A Principal’s reflections on Covid-19

Dr Burgis attended the Wuhan Opera House on 18 January 2020, thinking that the theatre was relatively empty.

These few paragraphs cover personal reflections on being a principal during a pandemic.

I remember sitting in the Wuhan Opera House on 18 January 2020, thinking that the theatre was relatively empty. The show before me was spectacular.

Acrobats flew through the vastness of space, riders blasted out of pools, propelled by water cannons. It was the age-old story of the good of the human community defeating individual power—the type of story the People’s Republic of China would applaud. The next morning I was at Wuhan International Airport. Even though the population of the city was over ten million people, the airport was all but empty. I had heard rumors of a terrible sickness whilst I was there, but my hosts from the Wuhan Australia School assured me that the Communist Government had everything in hand. When I returned to Sydney Dr David Lim, previous Chair of Council called me. ‘It is going to be big,’ he said. You should prepare for a pandemic. Dr and Mrs Lim had both been reading extensively on the virus and its impact on Wuhan. Their help over this whole period has been invaluable. I remember meeting with the Heads of Faculty. Their faces appeared both perplexed and unbelieving. It didn’t seem as if I was telling the truth! ‘We are going to need to prepare for potential online learning,‘ I said. I explained what I had learned to date and what the virus impact might be like. To their great credit they set straight to work. Our school was thus ready to go into online learning. PLC Sydney announced online learning a few days before Premier Berejiklian told our community that we would be going into lockdown. I was worried that we could have cases and potentially deaths. I think all school leaders felt the burden of the safety of their schools. Premier Berejikilian announced the lockdown on a Sunday. We had announced our move on the previous Friday. On the Saturday of that weekend I exchanged some difficult emails with colleagues who were principals. One in particular was quite angry with me. She thought the move to go online was unnecessary. Right or wrong, I had decided that I did not want to have a staff member with a preexisting condition catch the virus. We need to remember that we were worried that someone could die. I have to commend our Executive staff and our heads of faculty, heads of year and staff with particular responsibilities. They really worked hard to organise the school well and to make the girls feel secure. Our whole staff—teaching, professional support, and maintenance staff, all pitched in. We decided we were going to lead by communicating well. Even if people disagree with us, we thought they would be secure in knowing what we thought. We set up a ‘Covid tile’ on Places. Next we thought that we needed to support school businesses, so we opened up a page to allow our families to advertise. It was a great relief when we could return to school. I remember being here during the holidays with Mrs Chiba. We were measuring every room to check how many students could be in each classroom. A few days later we were told that there were no limits on the number of students in a room. This is what Covid-19 has been like: make a decision, find out more information and change the decision! Perhaps the epitome of this was the discussion we had about masks. I announced that we would mask our community. There was a strong push-back from our European medical and scientific community who said that the evidence suggests that masks don’t help. Our Asian community largely supported them. We ended up not going ahead at that time with mask-

wearing, but now they are mandatory in the school.

Year 12/2020 did exceptionally well under the circumstances. When we went into lockdown I went to their Common Room where they had set-up a mock Speech Day. They were giving out all kinds of awards and the tears were flowing. They thought they would not be back on campus. As it was, they finished the HSC in pretty good shape. It was Year 12/2021 who had the bigger challenge. They went into lockdown #1 at a critical time in their learning, only to then have to go into lockdown #2 for the latter part of their studies in 2022. I have written a ‘Whole Cohort’ misadventure submission for them. Their HSC Trial results indicated that they were collectively well behind our regular program. Whilst other schools have conducted every Chemistry practical and practised each Drama piece in full, whilst they have had uninterrupted access to Music teachers and their instruments and have started revising the whole course in September, our students have not been able to conduct experiments or drama pieces or music performances or begin revision. Our teachers have gone the extra mile time and again and have done a sterling job. Compared to schools that are not in a lockdown LGA, our students have been slowed down. Zoom itself is reason enough to indicate this: it is hard to get effective discussion happening on Zoom. I thank Ms Pollett, our Heads of Faculty, Heads of Year and teachers, for the superb job they did getting ready for exams with Rapid Antigen Testing, then turning around to run them all on Exam Net when the Premier suddenly changed course. It was a huge job, but

we were committed to full exams, in order to prepare our students well.

Students awaiting Rapid Antigen Testing during the 2021 Covid-19 lockdown. Trial HSC examinations, September 2021.

“PLC Sydney announced online learning a few days before Premier Berejiklian told our community that we would be going into lockdown. I was worried that we could have cases and potentially deaths. I think all school leaders felt the burden of the safety of their schools.”

Year 12 finished in great spirits. Our final farewell events were online, but I think we still honoured them. Mr Heap has been superb. He has cut together so many online events. Not every Year 12 student follows instructions well! We asked each student to send in a five second wave goodbye. He had to put some Year 12 videos on slow motion to make them reach the five seconds! The final product though was excellent. Here we are now, the HSC exams have finished, out of lockdown and free. We are OK. Our community is positive and strong. I am reminded of the words of our chaplaincy captain at the final assembly. They come from 1 Corinthians. ‘Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ... That is why we never give up.’ We feel the sense that we are loved by God, even though life gives us challenges.

Dr Paul Burgis

Principal