Students return to remote learning

No time to waste: Schools across the state were forced to move to remote learning following the lockdown announcement. photograph tom gannon

By TOM GANNON

SCHOOLS across the state have been forced to make the move back to remote learning within a matter of hours after Premier Daniel Andrews announced a five-day lockdown for the state at 5pm on Thursday.

Despite the short notice, schools in the Latrobe Valley say they are handling the quick transition well and that the previous four lockdowns have definitely taught them a thing or two.

The continuous rise in cases puts schools in further doubt that they will even be able to return to face-to-face learning this week.

Kurnai College Morwell Campus principal Dan Swallow said teachers had moved quickly to get provisions in place for the three days of remote learning.

“Certainly a late announcement complicates things but I think we’re now very used to what needs to happen and I’ve been meeting with our teachers this morning and they’re all moving very quickly to get things as in place as they can be,” he told The Express.

“Thankfully the five days includes the weekend which means we are only trying to provide three days of learning.”

Although Mr Swallow said the late lockdown announcement complicated things, acting off rumours of the lockdown circulating in the media had made a significant difference.

“There wasn’t really an opportunity to be frantic because the announcement was made at 5 o’clock, we had ideas like everyone else beforehand that it was coming and we made some very basic plans around it like telling students and staff to take everything home that they might need just in case regional Victoria was included,” he said.

Unfortunately the snap lockdown has placed extra pressure and stress on senior school students, some of which were preparing for assessments early this week.

“It’s going to add some extra difficulties, if not some extra strain to them (VCE students), there were outcomes that were due to be delivered at the start of next week,” he said.

“Our VCE theatre studies class was supposed to be doing their performance assessment at the start of next week so those sorts of things are inevitable delays that occur out of this and that will be very stressful for those students.”