The national lockdown, accompanied by the closure of educational institutions, brought economic hardship and deepened the digital divide between the rich and the poor. Educational institutions capable of transitioning to an online mode of delivery made that shift, while the majority of South Africa's schools remained excluded due to poverty and lack of technological infrastructure. The educational sector is at wits' end to find strategies to curtail the growing digital divide. This paper offers a digital resource mobilisation approach as framework to keep schools on the path to achieving the National Development Plan's aim of ICT capacitation.
Impact / Outcome
As a qualitative study conducted in one school within the context of a township, our findings cannot be extended to other schools. However, we argue that the intention of this study was not to generalise its findings but, rather, to understand a real case that can be used to open debate about the state of technology in township schools and to suggest practical ways to address the digital divide.
In response to the research question formulated to guide this study, and based on our findings, we conclude that COVID-19 exposed and exacerbated long-existing inequalities in the South African education system. Educational stakeholders have called for the technological support of township schools. We suggest a broad digital resource mobilisation (DRM) approach as a management framework.
Funding sources
Public
Key Metrics
Review the digital resource mobilisation approach
Operating model
Fully publicYear published
01 January 2021