A safe return to school

Good morning everyone. I hope that this finds you and your family safe and well. Last Friday was an important day for schools, teachers, students and families with regard to what the NSW Government’s plan for a safe return to face to face teaching looks like. My apologies in advance for the longer than usual information provided in this principal message. I’m sure you will understand the need to communicate this plan as clearly as I am able and that sometimes this is difficult to do in a brief form.

On Friday the Premier and Education Minister announced two potential pathways by which students may return to school. Both pathways will be based upon whether NSW Health ‘stay at home orders’ (lockdowns) are lifted or are still in place leading up to October 25. I’ve summarised these below:

Pathway 1

Currently, the Hunter region has stay at home orders in place until midnight on Friday 10 September. We will not know until closer to this date whether the stay at home orders will be lifted or extended. Under this first pathway, if at any stage NSW Health deems it is safe to lift these stay at home orders at any stage between 10 September and 25 October, then all students K-6 and staff will return on the next scheduled day for school - face to face. This will be a full return for all cohorts to schools, with reduced mingling and on-site activities.

In this instance, the school will operate under Level 3 operational guidelines which include the following restrictions:

• No non-essential visitors to school sites
• Face masks required of all staff in both indoor and outdoor settings
• Primary school students will be encouraged to wear face masks to school (though not mandatory)
• Parents and carers must remain outside of school grounds for drop-off and pick-up of children
• Canteens can operate with appropriate hygiene measures and a Covid safe plan
• OSHC services continue to provide before and after school care for those that require it
• Uniform stores must operate online
• Choir, band and cross-cohort sport is not permitted
• No school assemblies
• No scripture or ethics classes
• No excursions, camps or field trips
  

Pathway 2

If it becomes necessary that our region remains under stay at home orders up until the 25 October, students and staff will return to school for face to face teaching in a staged way. If these stay at home rules are still in place, other community vaccination and transmission conditions must be met first for the staged return to occur.  This is a staggered return for prioritised cohorts, with no mingling or on-site activities.

Students will return to face-to-face learning with NSW Health-approved COVID-safe settings on school sites in the following order:

•  from 25 October – Kindergarten and Year 1
•  from 1 November – Years 2, 6 and 11
•  from 8 November – Years 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

If by some poor fortune our area is still under stay at home orders and pathway 2 becomes the plan for return, there will naturally be some implications for those families with children who attend school across the cohorts. A family could potentially have 1 sibling return to school on 25 October with others to return in the 2 weeks after which would present a number of challenges.

We are awaiting further advice on this potential scenario, but rest assured, as has always been the case no students will be turned away from school. The pathway that will apply to us, will be determined on NSW Health advice, but fingers crossed that local cases of transmission stay low and the stay at home orders are lifted well before October 25.

We will provide regular updates through Skoolbag as ongoing advice is received. Once again, the most update advice is found of the NSW Education – Advice for Families page.

In the safe return to school plan, you may also be interested to learn that it will now be mandatory for all school staff to be fully vaccinated by 8 November. Vaccination is a very contentious and emotive issue for some members of the public and this decision for school staff to be fully vaccinated has not been taken lightly. The basic premise is that the best thing that we can do for the young people in the schools we serve, is to protect them through vaccination. You may be pleased to hear that many of the Lambton PS staff have already had their first jab and several, including myself have had 2 jabs and already meet these new requirements. For us it was an easy decision to keep ourselves, our families and our school and students safe.

At least two more weeks

The Premier’s announcement last Thursday morning, whilst not entirely unexpected, may have caused many hearts to sink just a little bit, including students, parents and teachers’ hearts. Learning from home is tough on all parties and I believe we all feel that education is best when it is face to face. As you would know, part of our process is for teachers to attempt to call each family at least once per week to touch base and check-in.

Over the past week, the teachers have shared with me some of the heart wrenching conversations they have had with a number of you about just how challenging it is to keep your children on track at home, motivated, engaged and to still juggle the other important responsibilities you have as parents or carers. Please know that we understand and can genuinely empathise with how you are feeling. Many of our staff are parents ourselves with our own children learning from home. Sometimes small ‘wins’ are much bigger than we realise in the moment that they occur.

Please don’t let guilt, stress or worries get the better of you through this period of learning from home. I am sure that no matter how you are feeling, you are not alone. Your struggles are not because you are not doing enough. They are not because you are doing a poor job. They are the result of an unprecedented set of circumstances. Your children will be seeing your strength, your persistence, your supportive care for them and learning even more from you than we can assign them from the curriculum. Don’t underestimate your success.

