Can WhatsApp save the education system in South Africa?

Kaone and Tshwaragano Seshibedi learn at home during the national lockdown on April 23, 2020 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Sydney Seshibedi)

Digital teaching methods born out of necessity during the Covid-19 lockdown provide opportunities to strengthen the education system in the long term.

First published in Daily Maverick 168

In October 2005, an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale struck northern Pakistan. Its effects were devastating: more than 80,000 dead and millions more homeless.

Other aspects of the earthquake’s impact were less clear and long-term. As a result of the damage, children in the affected area were absent from school for three months. Four years after the earthquake, they were still a year and a half behind their peers in educational progress.

This is frightening, given the apparent similarities with the Covid-19 lockdown, which means that regular study in South Africa has been suspended for five months and is still ongoing.

“Our kids are in serious trouble, no matter which way you turn,” teacher and activist Joanna Reynolds told me. She was referring to the effects of extended educational disruption. If there is an education system that does not need more problems, it is the South African system – but we can now add the impact of the lockdown to the current challenges.

However, a positive side can be found in the innovations spawned by the crisis, as teachers, NGOs and companies pool their resources to keep school children in South Africa learning from afar.

From WhatsApp tutorials to video tutorials, all kinds of remote teaching technologies have been developed and quickly tracked since the outbreak of the pandemic. We spoke to an NGO working in the rural heart of the Eastern Cape, Axium Education, which has made WhatsApp the nucleus of lockdown education. “You set the time to class; Reynolds of Axiom explained, the class will start at 4 PM.

The teacher logs in and says, “Hey everyone, please raise your hand or send in a few emojis if you are there. “All the children who are online send their emoji. The teacher greets the class and starts introducing the lesson.” What follows is a complete WhatsApp class that the teacher uses to send learners’ documents, voice notes, photos, and more. Reynolds says the method has been successful – and in fact has advantages over traditional classroom instruction.

One is that children can be categorized according to their educational needs rather than their age: a multi-level approach that Reynolds describes as very helpful when dealing with the fact that some learners reach high school and are “five, six, and seven years late in math and three years in reading”.

Another is that teachers can check in with pupils in private to see how they handle the material – something that is often difficult to achieve in overcrowded classrooms where children may also be unwilling to publicly admit that they are struggling. But perhaps the greatest opportunity that WhatsApp offers as an educational tool is its increasing use to connect school children with teachers in different cities or even continents.

Dr Lynn Bowie of Wits University noted that it is often very difficult to get good teachers to where they are most needed in rural South Africa. If teachers were able to provide help to school children from afar via WhatsApp, it is not difficult to imagine that many would volunteer their services.

The obvious caveat here is that digital infrastructure is lagging and data costs are high – problems that need to be resolved before South Africa’s education system can boldly advance toward the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

However, the challenges should not be overemphasized. For example, NGOs that have been successful in keeping children learning during this time have had to support the distribution of entry-level smartphones and the accompanying data. But these phones aren’t expensive: Bowie noted that the organization she works with, Olico Maths Education, has had success with the base phones available for around the R500.

Reynolds said, through trial and error, they learned that the data provided to learners should be WhatsApp data, which can only be used on this messaging system and goes further.

Telecommunications networks in South Africa are also zero-rated for educational sites during the lockdown, which means the sites can be accessed without data – a gesture that activists have suggested should be permanently expanded and expanded. NGOs and companies we spoke to said digital education technologies have been in the works in South Africa for a number of years, but the Covid-19 shutdown has greatly accelerated their introduction.

Because of this, the crisis has forced the emergence of new ways of doing things in education that may offer long-term solutions and help bolster the ailing school system in South Africa. Reynolds and Bowie both said their foundation will maintain WhatsApp as an educational tool; Olico is also launching a WhatsApp hotline that any learner can send math inquiries to.

One thing is clear: when post-Covid-19 ‘normality’ resumes, the education system will indeed work to ensure that learners affected by intermittent education in 2020 are not left behind for years. Digital methods should be taken very seriously as they provide a valuable complement to personal teaching. The South African education system needs all the help it can get. DM168

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