It was the last straw for Mia Geringer when her five-year-old daughter’s school shut its doors during the lockdown last year.
Like many parents, the Pretoria actuary was too busy to help her children with schoolwork — so she turned an outside room into a classroom and employed a qualified full-time teacher to teach Ella and her three-year-old brother, Finn.
Geringer is a pioneer among a growing number of parents who are turning to tutors to manage home schooling as Covid-19 continues to leave formal education in limbo.
Concerned over the postponement of the new school year to February 15 and the possibility of further classroom closures, some parents are even hiring pupils who wrote matric last year to help their children.
Geringer’s children are taught by Suzanne Sauerman from 9am until 1pm, Monday to Thursday. On Fridays, the children join a group of other home-schoolers for outdoor activities.
Parents in the Johannesburg suburb of Parkview are using the “I Love Parkview” Facebook page to request the services of tutors. One wrote: “Any university student looking for part-time work assisting a grade 3 boy with online learning. Education students preferred but not essential.”
Deputy minister of basic education Reginah Mhaule said at a recent media briefing that although teachers in cities and towns were able to communicate with pupils remotely, “this was not enough because it does not reach every part of South Africa”.
Geringer said that her children’s school “just didn’t really care” about keeping learning going. “They just sent parents the work that they [the children] needed to do. I’m running my own actuarial firm and I honestly don’t have time to sit with my kids and go through schoolwork with them.”
She and her husband eventually decided they had to employ a teacher even though they were paying R8,000 in school fees and a further R10,000 to an au pair.
“I can’t remember how many people we interviewed but we did go through about 100 CVs,” she said.
She added that children don’t listen to their parents if they are teaching them, but behave differently if there’s a teacher.
“Employing a full-time teacher was definitely the best solution as the kids are so much happier.”
Johannesburg mother of two Caryn Turnbull said that although her children’s private school started online classes on Monday, “they really need face-to-face teaching. They need to see the teacher in front of them writing on a board and showing them what to do. They really need that interaction. They also learn a lot from their peers.”
On Thursday she was supervising her seven-year-old son, who was writing a story about his holidays, while she tried to complete her own work. “It’s a juggling act. Online teaching and learning works with older kids but it’s not ideal for the younger ones,” she said.
Matriculant Chloe van Beukering, who charges R150 an hour for tutoring high school pupils in English and history, said there was “a high demand” for tutors from working parents especially.
Kai Sluis-Cremer, 19, who matriculated at Sacred Heart College in Johannesburg last year, said he was tutoring a grade 5 pupil. “Pupils can’t learn, for example, maths online. You need a person there to teach you. Kids switch off the cameras and play on their phones and don’t attend online classes.”
Sluis-Cremer, who has been provisionally accepted to study for a bachelor’s degree in accounting science at Wits University, said parents were very worried about the delay in the reopening of schools.
“They can’t supervise their children’s schoolwork and do their own work at the same time,” he said.
Kesandra Gounden, from tutoring company The Collective Genius, confirmed the high demand for tutors. “I believe it’s because of the fear of what’s going to happen next as well as concerns around the possibility of losing another academic year. Lots of people felt that last year was lost.”
She said the company was receiving inquiries about face-to-face teaching, as children could not cope with online learning.
