Schools pass Covid tests with flying colours

The past year has thrown up many additional challenges, particularly for boarding houses, but they’ve managed to overcome all of them.

Schools and students moved quickly to embrace home learning during various state lockdowns. Picture: Getty Images

After one of Westminster School in Adelaide’s boarding staff tested positive to Covid-19 in July, more than 95 per cent of its teachers were plunged into quarantine.

The early learning to Year 12 school had been preparing to return to online learning during South Australia’s latest lockdown but it became an exposure site when the staffer attended a professional development training day with the majority of the school’s 180 teachers.

Principal Simon Shepherd says the school was left with seven teachers who were not sent into mandatory isolation, all initially restricted to their homes for 14 days.

“We had staff teaching while in quarantine online and trying to get testing – some spending up to 14 hours to get tested – while the state was in lockdown,” he says.

“We worked with SA Health to provide lots and lots of information.

“Despite the fact they were all queuing for Covid tests, our staff managed to get online learning that day. There was no hiatus.”

Health authorities assessed the risks to staff and with progressive testing, allowed some to leave their quarantine conditions.

Just in the nick of time, the school was able to field sufficient teaching staff to operate effectively almost as soon as the lockdown was lifted in mid-July and by early August all teachers were back from quarantine.

And all this with no spread of Covid.

“It was incredible,” Shepherd says.

As this was happening, a dozen boarders remained in the boarding house. There had been no contact with the staff member who tested positive to Covid-19.

Westminster’s experience highlights the challenges and logistics schools – and in particular boarding houses – have had to overcome over the past year.

Snap lockdowns and state border closures have meant some boarding houses have had to stay open to accommodate students who have not seen their families abroad for almost two years. Some have closed for short periods. Others have reconfigured their boarding houses to comply with social-distancing requirements.

Australian Boarding Schools Association chief executive Richard Stokes says the pandemic and restrictions to reduce its spread have created enormous challenges for the sector over the past 18 months.

These include border crossing arrangements for students who live and board in different states, notably across NSW and Victoria. During times of restrictions they have had to stay at their schools or apply for specific arrangements to return after isolating at home.

“There is a national guidance about border crossings and kids going back to school but the states take no notice,” Stokes says.

“When they say, ‘OK, back to school tomorrow’, there is no consideration of the fact that we have to think about whether kids should be wearing masks because they’re in an institution or whether they shouldn’t be because they are at home.”

Stokes praised the boarding leaders for their information sharing and agility during the lockdowns, some of which meant students were being asked to leave or return to the boarding house within a day.

Overcoming the challenges of Covid-19 is the latest hurdle for a sector that has been part of Australia’s education landscape for almost 200 years.

Across Australia more than 20,000 students live at one of 202 boarding schools, a figure that has held roughly over the past decade. Almost one-third are in Queensland, with another quarter in NSW and Victoria.

About seven of every 10 students at boarding schools are from regional areas, while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and international students represent smaller groups.

There are boarding schools to suit all niches: from big-city establishment schools in Sydney to a community-owned school for boarders on the Tiwi Islands, agricultural schools for country kids, and a one-year transition school for 22 children from remote families in Northern Territory communities across Arnhem Land, the Tiwi Islands, the Victoria Daly region and the Roper Gulf region.

Some boarding schools offer specific programs for international students or facilities for creative arts, while the Australian Ballet boarding school is for elite athletes.

Boarding schools have long moved on from the Roald Dahl-esque descriptions of the past, with a strong focus on pastoral care and wellbeing.

Advocates point to the social and educational benefits of boarding as well as increased personal independence for students.

A supervisor oversees study at Presbyterian Ladies College.

A 2015 longitudinal study of 12 high schools found equivalent outcomes for day students and boarders in terms of education and social outcomes.

“However, where significant effects emerged, they tended to favour boarders,” the study says. “Unlike historical accounts of predominantly negative experiences of attending boarding school, the current study found no such negative effects on outcomes measured.”

A separate 2015 research paper of students in eight Western Australian schools found the transition to boarding school was harder emotionally on parents than it was for students.

Knox Grammar School deputy headmaster Phillip O’Regan says throughout the Covid-19 disruptions they expanded the program to boarders locked down in their homes.

“We’ve tried to reflect the routine of the house as much as we can,” he says.

Boarders do additional online sessions with their peers, academic tutors and a support specialist. These include daily physical activities, social catch-ups and wellbeing checks.

A Hong Kong-based boarding student who has attended school remotely for 18 months is Zoomed in for assemblies – “we set him up in the front row” – and there are additional sessions to connect with him.

A group of Papua New Guinean girls at Rockhampton Girls Grammar School have had the opposite experience and have not been home since early 2020.

“They have been strong and so resilient,” principal Deanne Johnston says. “We’re talking about 15- and 16-year-old girls who haven’t seen their families now for 18 months.”

For some boarders at Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Sydney, the current lockdown means they will be boarding temporarily and doing their final exams at their sister school, PLC Armidale.

Their exam experience will include Covid tests, antigen tests, masks, social distancing and staggered exam times.