Thirtieth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

Located within the context of post-COVID-19, the paper focuses on interventions made to primary school education to mitigate the learning loss experienced during COVID-19. Prior to COVID-19, learning outcomes were compromised by a range of factors in school provisioning, including challenges related to infrastructure, teacher competence, school leadership and curriculum coverage. Through a national funded initiative, four project streams to improve the quality of teaching and learning were initiated. This paper reports on the curriculum recovery project stream wherein the recovery curriculum implemented during COVID-19 was reviewed for conceptual coherence and quality of curriculum delivery. Subject advisors employed by the Provincial Departments of Basic Education reported, using a quality assurance reporting framework, to report on two hundred primary schools across three Provinces of South Africa on the implementation of the recovery curriculum. Findings suggests that most schools were rated “needs improvement” on the majority of standards related to the delivery of the recovery curriculum. Reasons for such ratings included lack of support from school leaders, minimal support from curriculum specialist and very little opportunity for teachers to reflect on their teaching to the recovery curriculum plan. A concerning factor that impeded the implementation of the recovery curriculum is the inability of teachers to cover the entire curriculum as planned. The paper concludes with some conceptual engagement on post-human and new materialism constructs that explains some of the findings emerging from the reports on monitoring the implementation of the recovery curriculum.