A NUMBER of coaches from Learn to Swim (LTS) and other competitive swim schools on the South Coast have noticed with concern the impact lockdown has had on some of their students.

While they are thrilled to be back in the water, they’ve seen that some are unfit, with others showing alarming evidence of perhaps too much snacking. Not being able to exercise or train is partly to blame for this, as is too much screen time.

KZNA accredited swim schools in the Ugu district which have opened include Margate Swimming Club, Bondi’s Swim School, Blue Ocean Aquatics, Little Dolphins Swim School and Super Shark Swim School.

Gerhard Labuschagne, chairman of Ugu Aquatics and vice-president of KZN Aquatics, is also the owner of Margate Swimming School.

He said that to ensure the safety of staff and swimmers, strict protocols have been put in place by KZN Aquatics and Swim SA.

He encouraged support for swimming and local clubs as he felt it was unlikely many other sports would be permitted to resume this year. Swimming however, he said, stood a good chance.

The coaches are pleased to see increasing numbers of swimmers return, at all levels, but have emphasised that it’s so much more than just about swimming.

“Why do we fight to get the students back in the water? It’s not just for the business. We coach because we save lives one at a time and because of our passion for the sport,” said Edward Holden-Smith of Super Shark Swim School.

“The coaches want to help young athletes develop natural discipline, dedication, leadership, persistence and resilience,” he said.

He added that, sadly, there were cases in South Africa where children had drowned during lockdown.

“Learning to swim is not only a sport but an educational process and life skill that reduces the chance of drowning by 80 percent,” he said.

He pointed out that learning to swim also opened doors to various water sports, such as competitive swimming, scuba diving, spear fishing, water polo and underwater hockey.

Mandy Koegelenberg of Blue Ocean Aquatics said that as a competitive coach, the most important thing now was not to push too hard early on because athletes can pick up injuries, which is the last thing they need after four months of no swimming.

“We are going to get back into training slowly and concentrate on drills, slow and correct swimming, getting balance, and most importantly, getting the ‘feel’ of the water again,” she said.

Thea Thomas of Little Dolphins Swim School said the ‘little ones’ are running through the door in excitement to get back into the pool.

“When I ask them to get out after the lesson, they give me many excuses,” she said.

“Children need to exercise and it is now safe for them to do so, especially with the protocol we have to observe. Parents are anxious and we respect their fear. We keep our protocol and sanitation in place and along with small classes we will survive this, and we will get back to where we were before.”

Dietician Natalie Quinn advised youngsters to avoid spicy, fatty and sugary food before swimming, as well as anything with caffeine in it, and to focus on eating wholegrain cereals, yoghurt, fruit and wholegrain sandwiches – with protein filling – at appropriate times before getting into the pool.

(Source: South Coast Herald)

ALICE Mukashyaka was involved with research in a refugee community in her native Rwanda, now she is co-founder of edtech social enterprise Starlight, which is using solar lamp kits and other projects to help teach young people –especially girls– how to pursue a career in STEM.

“Currently, at Starlight, we are designing a ‘build your own’ solar lantern kit to introduce young students to basic electronics in a fun, creative manner, and to provide households with a clean energy light source,” Mukashyaka said.

Mukashyaka was born and raised in a modest rural household in Rwanda without access to electricity and other basic needs, but she grew up as a very curious child.

“I would listen to a person speaking on the radio and break it to see if I can meet the person who is speaking from the radio,” she said,” I would always be in trouble with my mother because I broke something.”

Mukashyaka says she studied electrical engineering and met co-founder Ariane Umuringa and they started Starlight together. 

Meeting girls in a refugee camp also helped fuel her passion for STEM education.

“I was involved in the research work​ with the refugee community in Rwanda, I heard many voices of young girls who are mistreated, by both parents and their communities because they are girls,” she said, “I saw the girls who lost the hope of pursuing STEM careers and I believe that this is my turn to raise my voice.”

Mukashyaka says Starlight inspires girls to pursue STEM careers and offer hands-on STEM learning to spark their creativity and imagination.​

“The special thing about our work is that we care about sustainable lifestyles,” she said, “The educational products that we use are powered by renewable energy and are eco-friendly and we incorporate STEM and life skills which are important for the young girls’ journey.”

