Helping Aftercare Thrives

After a decade, The Learning Trust continues to strengthen organisations that run after-school programmes in areas where they are needed the most.

- Beth Peterson

At the beginning of August, 13 million South African children in various grades will have lost between 30 and 59 days of school. Across the world, there’s growing anxiety that COVID-19’s disruption to education could potentially result in setbacks for life, rendering this generation of school-going children significant victims of the pandemic.

It’s now clear that the ambitions to “save the school year” by adjusting to online or distance learning have been thwarted by the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) failure to deliver necessary support and resources to the majority of underprivileged schools and learners.

“On the ground in communities, our partner organisations have been bearing witness to the vast numbers of children who are being left behind in the 2020 school year,” says Sibongile Khumalo, the executive director of The Learning Trust (TLT).

“Although usually strategically focused on delivering critical after-school programmes (ASPs), they have had to pivot to drive innovative solutions to boost home-schooling opportunities, provide widespread psychosocial support, help food security initiatives, assist schools in improving water access and sanitation and even provide additional spaces for schools with overcrowded classrooms,” she says.

Sibongile says that COVID-19 has laid bare the sheer lack of resources and capacity in South Africa’s poorest communities. “These children are bearing a disproportionate brunt of the pandemic,” she explains.