This article focuses on how online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic further exposes the digital divide in South Africa. A few students and an academic share their experiences throughout the article, highlighting the difficulties with online learning. Not only are these difficulties to do with issues such. as poor connectivity, high data costs, lack of access to hardware and inadequate online training, but also home environments that are not conducive as learning spaces. For example, many poor homes are small and shared by a number of family members, and creating a learning space may be very difficult or even impossible to create. This article emphasises that online learning does not simply level the playing field or somehow erase social inequality. When students are expected to transfer from face-to-face to digital learning, the conditions and context in which people live - which extend beyond just learning (such as having little or no food) - are brought to the fore. Education is part of a system of inequity and injustice and the online learning experience during the pandemic highlights this.

Read the full article here. This article was first published by New Frame.