Mukashyaka says Starlight is creating a holistic STEM learning program for the students through STEM careers, role models, life skills and practical hands-on projects.

“Recently one of the girls we engaged in our last projects asked me, ‘Alice -you are an engineer, I wasn’t sure if girls could pursue these careers?’ And I said, ‘Yes, you can!'”

Mukashyaka says that girl decided to pursue engineering and asked for tips on how to get there.

“It made me so happy that I could be an example for her,” Mukashyaka said, “This is one simple example but STEM is the future and girls need to be engaged especially those from vulnerable communities.” 

Mukashyaka said government policies in Rwanda aim to change an agrarian society into a sophisticated knowledge-based economy, putting into action five-year “National ICT Plans” to attract foreign investment. 

She says the Rwanda doesn’t have enough students pursuing STEM education and careers, particulary amongst the 83% of the population who live in the rural areas.

“With 49% of the population under the age of 14, science in the classroom often relies too much on textbooks, rote memorization and does not include interactive, fun, engaging projects that encourage the future work-force to view science and engineering as careers or opportunities for exploration, innovation and positive changemaking in their communities,” she said.

Mukashyaka is part of 300 young changemakers in the latest cohort of the Women Deliver Young Leaders Program. Since 2010, 1,000 young advocates from 148 countries have been identified and supported by Women Deliver, an NGO championing gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women.

Another in that cohort is 22-year-old Ester Borges Santos. She and her colleagues at Brazillian NGO Minas Programam created a welcoming, inclusive virtual study group on gender, race, and technology.

Another example of a black female entrepreneur helping young women in STEM is Mbali Hlongwane from South Africa.

Pink Codrs Africa, which she founded, grew out of a series of networking events for female software developers aiming to build a strong network of female software developers in South Africa, bringing together industry software developers, women in technology businesses and STEM students.

(Source: Forbes)

THE Democratic Alliance is going to court to challenge President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to close schools, saying it was not in the best interest of South Africa’s 14 million school learners.

The party’s interim leader John Steenhuisen confirmed this on Friday while responding to an announcement made by President Cyril Ramaphosa after he ordered learners and teachers at public schools to remain at home from Monday until 24 August, with the exception of matrics and grade 7s who will return sooner.

“We strongly oppose the decision to close public schools for four weeks,” said Steenhuisen.

“We will be approaching the courts on the basis that this decision is politically rather than scientifically motivated and not in the best interests of SA’s 14 million school children.”

Steenhuisen said all the available evidence indicates that schools do not expose learners and staff to higher levels of risk than other places.

According to Steenhuisen, not a single learner death has been reported to the Western Cape Education Department and COVID-19 mortality among the province’s teachers, at 0.07%, is not higher than for other essential workers.

“The decision to close schools is rather a result of the ANC capitulating to all-powerful teachers’ unions, in particular SADTU, who do not have the best interests of learners at heart,” said Steenhuisen.

“Our position remains that those parents who choose to keep their children out of school should be allowed to do so. Staff members who choose to stay home must accept a salary cut.”

“We will not let children become another political football in the ANC’s game to entrench their power and access to state resources in the face of dwindling popular support. In the Western Cape there is no evidence of mass virus spreading at schools.”

(Compiled by Inside Education staff)

After broad consultations with expert bodies and education stakeholders, Cabinet has decided that all public schools should take a break for the next four weeks, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Thursday night.   

This is consistent with the advice of the World Health Organization, which argues that the best and safest way to reopen schools is in the context of low community transmission.

He said more than 6,000 people had died of COVID-19, and 408,052 infections had been confirmed.

Ramaphosa was speaking during an address to the nation on Thursday night.
“This means that schools will be closed from 27 July and will re-open on 24 August,” said Ramaphosa.

There are, however, some exceptions.

Grade 12 learners and teachers will only take a one-week break, returning to school on 3 August while Grade 7 learners will take a two-week break, returning to school on 10 August.

“Specific arrangements will be made for different categories of special schools,” said Ramaphosa.

“As a result of the disruptions caused by the pandemic, the current academic year will be extended beyond the end of 2020.”

