19 May 2020
Yesterday marked the return of students from Preschool, K-2, Years 7, 11 and 12 across ACT public schools.
We visited Erindale College and Southern Cross Early Childhood school yesterday to ask how students felt returning to school.
At Erindale, students were overwhelmingly positive. It was natural to see students happy to again see their friends, there was a vision of relief as students moved together.
One student expressed his relief to be back at school: “I didn’t know how hard it was to learn from home.”
Another was clear on the goals she had set and her desire to achieve them and most said “It’s so much better to be back.”
On the other side of town pre-school and years K-2 were back. There was much chatter and play and smiles, the basics of childhood seemed to be complete. One parent said her son was a little, anxious so she arranged a play date with friends on the weekend. The social warm-up seemed to do the trick!
There were many lovely stories from schools about the special way students were welcomed back onto school grounds. Canberra High School had their school captains record a welcome back video and ukulele song for the year seven students and even had students volunteer from their senior leadership program to welcome the year 7 students back to make sure they had a good first day.
Attendance figures from yesterday vary from school to school but of the students expected to be on site yesterday, we had approximately a 90% and above attendance rate across most schools.