Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has published the new 2022 calendar for South African public schools.
The country’s inland provinces are set to officially begin the school year on 12 January 2022 and conclude on 14 December.
This is a total of 199 school days across the four terms including the holidays.
The coastal cluster of schools will start a week later on 19 January and conclude on 14 December, with the extra days made up through slightly longer terms throughout the year.
Coastal schools
Inland schools
Motshekga recently gazetted updated lockdown regulations for South Africa’s primary schools and special needs schools.
She said primary school pupils and pupils attending schools with special needs are to return to full-time learning from the end 26 July.
Currently, most students in South Africa are learning on a rotational basis, with a large amount of learning and coursework still expected to be done at home in an effort to increase social distancing.
Motshekga said her department will now use a risk-adjusted differentiated strategy – where school attendance is determined by the direction the pandemic is taking in specific districts or the country as a whole.
The minister came upon huge criticism after making this decision. A number of provinces including the Free State, the Northern Cape, North West and Gauteng have seen sharp increases in the Covid-19 infection rate.
These schools saw schools close down in an attempt to control the outbreak.
READ: Union concerned about DBE’s ability to manage full-time return to primary schools
