Schools: no lunchtime sharing

Students in Marlborough are being reminded not to share food or water bottles at lunchtime, as principals take steps to minimise the risk of a Covid-19 outbreak.

Marlborough Principals’ Association president, and Bohally Intermediate principal, Shane Campbell said he was ‘‘hoping for the best but preparing for the worst’’, as schools looked to stay open.

Students and staff who were unwell had to stay at home, while students who became unwell during the school day would be sent home. ‘‘We cannot police the students but we will remind them of personal hygiene and advise them of the importance of not sharing food and drinking bottles,’’ Campbell said.

The coronavirus spreads via droplets expelled by coughing and the risk of catching Covid-19 from someone with no symptoms is low. However, it is possible to catch it from someone with mild symptoms, including a cough.

Campbell said the school had also been focusing on personal hygiene and emphasising the importance of washing hands.

‘‘School cleaners are working harder in terms of ensuring all the hard surfaces are cleaned thoroughly daily. Our school carpets were due to be cleaned over the next three months and we have brought that cycle forward,’’ Campbell said.

School assemblies had been cancelled for the remainder of term one, and a teacher only day, scheduled for May 29, had been postponed. In the event of school closures, the association was exploring different options for what would work best for the students to learn online.

‘‘At this stage it is not our intent to force all schools to use one platform but we do know some of them [platforms] are being used successfully internationally,’’ Campbell said.

‘‘Google Chrome and Google Meet is a proven tool internationally and Google Meet has been used successfully, for example in South Korea.

‘‘They have been doing online learning and that has been a good tool for video conferencing and that’s just one possibility,’’ he said.

Another app called Seesaw was used by a lot of schools for home school communication.

Since teachers, students and parents were used to some of the online learning software, it was not something they would have to learn from scratch, Campbell said. ‘‘It is not like we are all going out and learning something new and trying to work it out as we go,’’ he said.

Parent Sonya Grant said she was worried her daughter would struggle to study on her own.

Another parent, Jack Glover, said he was more worried about children losing the social interaction of the classroom.

‘‘They are not the first kids to learn from home but it is more around the extracurricular activity that they will miss out on,’’ he said.