School gates swing open

‘‘We trust that you’ve got it’’ was one parent’s remark to a Marlborough school principal as they happily dropped their children off at school for the first time in nearly eight weeks.

With some butterflies but ‘‘mostly excited’’, nearly 400 pupils were welcomed through Witherlea School gates on Monday morning, after a break longer than the summer holidays.

While mother Lucy Price was ‘‘absolutely ecstatic’’ to drop off her children Jake and Ruby at the gates, she said they had mixed feelings. ‘‘[The] little one’s excited, the older one, I think he would prefer to be at home on the TV.’’

As the family had returned from Australia and self-isolated over a week before New Zealand entered level 4, they had been stuck at home even longer than most.

Price had ‘‘no concerns whatsoever’’ about their safety at school under level 2. ‘‘I’m 98 per cent sure we’re all going to be OK in a few weeks . . . hopefully getting to level 1 soon.’’

Year 6 pupil Seth Thompson had kept in touch with his friends during the past two months, but was excited to see them again. ‘‘I’ve just been calling them and playing games with them in my free time,’’ he said.

School at home had been ‘‘kind of strange ... I prefer just no school at home. I go and do all my schoolwork and then I can play some games and then hop off and go have lunch.’’

Year 5 pupil Maggie Lonergan said her mum had been a good teacher but it had still been a little ‘‘hard and boring.’’

‘‘I’m most excited about seeing my friends . . . I usually call them on Messenger,’’ she said.

Her mum Jackie said there had been some first-day nerves but the children were definitely ready to be back.

‘‘It’s like going back at the start of the year . . . she was a little bit anxious,’’ she said. ‘‘I was surprised but I could understand’’.

Deputy principal Phil Funnell greeted the hundreds of students by name as they streamed through the gates, a job he had missed throughout lockdown.

Under level 3, numbers had fluctuated at around 20 children but on Monday he said nearly 95 per cent of the school’s ‘‘380-odd’’ pupils had returned.

‘‘We’re glad to get back to normal, the teachers are just as excited as the kids,’’ he said. ‘‘Having them all back in one place now is great . . . the feedback was they’ve just missed their friends.’’

There would be no fanfare on the first day back, with a focus on getting the children back into a normal routine, Funnell said.

‘‘There’ll be lots of hands-on activities, lots of art, just to build the relationships back with the teachers but nothing that is away from the normal for the time being,’’ he said.

Principal Andrea Harnett said pupils would learn to wash their hands properly to the song ‘‘Moist breath zone’’, written by a South Island principal and shared by the Education Ministry.

Returning children and their parents were mostly excited, Harnett said.

‘‘The kids need to come back, the teachers need to be here and the parents need a break,’’ she said.

‘‘One of the mums said ‘we really trust you guys, even though we’re a bit nervous . . . we trust that you’ve got it’.’’

‘‘That was really nice to hear.’’