The Sunday Mail
One of the biggest problems faced by most families during the lockdown is continuing the education of their children, both accessing material and getting that human advice when the child needs more than what a textbook or an online lesson can explain.
This is why backyard schools or study groups have mushroomed: they are cheaper than the cost of data and offer that personal touch.
And the gap in formal schooling of at least two months — and it might be more — can be crippling if the child is a slow learner.
When schools closed early and shortly after the initial lockdown was announced, efforts were made to put education materials online. For a middle-income family this was useful, so long as they had a computer at home, even if it was only a parent’s laptop, and a cable connection.
For less than $250 over the two months a family could pay the rent of the wi-fi modem and buy 10GB of data, enough to download the lessons and other material. The computer would have adequate hard-drive memory to store the material and lessons off-line and a big enough screen to make using that material possible.
But that group of families is a minority. Most families do have a modest smartphone, but have to buy wireless data, which is a lot pricier than cable, and the material is difficult to read on the small phone screen, at least when you are trying to plough through several hours a day of lessons, and is difficult to store on the limited memory of a basic smartphone.
At the same time income in these families is limited. Many are in the lower ends of commerce and most are in the informal sector, where unless they are able to work they have no income. Whatever little money is available has to be spent on food, not data, for the children. So for a lot of families, data is expensive, money is very tight and home equipment for online study is limited and often inadequate.
We once again face the dilemma of effective education being rationed by income, which is unfair.
The proliferation of backyard tutors and study groups is not the answer to this. They are illegal in any case and breach the lockdown directive since they involve some movement out of the house by the children and breach gathering bans, even if the group is small, say just 10 children.
The Covid-19 pandemic has witnessed a lot of creative responses from the Government, the private sector and sections of the informal sector. Old ways of doing things are changing in many areas as the nation embraces minimal movement and minimal contact with other people.
The response now has to include the children missing a large chunk of schooling and falling behind even further. One partial solution would be to allow backyard tuition, temporarily, but with a limit of, say, five children at a time on the backyard premises. More homework could be set, since exercise books are generally available in supermarkets and general dealers that are exempted from the lockdown. And with manufacturing now exempted more exercise books could be printed if needed.
This would be far from perfect, but would be a lot better than expecting families to cope on their own with inadequate resources. The added risks would be minimal, so long as the rules on social distancing and the like are followed.
Another partial solution would be to allow the printing and sale of online lessons. This would not come cheap, but would be cheaper for many families than wireless data.
If the mobile networks could figure out a cheaper data package this would help some, although not all. Admittedly a lot of the cost of data is taken up by the costs of getting the data to the nearest mobile base station and then to the phone, but perhaps the regulator, Potraz, could sit down with everyone involved and work out a solution that would give a minimum data package to all users at a lower cost.
The extra business generated by the lockdown should have boosted volumes for the mobile sector, allowing overhead costs at least to be spread over more business.
Generally, solutions have to cope with more than what a rich or middle income family already has and can afford. A set of solutions has to cope with the children of a pavement vendor whose income has dropped to zero. Zimbabweans have shown a great deal of innovative responses to the Covid-19 crisis, and surely we can come up with something that is cheap, does not increase risks of infection significantly and helps those at the bottom of the economic ladder at least ensure their children do not fall behind any further.
Education: Smart solutions needed
The Sunday Mail
One of the biggest problems faced by most families during the lockdown is continuing the education of their children, both accessing material and getting that human advice when the child needs more than what a textbook or an online lesson can explain.
This is why backyard schools or study groups have mushroomed: they are cheaper than the cost of data and offer that personal touch.
And the gap in formal schooling of at least two months — and it might be more — can be crippling if the child is a slow learner.
When schools closed early and shortly after the initial lockdown was announced, efforts were made to put education materials online. For a middle-income family this was useful, so long as they had a computer at home, even if it was only a parent’s laptop, and a cable connection.
For less than $250 over the two months a family could pay the rent of the wi-fi modem and buy 10GB of data, enough to download the lessons and other material. The computer would have adequate hard-drive memory to store the material and lessons off-line and a big enough screen to make using that material possible.
But that group of families is a minority. Most families do have a modest smartphone, but have to buy wireless data, which is a lot pricier than cable, and the material is difficult to read on the small phone screen, at least when you are trying to plough through several hours a day of lessons, and is difficult to store on the limited memory of a basic smartphone.
At the same time income in these families is limited. Many are in the lower ends of commerce and most are in the informal sector, where unless they are able to work they have no income. Whatever little money is available has to be spent on food, not data, for the children. So for a lot of families, data is expensive, money is very tight and home equipment for online study is limited and often inadequate.
We once again face the dilemma of effective education being rationed by income, which is unfair.
The proliferation of backyard tutors and study groups is not the answer to this. They are illegal in any case and breach the lockdown directive since they involve some movement out of the house by the children and breach gathering bans, even if the group is small, say just 10 children.
The Covid-19 pandemic has witnessed a lot of creative responses from the Government, the private sector and sections of the informal sector. Old ways of doing things are changing in many areas as the nation embraces minimal movement and minimal contact with other people.
The response now has to include the children missing a large chunk of schooling and falling behind even further. One partial solution would be to allow backyard tuition, temporarily, but with a limit of, say, five children at a time on the backyard premises. More homework could be set, since exercise books are generally available in supermarkets and general dealers that are exempted from the lockdown. And with manufacturing now exempted more exercise books could be printed if needed.
This would be far from perfect, but would be a lot better than expecting families to cope on their own with inadequate resources. The added risks would be minimal, so long as the rules on social distancing and the like are followed.
Another partial solution would be to allow the printing and sale of online lessons. This would not come cheap, but would be cheaper for many families than wireless data.
If the mobile networks could figure out a cheaper data package this would help some, although not all. Admittedly a lot of the cost of data is taken up by the costs of getting the data to the nearest mobile base station and then to the phone, but perhaps the regulator, Potraz, could sit down with everyone involved and work out a solution that would give a minimum data package to all users at a lower cost.
The extra business generated by the lockdown should have boosted volumes for the mobile sector, allowing overhead costs at least to be spread over more business.
Generally, solutions have to cope with more than what a rich or middle income family already has and can afford. A set of solutions has to cope with the children of a pavement vendor whose income has dropped to zero. Zimbabweans have shown a great deal of innovative responses to the Covid-19 crisis, and surely we can come up with something that is cheap, does not increase risks of infection significantly and helps those at the bottom of the economic ladder at least ensure their children do not fall behind any further.
Share This:
More Stories: