Webinar series tackles disruption to education in SA during COVID-19

South Africa is currently seven days into a 21-day lockdown. While most employees are able to work comfortably and stress-free from home, the spread of COVID-19 brings about several challenges to other sectors of society.

Education in times of a pandemic

Schools have been suspended which means educators need to find solutions on how to continue with their curriculums now that students are unable to attend brick-and-mortar learning institutions.

To assist in the quest to find alternate educational solutions, the Jakes Gerwel Fellowship will be hosting a series of webinars throughout April 2020 to tackle challenges and find solutions.

The series is titled Educating in Interesting Times, and the Fellowship has gathered “top local and international leaders and will be unpacking how best to respond to the recent, unforeseen changes”.

Educating in Interesting Times – Agenda

According to The Jakes Gerwel Fellowship – which is fully funded by the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Endowment – South Africa joined “a growing international list of 107 countries who have implemented national school closures”.

With schools only opening again in mid-April, school leaders are faced with a number of new challenges. Therefore, the webinar series will address the following points:

• What low-tech and no-tech strategies can be deployed to effectively support learning through this period? This will be an exploration of existing and potential solutions that can be deployed quickly, easily and broadly to low-resource areas.

• Identify opportunities of maximising high-tech solutions and strategies for schools and institutions that are tech ready or can deploy technological solutions quickly.

• Develop resilience strategies – what are the systemic changes that can be implemented to improve the resilience of the education system?

• Looking into the future – how are future education leaders navigating this current disruption with an eye to creating solutions that will help buffer the education system against such disruptions in future?

Educating in Interesting Times schedule

The first part of the series will be hosted on Friday 3 April, between 10:00 and 12:00 South African Standard Time (SAST). Interested parties can register for the webinar here.

The second part, titled Exploring Low-Tech Opportunities, will take place on Thursday, 9 April between 10:00 and 12:00, followed by the third part, Exploring High-Tech Opportunities, on Friday 17 April between 10:00 and 12:00.

The webinar will be available on PCs, Mac, iPad, iPhone and Android devices.