Following the announcement of the extended lockdown, a colleague shared with me a Facebook post from a school principal currently working in the Blacktown LGA. They have articulated the most important messages for their community far better than I ever could. I hope that you don’t mind, but I’ve shared their message in full, further on in today’s newsletter. I hope you find it as encouraging as I did.

NAPLAN and the impact of LFH

You may have seen in the media last week, encouraging reports based on 2021 NAPLAN results which highlighted that despite the interruptions to learning in the last 18 months due to Covid-19, students have not ‘gone backwards’ but have actually maintained their learning. The national testing authority ACARA released this specific statement last week: “The global COVID-19 pandemic has had no significant impact on students’ literacy and numeracy achievement at the national or state/territory level, according to the NAPLAN 2021 summary information released today”. NSW Education Minister, Sarah Mitchell, added “Once again, NSW students are achieving above the national average in all five domains, at all year levels”. Given the challenges faced over the past 18 months, this is encouraging news indeed.

I received copies of our students’ individual results through the online portal this week. Although the initial data looks positive for our school, comparison and trend data is yet to be released that will better help me analyse how our school as a whole has progressed since the last NAPLAN testing period in 2019. When I have had an opportunity to analyse it more thoroughly, I hope to be able to share with you some general information about our school’s results across the areas tested. For now, and in the midst of our current predicament, please be encouraged by this news that students literacy and numeracy progress has not been impacted significantly by the previous disruptions. The extent of the current disruption will obviously remain unknown for some time.

Parent Feedback and Q&A Zoom

I offered an opportunity at the beginning of this period of learning from home (Week 5) for our families to touch base with me and ask questions via a Zoom meeting. The feedback I received about this session was really encouraging, but also helpful in getting a better understanding of the concerns that parents had heading in to LFH. Now that we are 3 weeks into LFH with at least another 2 weeks ahead of us, I’d like to offer you another opportunity to check-in and provide any further feedback that you feel would be helpful in understanding how the procedures and routines that we currently have in place are working, or potentially how they are not working. The Zoom is scheduled for Monday afternoon at 3:30pm. 

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 640 6899 9502

Passcode: 550764

The Executive team members will also be joining me and are able to assist with answering questions about all aspects of learning from home. Unfortunately, the Department’s access to Zoom limits the recording of school Zoom sessions, mostly for child protection reasons. However, similar to the last Q&A, I will endeavour to release a summary of the questions asked and answered via Skoolbag and the newsletter for those unable to join this session.

We appreciate the opportunity to understand what LFH looks like for different families and the chance to touch base with those able to join us.

Have a great week.

David Holland

Congratulations to the following students who were awarded Junior and Senior Students of the Week for their work during Week 7.

A reminder to all families that for teachers to confirm that students are participating in and engaging with learning from home material, there needs to be evidence of completed work samples. For some students, this is the work that is completed and uploaded in the Google Classroom itself, for those working on hard copies, this will be returned LFH work booklets (hard copies). It may even be a combination of both. Please ensure, regardless of how many tasks your child completes that you still submit ALL work that is completed. We understand that not everyone can easily scan and upload completed work, but one tip we can offer is to take a photo of completed work on a phone or iPad and upload the photo. If it is completed hard copies, please return these (with your child’s full name and class on it) to our staff that are supervising the tables in the Armstrong Street carpark during our drop-off/collection windows each Friday and Monday. We need these back straight after the students have completed them in order to make informed decisions about their attendance and participation in learning from home. 

When teachers are checking in with families via the weekly phone call, some of you have indicated that it is taking your child quite a while to get through some assigned tasks. From Week 9 onwards, the teachers will try to assist you further by putting a time estimate next to each task as a guide for how long a task should approximately take. Please use this as a guide. If your child is taking a lot longer to complete a specific task in comparison with the guide, please have them move on to the next task and submit whatever they did complete in the time they worked on it. It is quite common in the classroom for students not to complete a task before needing to move on to the next learning activity. If they finish other tasks early and want to double-back to complete the unfinished task that is OK too, but please feel free to submit partially completed tasks when applicable. 

Dear Parents,

You might be inclined to create a minute-by minute schedule for your kids. You have high hopes of hours of learning, including online activities, science experiments, and book reports. You'll limit technology until everything is done? But here's the thing .....

