In-person school tours to return after lockdown forces families to see schools online
Seeing a campus in person was one of the best ways to find out if it is right for your child — before lockdown. Now one elite Melbourne school is taking tentative steps to welcome prospective families back on site.
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Coronavirus derailed physical school tours, forcing them online, but one private school is dipping its toe back to on campus tours from this week.
Wantirna’s The Knox School has scheduled a series of tours which will be tightly regulated. Kinder tours will be limited to four people with senior tours capped at 10 people.
Many schools are not even allowing parents of current students on campus, but The Knox School said it felt that it could manage the tours.
The physical attendance at a school campus, where families see state of the art facilities, engage with teachers, meet the principal and observe students in action, often seals the deal.
Many families with children in Year 6, starting Year 7 in 2021, may have settled on schools before now. If they are going private they will most likely have accepted a place or if they are going government they will, unless they have applied for a special entry to a school, be attending the school they are zoned for. Applications for entry to government schools were pushed back to May 29, this year.
But, it’s the parents of Year 5 children who are being offered places at private schools for a 2022 start that are in a quandary if they haven’t had an opportunity to attend the school.
To accept a place at some schools, such as Kew’s Trinity Grammar, a deposit of $2000 per child of which $500 is refundable at the completion of the child’s time at the school is required. A further $2500 is to be paid at the time the offered place is accepted with this amount credited to the student’s second tuition fee statement
A number of schools say that the online tours are something they will consider continuing post-COVID-19.
Melbourne Girls’ Grammar says there have been some “silver linings” with webinars and virtual tours providing access for people who may not be able to make on site tours.
A webinar session for would-be boarders was well subscribed with people who may not have been able to travel to the South Yarra school on a particular day signing up. A second session for Year 5 and Year 7 entries also was well supported.
Principal Dr Toni Meath told the Herald Sun that the webinars were providing an authentic, real time experience of the school.
“We are just increasingly busy so if you can do something in a virtual setting, especially as an introduction, it can work,” Dr Meath said.
“One of the things that I found with our virtual webinar was that we had global participants, not only across Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, we also had people from across the planet tuning in.
“School is increasingly an international commodity.”
Dr Meath said she saw the online webinars and tours as valuable for parents checking and confirming their already made decision to send their daughter to the school.
“The decision of where you send your child to school is a really big decision. It is an important decision. Parents and guardians always do due diligence,” she said.
Others might be at the beginning of making decisions.
Dr Meath said other people tuning into the webinar might have made a commitment to send their child but were looking to start at an earlier year level.
She said the webinar enabled prospective parents to ask questions in real time.
Dr Meath said there were no plans for on campus tours, saying they were opening the school up slowly and carefully.
The Knox School has outlined strict guidelines for its on campus tours. Where possible it has asked families not to register children to attend, although it will permit the prospective student to attend. Young children should not attend but if that cannot be avoided they must be carried in their carer’s arms during the tour. Temperature checks and hand sanitiser are compulsory on arrival.
The Knox School principal Allan Shaw said with a smaller enrolment of 700 students, from kinder to Year 12, the school felt they could manage the physical distancing of smaller tours.
“They are proving quite popular,” he said. “This better suits the way we run the school.”
While mass open days sees “tyre kickers” where people are anonymous, the bespoke tours give an insight to the school’s operation.
Mr Shaw said people could often get a feel for a school after 20 minutes, speaking to the principal and seeing students in action.
“I think the two factors that seem to come back to us in feedback is people meeting me or another senior member of staff who know the school well and having access to ask questions of students,” he said.
Mr Shaw said he felt it was more beneficial for prospective families to see a school in operation.
“When students are available I think parents see them as being more authentic and fairly open and honest,” he said.
Several parents of Year 5 students, who would normally be touring prospective schools, say they have had to make choices sight unseen for a number of private schools. But, should they change their mind, they will still be zoned into popular Kew High School.
Northcote High School is one of the many schools that has gone online, cancelling its open morning and directing prospective families to an virtual open day via YouTube.
It says it may look at small group on campus tours later in the year. Semi-select Melbourne Girls’ College also has gone online, hoping to offer some kind of tour for incoming Year 7 families later in the year.
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