Victorian schools: How Fairhills High School students will return to classes
The safety of older teachers and the ability for students to be able to keep a safe social distance in the classroom are among the concerns of a Knoxfield secondary school principal ahead of schools resuming.
Outer East
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Fairhills High School principal Harvey Wood says social distancing won’t be possible between students in most school classrooms due to a lack of space.
But Mr Wood said it was good news students and staff were heading back to school and a sign Australia had been successful with its management of the coronavirus.
Premier Daniel Andrews announced this morning Preps, grades 1 and 2 and years 11 and 12 students would end remote learning and go back to school on May 26.
Special schools will also return on the same date, while students from years 3 to 10 will head back into classrooms on June 9.
Catholic schools are yet to confirm dates but are expected to announce a similar timeline.
Mr Wood said staff meetings at the Knoxfield school would be held in a bigger space so staff could keep their distance but social distancing between students in classrooms would be the challenge.
He said about 25 students in 50sq m was the average classroom size, which was only 2sq m between each person “so you won’t be able to have social distancing”.
“That’s one of the issues I’ll be discussing with my staff is how do we manage that,” he said.
“It’s possible some students aren’t allowed to come within 2m of their teacher but they can be closer to each other, that seems a bit unfair but given the nature of the virus it’s the older people that are more vulnerable than younger people.
“Another approach is only having half the class present in the room and then the students can be socially distancing as well.”
Mr Wood said initially it wouldn’t be a problem with only VCE students attending.
“We have enough double classrooms to accommodate that with social distancing so that’s what we’ll be doing with them,” he said.
But he said when other students came back, which he assumed would be for five days a week, most schools would not have enough space for socially distancing between students because there would not be enough space in classrooms.
“It’s an issue that needs to be talked through a bit more, and no doubt the department will give a bit more advice on that,” he said.
“Another issue I think needs to be discussed is older members of staff who are more vulnerable (to the virus) and whether they should be able to continue working from home.”
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Mr Wood said student drop-offs and pick-ups would not be an issue at the school as it had a separate carpark which parents could use without getting out of their car.
He said the State Government’s announcement sport would not be held also needed to be addressed and he would be talking to his PE teachers to get their advice.
He said the school had plenty of space which could be used to allow students to get some exercise while social distancing.
Mr Wood said he would also talk to the school’s teachers about the possibility of them continuing to post detailed lesson plans online on program Compass for students to download if their parents chose to keep them at home.
“I don’t think you can question parents’ desire protect their children’s health,” he said.
Lysterfield Primary School principal Kendra Parker said the advice from the Education Department was that adults should keep 1.5m apart, and she also wanted to ensure teachers and students kept their distance.
“So we’re thinking about how we can set up classrooms so kids have a bit of space,” she said.
“(It will be a challenge for students and teachers to keep their distance) especially in the younger grades where teachers are always leaning over children because they care so much about their work, so I think that is going to be the hard thing.”
Ms Parker said the school would continue with online staff meetings, and she would be advising teachers to avoid using shared offices.
She said they would also be looking at limiting the amount of people coming onto the school grounds and would introduce specific entry points for different year levels.
The school will also introduce staggered start and finish times.
Ms Parker said communication between parents and teachers would continue to be online.
She said it would not be possible for students to continue learning from home once classes resumed at school, unless they were vulnerable due to health reasons.
“Once those classroom teachers are back at school and the advice is it’s safe I would hope parents return their children,” she said.
“The remote learning program takes a huge amount of time to put together and the only reason teachers can do it is because they are not in the classroom, they can’t do both.”
Ms Parker said she couldn’t praise the school’s teachers and the whole school community highly enough for their support while students had been learning from home.
“Teachers have been working so hard and parents have been so supportive,” she said.