Canty schools adapt to life in level 3
Many schools across Canterbury are adapting to classroom life under coronavirus restrictions, despite depleted school rolls and staffing levels.
Loburn School in rural North Canterbury usually has a roll of just over 150, but yesterday only two pupils were in attendance.
‘‘It’s quiet and peaceful, it is lovely,’’ principal Stuart Priddy said.
He said the pupils were ‘‘apprehensive’’ when they first arrived, but he and the two teachers working during alert level three were doing their best to make them feel comfortable.
‘‘The children are here because they need to be here, so our job is to make it as engaging as possible and give them some really fun and neat things to do.’’
Priddy said much of the feedback from parents following the lockdown period was focused on the school reducing its device use with pupils, so staff had been engaging with them differently this week.
‘‘[We’ve been doing] skipping, woodwork, construction, things they may not get a chance to do at home.’’
Priddy said he expected the lessons being learned from teaching through levels three and four could bring changes to the way the school engaged with pupils in the future.
Across Canterbury and the Chatham Islands, 174 schools (or 61 per cent) had one or more students on site on Thursday.
The 1797 students who attended school amounts to only 2 per cent of the total roll numbers.
Just two students out of Burnside High School’s normal roll of 2500 were in attendance yesterday, but associate principal Andrea Griffin said the school was there to provide support to the community when it was needed.
Principal Phil Holstein said the low number of students at schools was testament to the ‘‘great work’’ teachers had done to enable students to work online.
Riccarton High School principal Neil Haywood said the school had been ‘‘eerily quiet’’ this week with only nine students in attendance from the junior school, which normally consists of about 520.
Staff had been itching to get back and have face-to-face interactions with their pupils.
Haywood said staff had been ‘‘changing it up’’ to make things interesting for the small group of pupils. He was encouraging pupils to spend less time on devices, go outside and spend time with their families.
At Cashmere High School, there were four students yesterday, two year 9 students and two year 10 students.
They were in one bubble working through their online learning programmes and were being supervised by a rotation of teachers, principal Joe Eccleton said.
‘‘Myself and the associate principal are on site as well as the property team and one office support staff,’’ he said.