Motshekga addressed Parliament’s education committee on the preparations for a third wave of Covid-19 on Tuesday.

She told MPs that the department has requested both Treasury and the presidency to make provision for teachers.

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"I can assure that from the word go, we had requested a special dispensation for teachers to make sure that not only on the basis of returning learners back to school but on the basis that we can deal with co-morbidities to make sure that they come back to class.

"We have engaged with treasury and we have raised it with the Presidency and there is a lot of sympathy around it but we will bear in mind that teachers, police and the army are frontline workers including those at Home Affairs.

"The Minister of Health has committed that as soon as he gets certainty around the availability of the vaccines he will prioritise frontline workers. I can't commit on this date that we have agreed on this date with the minister."

All primary schools pupils are expected to head back to the classroom on a daily basis at the start of the third term in July.

This will be the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020 that all primary school learners will be in the classroom all at the same time.

Professor Martin Gustafsson, from the University of Stellenbosch, said it is important for all pupils to go back to school to avoid any more lost time.

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"During the period of 2019 and 2020 when the pandemic hit us, there were little gains made. This is what we mean when we say about 75% of learning has been lost.

"This is very serious because it is not easy to catch up, children need to learn to read at a very specific age and is related to brain development. It is more difficult to catch up when the child is older.

"This is at the centre of our concern. These losses could reflect in weaker matric results in nine to ten years from now and that is what we want to minimise as much as possible."