABC1, 1,07-million on DBEtv OVHD Channel 122, a further 13,000 YouTube subscribers and reached 57,000 via the Matric Live NECT platform while supporting 2,847 pupils through a dedicated WhatsApp line.
“The NECT garnered a village of organisations, institutions from the private, public, civil society and corporate sectors; built social capital to leverage their expertise and resources and harness these for the benefit of the classes of 2020 and 2021. We dare not fail the class of 2022 and the second-chance matrics,” said Khosa.
For pupils with no access to the internet and other technological gadgets, Khosa said: “All the resources developed are shared with the DBE and the provincial education departments through which learners in low-resourced communities are assisted by these resources being availed through their schools.
“We found that even those learners with no internet access had access to a phone with WhatsApp at least, and that became the means through which assistance could be offered to them. As a result, a partnership and expertise leverage approach is what helped close the gaps where they exist.”
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