On the morning of my lunch with Michael Parker, the headmaster of Sydney private boys’ school Newington College and a former teacher at Cranbrook and Eton, the NSW government said kids will be returning to school earlier than planned as the state hit its vaccination targets.

For Parker, this means COVID-19 discussions will shift from social distancing and organising online classes to ventilation filters and rapid antigen testing. “If you eavesdropped on a meeting of the school executive, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a health department,” he says.