Effects of COVID 19 on the Namibia education

COVID 19 is a pandemic disease which was detected in Wuhan [Chain] in 2019 and spread into different
country including the republic of Namibia in 2020. The pandemic has affected the republic in different
ways, including the Namibia education system. The education procedures are completely different from the
usual education due to the pandemic. The change was including the closing down of schools, the
implementation of the system to learn from home and the online learning to the students at tertiary schools.
So, the question now is, how did those changes affects the Namibia education in terms of learners
performances, economically, physical and emotionally? After the announcement of the outbreak disease, the
Ministry of education was agreed to close down all the schools in Namibia as per instruction of the Ministry
of health and social servers. Although, the purposes of the lockdown was to prevent the spreading of the
virus, that was also contributed to many disadvantageous in terms of education until today.

COVID 19 has negative impact on students’ performance. When the COVID 19 cases started to rise, schools
and all educational institution were temporary closed, to prevent the transmission of the virus. Therefore,
students were forced to learn from home. The ministry of education should either provide the basic
education learners with learning resources or divided them into few groups to attend the lesson in a week.
Students at high institutions were forced to go for online learning. Online learning or learning from home is
not an easy process of learning, considering young children at rural area or those from poor families. As a
result, this systemic education was only more benefited those from families with better education or with
financial stables, who can afford to buy smartphones and have access to the internet, libraries and other
sources of learning.

In Namibia, the school closure brought about more disruptions in the school calendars and teaching in
general. This makes it almost impossible for formal assessment for the 2020 academic year to take place.
Consequently, this may compel all the learners to repeat their classes in 2021 (Evelina, 14 April 2020).

Furthermore, COVID 19 also affected the Namibia education economically. New education system forced
the ministry of education to spend the yearly budget to fulfill the needs of new learning process, such as
increasing of infrastructures {extra classroom, internet and the recruitment of teachers].The ministry also
have to make sure that every school has adhered to the prevention measures, therefore money have to spend
on bought of sanitizers and other materials concerning with hygiene. Parents took over the duties of buying
all the school stationary which supposed to be the part of the school budget. Consequently, education system
is now becoming difficult to maintain due to COVID 19. School feeding program was also affected by
COVID 19. The money was spent on the other things instead of being saved for the coming years. Now it
takes time for the food to reach some schools.
 COVID 19 also has major impacts on physical and emotional of the teachers, learners and all the
educational stakeholders. Teachers become stressed due to the limited time to cover the curriculum and high
numbers of learners per class. Some learners end up being dropout because of some reasons such as peer
pressure and teenage pregnancy during lockdown. Some students are being stressed because of grade
repetition while others due to financial problem to buy online studying materials such as smartphones
internet and many more. (Ms. Lydia P.Aipinge, August 2020)

COVID 19 has changed or affected a lot when it comes to Namibian education system. This means that,
there is something a lot need to be done in order to return education system at normal. Both the government
and private company need to come together and negotiate about what is the way forward to improve the
education system to come at the normal. Starting with tracing out effects of poor performance among
learners as well as how and where to get money in order to provide proper education.

References
Evelina, J. a. (14 April 2020). Estimating the Economic Impact of COVID 19: A case study of Namibia. MPRA , 13..

Ms. Lydia P.Aipinge, D. B. (August 2020). Managing School Closures Amidst COVID 19 Pandemic: Lessons from other
Countries and Option for Namibia. School Closure, 18.