Throughout this period, the National School Nutrition Programme will continue to operate so that all learners or their parents can collect food directly from schools.

Ramaphosa said the Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga will provide details on the management of the remainder of the school year.

“We have taken a deliberately cautious approach to keep schools closed during a period when the country is expected to experience its greatest increase in infections,” he said.

“I am aware that this arrangement will disappoint many learners who want to be back at school and may cause inconvenience and difficulty for many families who need to make alternative childcare arrangements.”

Reacting to Ramaphosa’s address, DA interim leader John Steenhuisen said the party does not support the decision to close schools for four weeks.

“President Ramaphosa has bent the knee to all-powerful teachers’ unions, in particular SADTU, who do not have the best interests of learners at heart. This is not leadership. President Ramaphosa is behaving like a “spectator President”, taking instructions from whichever powerful interest group threatens him more,” said Steenhuisen.

“This decision is not supported by the best available evidence, it is not supported by education experts, and it is not supported by the virus data. The scientific evidence is that schools do not expose learners and staff to higher levels of risk than any other places.”

“Closing schools will have a devastating effect on children for years to come. It will make inequality in our society worse. The school year will be further disrupted and may be compromised altogether. Many learners will drop out and never return or will fall behind to the point that they can never catch up. School feeding schemes will be further compromised. Schools will be vandalized. As education is compromised, so poverty will go up, along with the suffering and loss of life that accompanies that. Let us be under no illusion: poverty kills.”

(Compiled by Inside Education staff)

SUHANI, WHO is nine years old, wakes each day before dawn. She collects flowers to weave into necklaces which she flogs to drivers stuck in Dhaka’s endless traffic jams. Until recently Suhani and her sister spent their days in a crowded classroom in Nimtoli, a slum in Bangladesh’s capital.

When the country locked down to stop the spread of covid-19 their mother, a single parent, lost her job as a maid. She has been out of work since. Schools remain closed. Even if they were open, Suhani could not go. She is the breadwinner now.

Of the 1.5bn children forced out of school by lockdowns around the globe, 700m are in developing countries. Like pupils in rich countries, their education is suffering.

But the consequences in poor places will be far worse.

Before the pandemic, more children were in school than ever before, according to Robert Jenkins, head of education at of Unicef, the United Nations’ children’s fund.

In its aftermath nearly 10m children in 40 countries might never return to formal education, estimates Save the Children, a charity.

The economic impact of the pandemic has forced many to abandon their studies in favour of work. Between 2000 and 2020 the number of children in work around the world fell by 40%, mostly because more were going to school. Covid-19 is undoing that progress.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo growing numbers are helping their parents in mines, says Stephanie Shumsky of Pact, an aid group. Others are being recruited into militias. In Jordan young Syrian refugees are toiling on farms.

Experts are most worried about the effect on girls. In the handful of places that have reopened schools, such as Vietnam and the Ivory Coast, teachers say girls are notably absent. Some are getting married—or being married off. Snehalaya, an Indian NGO, says its emergency hotline has been inundated with reports of this since schools closed in March.

Handing a daughter over to a new husband means one fewer mouth to feed. With schools closed, idle daughters may strike up a romance or fall prey to sexual assault.

Working parents forced to leave their daughters at home all day alone would rather marry them off than risk the shame of premarital sex, says Girish Kulkarni, Snehalaya’s founder.

Others are falling pregnant, some after being raped by relatives or neighbours while quarantined at home, says Alice Albright of the Global Partnership for Education, an umbrella group based in Washington, DC.

While schools are closed girls are no longer in touch with teachers who might help them in such circumstances.

During the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone in 2014, when schools were also closed, teenage pregnancies rose by between 11% and 65%, according to a variety of studies. Extrapolating from these data, researchers at Save the Children think they could rise by 25% as a result of covid-19.

The economic damage from children dropping out of school will be vast. The World Bank estimates that, if schools remain closed for five months, pupils will forgo $10trn of future earnings in today’s money.

That could rise if covid-19 is not curbed and schools stay closed for longer.

