Cabinet has decided to close public schools from July 27, for four weeks to prevent them from becoming sites of rampant Covid-19 transmissions as infections peak, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Thursday evening.

Ramaphosa said in a televised address that meetings Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga held with more than 60 stakeholders in recent days failed to yield consensus on whether to keep schools open as the number of infections in the country head to the 400 000 mark.

"It was difficult to find consensus on the best approach... taking into account the views, Cabinet has decided today that all public schools should take a break for the next four weeks," he said.

Learners will return to school on August 24, and the school year will be extended beyond the end of 2020 to make up for time lost to the pandemic.

However, this would not apply to Grade 12 and Grade 7 learners, who would return to school within one and two weeks respectively. Grade 12 will go back to class on August 3 and grade 7 learners on August 10.

School feeding schemes would however continue and learners would be able to collect meals.

Ramaphosa said his Cabinet had taken a cautious approach, because everybody agreed that the health and well-being of learners and teachers was paramount.

He said this was consistent with advice from the World Health Organization (WHO) to balance health concerns with educational imperatives and several other countries had done the same at particular moment in the trajectory of Covid-19 through their population.

"We have taken a deliberately cautious approach to take schools closed at a period when the country is expected to experience its greatest number of infections... it is important to ensure that schools do not become sites of transmission at a time when infections are rising fast."

Ramaphosa acknowledged that the decision will "disappoint many learners" and inconvenience many parents who would now have to make child care arrangements.