Covid-19 Business Watch
WATCH | Data shows urgent need for education intervention
Michael Avery and a panel discuss the findings from Wave 4, a survey that highlights the effects of school closures and educational inequality
“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It’s awful.” Samuel Beckett’s iconic quip in Waiting for Godot encapsulates the way it’s felt waiting for a vaccine in SA. During the peak of the first wave in 2020, a study conducted by an academic consortium, National Income Dynamics Study — Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (Nids-Cram), offered policymakers unrivalled insights into almost real-time effects of the coronavirus lockdown on households across the country.
Last week, Wave 4 was published and the findings are equally fascinating, as the effects of school closures on educational inequality call out for urgent policy interventions. This penultimate wave of the survey helps to provide a window of insight into the state of South African society during the onset of the second wave of Covid-19.
Michael Avery spoke to Nic Spaull, an economist at Stellenbosch University and the co-principal investigator of the Nids-Cram study; Mpumi Mohohlwane, deputy director: research, monitoring and evaluation at the department of basic education; and Ronelle Burger, professor in the economics department of Stellenbosch University.