By Jordan Baker
On the morning of Sunday, March 15, a fortnight ago, a handful of private school principals, mostly from Sydney's upper north shore, were getting the jitters.
Even though the country's top medical experts were insisting it was safe for schools to remain open, and closing them might make the spread of COVID-19 worse, these wealthy schools had the means to run lessons online. They decided to do it.
Within hours, word of the plan reached Mark Scott, head of the NSW Department of Education. He was worried. Private schools can do whatever they want, but their decisions put enormous pressure on other systems to follow suit, including the state's 2200 public schools. The NSW government's response was being led by health experts, but the breakaway group's move meant a decision with vast implications for the state could be driven by half a dozen self-interested private schools.
"The [department's view was that the] stance we took would be perceived by a significant portion of the community as the gold standard," one principal said. "It would play into the class warfare narrative: rich kids looked after while poor kids will be catching diseases."
Scott rang Geoff Newcombe, the chief executive of the Association of Independent Schools NSW. The relationship between the independent, Catholic and public sectors can be fraught at the best of times, but Scott has known Newcombe for years, and Newcombe quickly understood the problem.
Newcombe rounded up 30 principals from some of the state's most influential independent schools for a conference call that evening with the NSW Chief Health Officer, Dr Kerry Chant, and the state's education and health ministers. It included heads of schools such as MLC, Newington, Kambala, Shore and Cranbrook, and was chaired by Scott.
"Mark [Scott] doesn't stand over the independent sector," one principal said. "Just that fact [that he organised it] meant it was clear that what we do will have massive implications for the whole sphere of school education."
Mark Scott.Credit: Janie Barrett
The government ministers contributed little. "They just said, 'please listen'," recalls one of the participants. Chant explained how medical experts had arrived at the decision that schools should remain open, at least for now. She was compelling.
"I took it as a pitch to our civic duty," one principal said. "A recognition that we had the autonomy to make our own call, but to be aware that the call we made had implications well beyond our own borders too."
The principals asked questions. And they told Chant that, from their perspective, the biggest risk to the cohesion of their school communities – and their own leadership on COVID-19 – was parents who were medical professionals, but neither pandemic experts nor privy to the full picture of information on which decisions were based. They were demanding health authorities change their course of action, creating panic and uncertainty within their parent bodies.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian (right) and NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant (left).Credit: AAP
"Experts did their modelling based on facts and what we know about how pandemics spread in
different conditions," one of those on the call told the Herald. "But the thing that modelling has not accounted for is fear."
They also told the ministers that they could do classroom learning, or online learning, but not both.
The following day, the heads contacted their school communities to tell them about Chant's advice and explain why they had chosen to stay open. While many Victorian schools rushed to close their doors, few in NSW followed, due to that Sunday night call.
"Whatever my own views on the topic are, I believe we are in a time where listening to one considered voice is important," Reddam House co-principal Dee Pitcairn wrote in a letter to parents. "For me, those are the voices of Scott Morrison and [Chief Health Officer] Brendan Murphy."
Most of those that did close in NSW were smaller schools, such as a Buddhist school in Parramatta and Alpha Omega College. Pymble Ladies College was the largest to break ranks, running an online program while keeping its campus open for students who had to attend. PLC's decision angered many independent school heads, who felt it had acted in its own interests rather than for the collective.
The consensus was threatened again days later when, on the Wednesday, NSW Catholic systemic schools signalled they would close their physical campuses and begin online learning, taking several Catholic independent schools with them.
Association of Independent Schools of NSW chief executive Geoff Newcombe.
That drew more significant intervention; the next morning Prime Minister Scott Morrison telephoned Sydney's Catholic Archbishop, Anthony Fisher, who then wrote to Catholic bishops and school leaders insisting they follow federal government advice and remain open.
In calls to both Catholic and independent sector leaders, Morrison mentioned that the federal government paid their bills. It was a veiled threat: toe the line or risk your funding. Through a mixture of persuasion, threat and leadership, the three school sectors managed by the end of that third week in March what so many have accused them of failing to achieve in the past – unity.