Our kids are just as scared as we are right now. Our kids can not only hear everything that is going on around them, but they feel our constant tension and anxiety. They have never experienced anything like this before.  Although the idea of being off school for weeks sounds awesome, they are probably picturing a fun time like summer break, not the reality of being trapped at home and not seeing their friends. 

Over the coming weeks,  you will see an increase in behaviour issues with your kids. Whether it's anxiety, or anger  or protest they can't do things normally - it will happen.  You''ll see more meltdowns, tantrums and oppositional behaviour in the coming weeks.  This is normal and expected under these circumstances. 

What kids need right now is to be feel comforted and loved.  To feel like it's all going to be ok.  And that might mean that you tear up that perfect schedule and love on your kid's a bit more. Play outside and go for walks. Bake cookies and paint pictures. Play board games and watch movies. Do a science experiment together or find virtual field trips of the zoo. Start a book and read together as a family. Snuggle under warm blankets and do nothing. 

Don't worry about them regressing at school. Every single child is in the same boat and they all will be ok. When we are back in the classroom we will all course correct and meet them where they are. Teachers are experts at this! Don't pick fights with your kids because they don't want to do maths. Don't scream at your kids for not  following the schedule.  Don't mandate 2 hours of learning time if they are resisting it. 

If I can leave you with one thing, it's this: at the end of all this, your child's mental health will be more important than their academic skills. And how they felt during this time will stay with them long after the memory of what they did during those weeks is long gone.  So, keep that in mind, every single day. 

We encourage you to continue to monitor the Advice for Families information on NSW DoE website regarding keeping children at home wherever possible. If you are finding that you require further support for learning at home, please contact us. We are happy to support you and your child to engage in this important requirement to help keep our students, staff and families safe and well.

The following information is current and directly from the Advice for Families page of the Department of Education’s public website:

• Parents and carers must keep children – across primary and secondary school – at home unless they need to be at school. Schools and outside of school hours care (OOSHC) services are open for any child that needs it.
• Schools will have minimal supervision on site for those students who cannot be educated at home, for example if their parent or carer is an essential worker.
• If you are working from home, and your child is able to be educated from home, please keep them at home.

Thank you for working with us. The intent of the message is quite clear.  The exceptions to learning from home are for children of essential workers or where a child would otherwise be in an unsafe or vulnerable situation. If in doubt please contact Mr Holland at school to talk it through. As always, your cooperation and support is appreciated.

 https://education.nsw.gov.au/inside-the-department/covid-19/advice-for-school-based-staff/level-4-plus-schools

As announced at the Premier’s press conference on Thursday 19 August, stay at home rules apply to all regional NSW school until midnight on 10 September. Parents and carers must keep children at home unless they need to be at school. Schools and outside of school hours care (OOSHC) services are open for any child that needs it.

NSW Health current advice requires all staff must wear a face mask or covering at all times including when working outdoors in all schools operating under Level 4 restrictions – this includes in playgrounds and on school grounds. While at school, masks or face coverings are required in all indoor settings for all students in Year 7 and above. Primary aged students are not required to wear a face masks, but will be supported to do so if they wish. 

Non-essential visitors are not permitted on school sites. Parents and carers must follow their school’s advice regarding changes to student drop off and pick up. This includes staying in the car when dropping off and picking up children if it is safe to do so. This does not apply to drop off and pick up from outside of school hours care (OOSHC) as sign in and out procedures are required.

Parents should:

• follow the physical distancing advice for their local area and avoid gathering outside of school gates

• remain outside of school grounds

• adhere to mask-wearing requirements and sign in using the Service NSW QR code when entering the school.

• Early childhood services including outside of school hours care (OOSHC) can continue to operate for those who need it
• Families are to be encouraged  to keep their children at home wherever possible but no child will be turned away from school
• Implement revised roll marking procedures incorporating use of “F” for students participating in learning from home
• Minimum staff on-site to oversee one unit of learning for students attending school site, noting that flexible syllabus requirements are in place
• Kindergarten orientation and transition activities are recommended to be delayed until later in Term 3 or early Term 4
• Canteens and uniform stores are not to operate
• No community use arrangements
• No community language schools
• No multicultural celebrations
• Continued enhanced cleaning and hygiene supply arrangements
• No SRE/SEE/VSA
• No P&C activities on school sites