Many governments are finding it hard to get children learning again. Poorer countries face obvious disadvantages in teaching lessons remotely. In some places access to the internet is patchy. In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, 87% of children can get online, says Nadia Fairuza of the Centre for Indonesian Policy Studies, a think-tank, but in Papua, Indonesia’s biggest province, the figure is less than 30%.

Thus the pandemic is widening the pre-existing gap between how much rich and poor children learn.

A survey last month by Datafolha, a pollster, revealed that while 74% of pupils in Brazil are participating in some kind of distance learning, often over WhatsApp, that drops to just 52% in the poor Amazonian north.

There is a similar disparity between the (poor) north and (richer) south in Nigeria, says Emeka Nwajiuba, the country’s education minister. Families sometimes respond to scarcity in ways that disadvantage girls. Parents often give the family’s only phone to their son, not their daughter, he points out.

Many parents and students are being asked to do the impossible. Francis Aruo, a 32-year-old father of five from Rumuruti, a small town in central Kenya, was told to buy a computer by his children’s headmaster. It would cost more than three times his savings.

Even if he could afford the computer, a reliable internet connection is not readily accessible in Rumuruti.

Mr Aruo can just about afford enough data to run WhatsApp on his phone; he cannot afford enough to download lessons.

Femi Odunsi, a secondary-school teacher in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, was trained by the state government to teach online.

But few of his students have computers and those who have smartphones cannot afford data. In Bangladesh the main remote learning is through programmes broadcast on state-run television. But only 44% of children have access to a television, according to BRAC, a big charity.

Some governments have failed even to try to help children learn from home (see map). Others have been slow to get going. Ghana’s government only launched its distance learning radio programme on June 15th, three months after schools closed.

Reopening schools is hard, too. In June only about half of poor countries said they had a plan for doing so, according to a survey by the UN and World Bank. Social distancing is tricky where 50 or 60 pupils are often packed into a single classroom. In sub-Saharan Africa less than 30% of schools have handwashing facilities.

Governments are opening many other things before schools. In Kenya revellers can hit the pub for a beer and some nyama choma (grilled meat), but the government says schools will stay closed until 2021.

In Pakistan the government has allowed madrassas, run by powerful religious groups, to open, but not mainstream institutions. Garment factories opened in Bangladesh more than two months ago, but schools remain closed. Schoolchildren and their parents lack the political clout of factory owners—or indeed, teachers’ unions, which typically resist a return to work.

They cite the health risks, which are real. Since South Africa’s schools opened partially on June 8th, nearly 800 schools have had cases of covid-19.

But teachers’ unions have also made unreasonable demands. SADTU, the biggest, opposes some provinces opening schools before others: ie, it wants all to hang back with the slowest.

Getting schools up and running will require money, which is tight. Just 8% of the poorest countries report that they are recruiting new teachers to help with reopening, compared with almost 40% of rich ones, according to the same survey by the UN and World Bank. Cash-strapped governments are more worried about boosting their already overstretched health systems. In Bangladesh’s new budget, announced last month, the amount allocated to education was unchanged as a share of GDP.

Still, some governments are making progress. Education ministries in Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia and St Vincent and Grenadines in the eastern Caribbean are working with private telecoms providers to roll out free internet for students and distribute mobile devices to the poorest. Rwanda hopes that an offer of free lunches will get children back to school. Mozambique is giving girls sanitary products. Even handing out snacks or pencils can make a difference.

Old-school learning

Experience helps. Sierra Leone used radio programming during the country’s Ebola outbreak in 2014. It was easy to reboot it, says David Moinina Sengeh, the country’s education minister. Preparation for schools to reopen started before they even shut. Mr Sengeh enlisted an army of bus drivers to ferry children, whose families had moved during lockdown, back to the villages and towns their schools were in.

He also rushed to overturn a law banning pregnant girls from going to school, offering incentives to teenage mothers to return to their studies and adding sex education classes to lessons broadcast by radio to reduce the likelihood of girls getting pregnant.

Mr Sengeh sees the pandemic as an opportunity to ensure that everyone, everywhere, gets a good education. Covid-19 has given the government the “oomph” it needs to make it happen, he says. Others could learn from him.

