Coronavirus: Private schools ahead of the shutdown game

Teachers from Alpha Omega College in Auburn teach their kids online as students stay home due to the COVID-19 virus. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

As parliament refuses to seriously consider virtual sittings, and most state’s public schools remain open to all, private schools are successfully moving to online learning systems, ensuring their students continue learning, but without the risks posed by mass gatherings at school. Risks for students transmitting the coronavirus, indeed risks for teachers.

Private schools have been ahead of the game throughout this coronavirus crisis, despite criticism from government’s along the way.

Criticism which has been more than a little pointy.

It started when the virus was still seen as a China problem only.

As Wuhan locked down and the world looked on, many private schools moved to ban returning students and parents from attending until after they had spent 14 days in self-isolation. This was well before the government had even banned flights from China, and we were an early adopter compared to many other nations when it came to doing that.

The self-isolation demand by private schools for incoming students and parents was criticised at the time by the education minister Dan Tehan as over the top and unnecessary. Ponder that reaction from where we all sit now: locked down in our houses as this virus continues to spread.

From that time many private schools began quietly working on their online learning systems: planning for the worst, all the while hoping for the best.

Eventually, the private schools that had the capability to move to online learning management systems (LMS) started doing so one by one. As the dangers of the spreading virus became more apparent. This included my daughters’ school. I have to say having watched them this week learning from home via various means, the capability has been extraordinary. And the forward planning is obvious.

I have long taught online course for universities, and I completed an online Master of Commerce too, but I didn’t think the systems could be adapted so effectively for children.

Yet this week alone I have watched my girls doing physical education online, continue their music classes, including playing their instruments in one-on-one tutorials, and participate in classroom discussions led by their teachers using Zoom. All the while also being assigned “homework”, which I had a bit of a laugh at, and completing assignments during individual learning time. They have been in their school sports uniforms, to ensure that the experience is seen appropriately as school time. They have also been regularly in contact with their friends, via FaceTime and other means, when doing group work.

Of course the isolation isn’t easy in other respects, and as a parent I feel for what they are missing out on. But the system is working and working well.

It is worth remembering what happened to private schools when, just like travel bans on incoming students from China, they moved first to online teaching. The announcements were met with more political criticism. The Prime Minister, according to the head of the independent schools association in a letter he sent to Principals, reminded him that private schools had certain obligations when receiving government funding. I took that as an implied funding threat. The NSW Premier came out and strongly criticised her state’s private schools for their actions, before the backflip we have seen since.

Fast forward to today and the state system continues to scramble to match these online learning systems, and the NSW Premier is now advising parents to keep their kids at home — even in cases where schools don’t have online learning systems up and running at all. And we now know the NSW education minister has been arguing internally for weeks that public schools should close, as told to me by one of her cabinet colleagues.

In Victoria state schools have already closed early ahead of school holidays. In the ACT they have gone pupil free. Other states will no doubt soon follow.

This is not a criticism of public schools being slow to move, or indeed politicians making different decisions from state to state to the decisions private schools have made.

One size rarely fits all, something the Prime Minister should perhaps reflect on from time to time. And public schools face challenges private schools often do not, or at least not to the same extent anyway. Private schools, generally speaking, have higher capabilities because of their better resourcing and more wealthy parent bodies.

And the challenges in a public policy sense for public schools is greater when it comes to the demographic mix of parents: cohorts of essential workers, family cohesion, you name it.

But just because the public schools and the politicians deserve some understanding for being behind the eight ball when it comes to transitioning their learning environments to the new world, that is no justification for them lashing out, as they did, and attacking private schools for getting it right. Indeed for doing what was right by their school communities from their better positioned vantage points. Especially when some of the politicians doing so were happily keeping their kids home.

While we can be understanding about public schools and the challenges they must overcome to embrace virtual teaching, no such understanding can be had for the parliament not stepping up as private schools have. Indeed as universities, TAFE and many businesses have. Parliament has all the capacity and capability it needs to go virtual, which is why so many political scientists are critical of their decision to indefinitely end parliamentary sittings.

Peter van Onselen is political editor for Network 10 and professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University