Principal's Report
Are schools safe?
Over the past few weeks I have been talking a lot with our Department of Education Health and Wellbeing Key Contact about how we transition back into on-site learning this time around (no news on that front as yet). I posed the question to her 'How to we support children who have received the message that school is not a safe place for them?' As adults, we know that schools are safe places and that they pose a very low risk from Covid-19. They are controllable environments where we know who is on-site, where everyone is and have strong hygiene practices in place that we are able to enforce regularly. My concern was around the image that children may have created that schools are currently unsafe.
If we think about it from their perspective, the year began as normal, then we had a time where 'school was not safe' (Remote Learning v1) then we all came back and parents were not able to be on-site, we had staggered drop off and pick up times etc. Then the school holidays happened and we have not been back since because 'school is not safe'.
For some of our students, the time to return to school will be a daunting one as they are being asked to return to the 'unsafe place'. Most of our students transitioned back during Term 2 with little or no concern, however, a few did struggle.
In my discussions around supporting student wellbeing through the return to school period, we look at the reality of the situation and how we need to work with children to shape their perception of school so that it matches the reality of school.
We talked about what are the key messages that we would want children to understand about coming back to school, which they will do whether it is at the start of Term 4, or somewhere a little later than that. I would ask all families keep the following talking points in mind when discussing why students are not at school currently and when talking about transitioning back to school.
- Schools have always been safe places. There are adults at school who are there to care for you and look after you.
- The reason that we cannot go to school right not is not because Covid-19 might be at your school, that is is stopping people moving around as much as possible. This is something to keep everyone safe.
- Your teacher knows just how hard you have been working at home and is ready to help you learn more things when you can be back at school.
- There will be lots of time at school to play with your friends, we know you have missed them.
It will be expected that while a lot of students will be taking things in their stride as they return to school, it is vital that you make contact with your classroom teacher before your child comes back to school if you feel they are not coping with the transition back to school.
PE or Sport?
Bonny Chisholm has asked me to share the following article with you all. It poses the often asked question is it PE or Sport? Before reading the article you may like to have the discussion with your children around their thoughts on do they do PE or Sport.
2021 Planning
If you have a younger sibling yet to enrol at Marlborough for 2021 I would ask that you please download an enrolment form from our website and email it to either the office or myself as soon as possible. We are currently working through our planning for 2021 and knowing our likely enrolment numbers across the school plays a major part in this work.