Kia ora e te whānau

Now that the announcement has been made to move to COVID -19 Alert level 3, Monday 27 April, we can roll up our sleeves to prepare for schools to re-open Wednesday 29 April.

I want to congratulate all of you for your response so far. You have faced the challenges of distance learning for your young people compassionately, calmly and with energy and creativity. You have kept the wellbeing of your tamariki and parent communities front and centre. In all your planning and in executing your plans, you have considered the whole child and the whole family.

You have also extended your care and concern for your teaching and support staff, pulled them together to collaborate and share their ideas, whilst also being considerate of their own personal circumstances.

I couldn’t feel prouder to be part of a profession that at its heart, wants to make a positive difference; wants to make a meaningful contribution to help grow our nation’s young people into humane, kind, creative and resilient adults.

Yesterday the Prime Minister set us a challenge. She called us to leadership. This is our time. This is the time we bring our compassionate leadership, our thoughtful and adaptive leadership. This is the time our country needs us to make our contribution.

Through this Principal Matters newsletter, I want to raise with you several key messages that are important for you to keep ‘front and centre’ as you plan for your physical school site to reopen. These ideas are by no means exhaustive and represent some important practice-based perspectives that it is important to know.

Remember Alert level 3 is not intended for mass return to school. It is specifically for children who NEED to be at school, not for those who can continue to work on their home learning plans under adult supervision at home as they are now. Make your messaging to your community crystal clear about this expectation. Remind them that every child able to learn from home enables the school to work with reduced numbers and therefore supports the capacity to implement social distancing.

Be aware that there are many reasons why a child might need to attend. For many this will be to enable a parent to attend to work. We note a reported increase in family violence over the lockdown period. Make it a goal to be proactive about contacting and inviting attendance for those young people that need to attend so that they may be provided with support and oversight particularly at this time of continued lockdown.

It is good practice to establish a level 3 roll that details those expected to attend school and those learning from home. Remember to communicate to your community the requirement for you to have certainty about who is returning to school and who is learning from home. Inform parents that you would like a firm commitment one way or the other so that you can establish the planning needed to operationalise a restart. Again, the clarity of your communication with your community is key.

We are keen to see clear advice from the Ministry of Education about situations where the anticipated numbers of students returning cannot be supported initially within the 1:10 staffing to pupil ratio required of bubbles. Principals need to know what to do in such a situation.

Some of the issues not yet clear include whether children may be added to that level 3 roll and if so with what regularity; whether students can learn from home and at school in a hybrid approach informed by a parent’s work schedule; how to manage ORS children who might require toileting; the expectation around students who have behaviours that pose a risk to health and safety; managing food provision for children; managing health and safety expectations on school transport; teachers and support staff managing their own children who may attend multiple schools; the management of siblings within school that may be spread across multiple bubbles; expectations for travel to and from school particularly for working parents who are unable to drop off and pick up at the designated school start and finish times.

There are many more which I will not address today. The Ministry of Education is working hard to give us as much clarity as they are able.

Let’s continue to breathe deeply and recognise the complexity of the work we are doing. Let’s also continue to acknowledge our Ministry of Education who have been working at pace for an extended period of time to provide information and support to us. 

Please be aware the robust guidelines to aid health and safety planning is pending and will be issued shortly.

We look forward to further and ongoing advice from the Ministry of Education. This is a busy time for us requiring us to absorb information, activate planning and network widely.

Finally, don’t forget to deploy your rightful responsibility to be chief ‘number eight fencing wire’ expert in your school. There are many questions that will come to mind at this time that don’t need to be asked because the answer lies in the practice of deploying some good old-fashioned common sense.

You are in charge. The job is to get the young people who need to attend back to school whilst enacting public health protocols.

Let’s get the job done!

Ngā manaakitanga

Perry Rush
perry@nzpf.ac.nz