Coronavirus: Class is out as Victoria sits its giant test on home schooling

Almost 1.2m Victorian students have embarked on the nation’s biggest home schooling experiment as day one of term two opened with near-empty classrooms.

Teacher Georgia Smart with a mixed Prep to Grade 2 class of children of essential services workers at Elsternwick Primary School on Wednesday. Picture: David Geraghty

Almost 1.2 million Victorian students embarked on the nation’s biggest home schooling experiment on Wednesday as day one of term two opened with near-empty classrooms throughout the state. Elsternwick Primary School in the bayside suburb of Brighton welcomed just 21 students, instead of the enrolled 500, as only essential services workers dropped their kids off.

“It certainly feels historic and really quite different,” said principal Michael Portaro.

Meanwhile, parents juggled makeshift home offices with temporary classrooms in kitchens and bedrooms as Victoria’s preps to Year 12s became Australia’s first students forced into mass remote learning by the coronavirus pandemic.

The success or failure of the historic move in Victoria is likely to prove crucial in how other states handle education when students return from holidays later this month.

In the eastern Melbourne suburb of Nunawading, Stephanie Gear is helping her three daughters adjust to the new schooling regime. “Teaching is a job and being a parent is another job and it’s really challenging trying to have all the hats on at the same time to do each job well,” she said.

Elsternwick Primary School is running three classes based on an eight-student-per-staff-member ratio with a 10-person limit per room and collaborative learning; shared workspaces and pencil boxes have been exchanged for physically distanced desks.

Mr Portaro said some of the five-year-old students had been a little disconcerted when their parents hadn’t walked into class with them but the day had gone smoothly. “There’s that feeling of the unknown, for what lies ahead, when they walked into a classroom and there’s a teacher at the door with hand sanitiser giving them a squirt,” he said.

Term two began in the Education State on Wednesday, with the vast majority of more than one million public school students and 145,000 independent students learning remotely.

Teachers and classrooms were replaced by parents and screens as Premier Daniel Andrews urged parents to keep their kids home in the face of conflicted advice offered by Scott Morrison.

State Education Minister James Merlino said physical attendance was very low across the state, with parents heeding official advice. “A small number of schools had no children attend at all and operated entirely remotely,” he said.

Jane Plunkett and Matthew Zbaracki with their home-schooling children Emma and Oliver at home in Montmorency. Picture: Aaron Francis

Australian Education Union Victorian president Meredith Pearce said despite some issues with technology, overall the first day of statewide remote learning had gone smoothly.

“Overall it’s gone relatively well given it's such a different way of operating,” she said.

Independent Schools Victoria chief executive Michelle Green applauded schools for stepping up to the challenge of remote learning, which she said was unsustainable in the long term.

“We agree with the Prime Minister that face-to-face classroom teaching in dynamic school communities is the best way to deliver education,” she said.

As the head of education at the Australian Catholic University, Matthew Zbaracki is perhaps a bit more comfortable with remote learning than other parents.

“I’m able to work from home and if I’m doing that, I think we can support what everyone’s trying to do to keep Australia safe,” he said.

Dr Zbaracki said he expected parents would struggle a little bit more with the transition to remote learning, with children more likely to miss their friends in the playground than fret about changes to learning environments.

“I think children are very resilient and I think adults struggle with it a little bit more,” he said.