But while non-government leaders were persuaded to follow a single message from the nation's top health experts, pressure was mounting on the government elsewhere. Teachers were becoming increasingly anxious about their own health, especially as many in the public system did not have access to the protective measures that private schools were able to summon quickly, such as extra sanitiser stations; some did not even have soap and were running out of paper towels and toilet paper.
They were also increasingly resentful about one of the key messages coming out of governments: that schools had to stay open to look after the children of healthcare workers, who were doing an important job. By implication, a teacher's job was not important; they were being asked to self-sacrifice too, with no acknowledgment. One senior education bureaucrat believed authorities blew their chance to get teachers onside from the beginning. "They should have said thank you. It quickly became too late."
For a workforce that has had its goodwill eroded by ever-increasing levels of disrespect from the wider community over many years, it was hard to swallow. "I hate that we are being sacrificed to keep nurses working," one teacher said.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, national Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on March 13.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
By the end of that week, teachers unions from the public and private sectors were stepping up their pressure on governments, particularly the NSW government, to create a situation in which teachers, especially older and vulnerable ones, could work from home, as everyone else was being told to do.
In the end, it was Premier Gladys Berejiklian who made the call to effectively shut schools.
Her government was worried. There was the Ruby Princess debacle, in which cruise passengers with COVID-19 were allowed to disembark and wander unchecked into the community. Thousands of people gathered at Bondi Beach on a 35 degree day, ignoring social distancing advice. Pressure from teachers was intensifying, although there was no direct threat of industrial action. Then, last Sunday morning, Victoria announced it would bring school holidays – which were due two weeks earlier than in NSW – forward.
With NSW becoming the country's coronavirus epicentre, Berejiklian decided to move.
At the urging of the NSW and Victorian premiers, national cabinet was brought forward to last Sunday night. On the question of school closures, Morrison could not be persuaded; as long as the medical experts said it was safe, schools should remain open.
So Berejiklian settled on a position that would not directly flout the authority of the national cabinet, but still achieve what she wanted; schools would technically be open, but parents were urged to keep students at home and all learning would be done online. Her public reasoning was that schools might as well go online, given a quarter of parents were already keeping their children home.
Within days of the Premier's announcement, absentee rates reached almost 90 per cent. "What Gladys could not achieve by way of a policy, she got by persuasion," an education executive close to the negotiations said. "They have a view inside NSW cabinet that the national response is lagging. But if you identified the messiest part of the [COVID-19 response], it's around schools. The ambiguity has been allowed to linger too long."
For now, schools remain open to those who have no option but to send their children, but fewer and fewer are attending each day. The NSW Teachers Federation wants a bigger shutdown so that only children of frontline healthcare workers may attend. The Prime Minister, who tried so hard to keep schools open, has now acknowledged they are likely to shut after Easter.
Many teachers were relieved by the NSW government's response, worried about their own health and those they love. So were many parents, who gained the go-ahead to keep their kids at home. Many frontline health workers believe it was the right decision to stop the spread of the disease. But some families have also been thrust into financial hardship by the pressure to choose between looking after their children and their jobs, as industries continue to shut down with no sign of reopening and job losses continue. Many are also worried about how they will sustain working and home-schooling for six months.
There is also deep concern about how the state's most vulnerable students will be affected not only by a potential pause in learning, if they have neither the technology nor the support at home, but also by the loss of the care and safety they find at school.
Berejiklian's decision scotched cross-sector co-operation. Despite her bureaucrats and ministers having gone to great lengths to explain the strong reasons to keep schools open and to convince the non-government sector to stay on a single, scientifically based message one week, she abandoned it the next.
Some of the private school principals who rallied after the phone hook-up are angry. "I had staked so much of the school's position on the fact we would follow the advice of the NSW Chief Medical Officer," one said. "Then we had what was, by my understanding, a political decision."
Another felt betrayed. "I don't understand how anybody can say, 'I note that the medical advice is this, but we're going to do something different'. How is that leadership? You can't expect loyalty then not show loyalty in return. I can no longer rely on health advice, because people keep changing their minds about what they do with it. I'll make my own decisions from now on."