Unplaced pupils may face cognitive and social challenges due to starting school year late

A woman living in Alexandra township in Johannesburg says she is considering relocating to her hometown in Limpopo because she cannot find a school for one of her children.

Dina Mashidi has had to seek schools for her two children this week‚ after failing to register them using the Gauteng education department's digital system last year.

Her son‚ who moved to Johannesburg this month from Limpopo after his grandmother who raised him died‚ has now been placed at East Bank High School in Alexandra‚ but her daughter is still without a school.

Gauteng education spokesperson Oupa Bodibe said on Thursday that it may take the department until the end of February to find schools for 35‚800 unplaced pupils‚ whose parents registered them online last year.

The children of latecomers‚ like Mashidi's daughter‚ are not the department's priority and will only be placed once the backlog is cleared‚ he said.

Lecturer in educational psychology at the University of the Western Cape Frederick Sylvester warned that the rights of children are being violated when they are not in a place of safety‚ like school‚ for weeks at a time.

Beyond this there are cognitive and social disadvantages to starting the school year late‚ experts say.

"The impact is significant because the work they do in school builds [on previous learning]. So it will be difficult to catch up and can cause learning backlogs.

"Socially it can also be a problem because friendship groups are already established and coming in late can cause social isolation‚" says University of the Witwatersrand Professor Ruksana Osman.

Educational psychologist Zaakirah Mohamed says the stress parents may experience as they await placement for their children also plays a role.

“Most parents are told to help prepare and support their child for their transition into the next grade. These parents are anxious‚ frustrated and in most cases feeling helpless.

“They have not envisioned their child being at home when the rest of the schooling year continues. At times these feelings may be projected onto the child. Thus‚ these learners may enter school with heightened levels of anxiety.”

In order to minimise the impact of missing weeks of school may have on children‚ both parents and schools need to introduce interventions.

“Schools will need to set in a full programme [for catching up]‚ especially around core skills‚" Osman says.

Mohamed recommends parents put in the extra hours at home with their children's school work.

She adds that teachers should prepare pupils to welcome new classmates later in the year.

“They need to create environments whereby the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ learners get to mingle rather than stay in the groups that were formed when the school year began."

Bodibe says the department has not yet considered interventions for latecomers as it does not have a clear picture of who these pupils are and what their learning requirements are.

He added that parents are responsible for registering their children for school timeously and through the correct channels.