The October school holidays will go ahead as planned, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga confirmed yesterday.
Speaking at a press briefing, she said the amended 2021 school calendar must be retained as it was from its very last amendment.
She said that “the October vacation will not be interfered with”, despite more than 50% of learning time lost in 2021.
The Council of Education Ministers (CEM) further recommended that the lost number of school days should be recovered at district and school-level, but with reasonableness.
“The CEM met on Friday to consider inputs from stakeholders, following rounds of consultations regarding the already amended school calendar for the 2021 academic year,” said Motshekga.
Her announcement comes amid outrage from especially educators that the 4 to 8 October holiday would be scrapped to make up for lost school time.
This was after the July holidays were extended by a week after a spike in Covid-19 infections.
Teacher unions said many educators and parents have already made travelling plans for that period.
Among other issues, the minister yesterday also addressed teenage pregnancy, as well as the scourge of gender-based violence, referring to the murder and mutilation of a fourth-year law student at the University of Fort Hare, Nosicelo Mtebeni.
Last week, the DBE released the results of the 2021 May/June exams.
“The examination was successfully administered, despite the enormous challenges relating to the Covid-19 pandemic,” added Motshekga.
“The prevalence of examination irregularities of a serious nature, such as imposters, crib notes, and possession of cell phones during the writing, have declined compared to previous years.”