(Source: The Economist)

A DECISION on whether schools will remain open or closed will be made in due course, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga told the National Council of Provinces during her department’s adjusted budget vote speech for the 2020-2021 financial year.

“We have tabled our consolidated report from the broad consultations to the Inter-Ministerial Disaster Management Committee, the National COVID-19 Command Council (NCCC) and Cabinet.  We will soon announce the decisions and directives of the Cabinet on whether schools should remain opened or closed,” said Motshekga.

She told the NCOP that there are divergent views on whether schools should remain open or closed.

“There are parents and there are learners who have written to me and the department saying that we should keep the schools open. There are also very strong and loud voices for schools to be closed,” said Motshekga.

Teacher unions have met with Motshekga to present their plans on the operation of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) said it expects a response from the government soon.

The unions are concerned about teachers and school staff infections.

The union leaders are using a study conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) which said where there is a peak in local transmissions, schools must be closed.

Motshekga, however, argued that there that it must also be stated that there is an acceptance that schools are safe havens, particularly for the learners, from a variety of challenges. 

“These include, but limited to widening disparity in educational attainments, limited access to meals, domestic violence aggravated by economic uncertainties, drug abuse and teenage pregnancies,” said Motshekga.

(Compiled by Inside Education staff)

Oxford COVID-19 vaccine trial: The coronavirus vaccine created by the University of Oxford appears safe and has shown a protective immune response in hundreds of people who got the shot in an early trial, scientists announced on Monday after the first phase of human trials.

British researchers involved in the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine trial had first begun testing the Coronavirus vaccine in April this year in about 1,000 people.

Half of these volunteers got the experimental vaccine, an AP report said. Such early trials are usually designed only to evaluate the safety, but in this case, the experts were also looking to see what kind of immune response was provoked, the report added.

In the research that was published on Monday in The Lancet journal, scientists said that they found their experimental COVID-19 vaccine produced a dual immune response in people aged 18 to 55. “We are seeing good immune response in almost everybody,” Dr. Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, told Associated Press.

He added that the vaccine triggers both arms of the immune system, and added that it also produces neutralizing antibodies — the molecules that are key to blocking infection.

The results during the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine trial show it induces strong antibody and T-cell immune responses for up to 56 days after administering it. The report said T-cells are crucial for maintaining protection against the virus for years.

Though the findings are seen as promising, the experts still feel it is too soon to know if this is enough to offer protection as larger trials get underway. Professor Sarah Gilbert, the co-author of the study, was quoted by PTI as saying that there’s still much work to do before it can be confirmed that the Oxford vaccine can help manage the COVID-19 pandemic. She added that these early results do hold promise.

One of the top leading Covid-19 vaccine candidates in the world, the Oxford University vaccine in collaboration with AstraZeneca published the initial data and findings on the efficacy of the vaccine today.

The vaccine candidate which was one of the first candidates to have reached the clinical trial stage is undergoing the phase 3 of the clinical trials at the moment somewhere in Brazil.

Earlier this month, the makers of the vaccine named AZD1222 had said that they were enthused with the affirmative findings and result of the initial human trials. They had also said that the findings of the phase 1 of human trials would be released by the end of July. More than a 100 vaccine candidates are being developed in different countries to help the world get rid of Covid-19 pandemic. Many vaccine candidates are also reported to be in the human trial stage while some of them are at the initial stage of animal trials.

Apart from the vaccine candidate of the Oxford university, the other vaccines which show promise of an early breakthrough include United States’ Moderna Inc’s vaccine which is expected to commence the third and the final phase of human trials on July 27.

The vaccine candidate of Russia which has reportedly fast-tracked the development of the vaccine has also reportedly shown encouraging results. Earlier last week, the Russian military hospital had discharged 18 volunteers who had participated in the first phase human trial of the vaccine after keeping them under observation for close to a month.

India has also started the clinical trial of its vaccine candidate Covaxin. The first phase of the human trials will be done at AIIMS, New Delhi, AIIMS Patna and Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak involving a total of 350 volunteers spread across the three hospitals.

AIIMS New Delhi is expected to roll out the human trials soon as it has got the approval from its Ethics committee to begin the procedure.

(Source: Financial Express)