Online schooling for kids- Yay or Nay?

With Covid19, and subsequent lockdowns, South Africans, and many others around the world have taken life online on various aspects such as work, learning including socialising and human interaction, dating and play. While the pandemic eliminated millions of jobs, we have witnessed life online cultivate innovative income generating ideas as well as a general increase in activity for those that existed before like online shopping, online learning etc.

Unfortunately, limited or lack of access to the internet disables mostly previously disadvantaged individuals and communities from accessing online resources and this has resulted in many South Africans being unable to keep up as a result are being “left behind’ while the few privileged ones are able to proceed with as little interruption as possible.

A glaring and unfortunate example of this is the access to Basic education.

The Department of Education has reported a devastating number of pupils dropping out of school in the 2020 academic year, with the Eastern Cape accounting for 130 000 of these pupils. While the economic and other social factors and the overall impact of Covid19 cannot be ruled out as the root cause of this, there is no doubt that with adequate access to the internet for many of these pupils, some of these dropouts could have been avoided. While many school going young people were roaming the streets of our townships during the lockdown, the few privileged ones continued with online lessons as a result apart from the social interactions that being at school afforded, not much interruption happed to their schooling.

Unsplash @kemi_ii

Understandably, many parents are against the idea of extended “screen time” for their children for various reasons, however, online learning is proving to be a necessary devil, if there ever was one.

Institutions such as Teneo and Brainline have been successfully providing online learning even pre-covid. We have recently seen popular prestigious private schools like St Stithians and Future Nations offering online schooling as an alternative for pupils/ parents who prefer this way of learning. With the University of Cape Town also jumping into the bandwagon, it is no secret that this is a fast-growing market- whichever way you look at it.

No one is completely certain that covid will not cause any further damage in the near future. In fact while we think that the pandemic has gone and passed, its remnants are still felt harshly by many who have lost their jobs, sadly lost their loved ones and the rest of us who continue to feel the pinch of the dwindling economy every time the repo rate is adjusted.

I digress.

I am not in my wildest dreams considering online schooling for my child. However, I am very much open to the idea of her accessing millions of educational resources that will help her excel academically and otherwise. I have noticed her vocabulary develop from watching a lot of content on YouTube. But it ends there for us. I don’t have the capacity to help her navigate online schooling fulltime. It was a struggle back during the hard lock down and I was at home full time then. Now, with work and other activities on my end, it would not work for us. Kuddos to all the parents that have this figured out and their kids are thriving in online schools.

Many children (and adults) are using the internet for learning one way or another. Whether its for main stream schooling, for scheduled sessions with tutors, research for assignments or just consuming educational content on YouTube- either way you look at it online learning is here to stay and we should all embrace it, warts and all!