Category: General Education

Australian Schools and Coronavirus More School Closed In NSW 13th of March 2020

Katoomba High School had been closed today due to a member of the school community had been tested positive with Coronavirus. The school will be cleaned and the Department of Health will conduct the contact tracing institute quarantine on the close contacts.

Sacred Heart College’s senior campus in Somerton Park SA had a student tested positive for Coronavirus and school campus will be cleaned over the weekend. The school will not be closed next week.

St Patrick’s Marist College in Dundas has been reopened.

So far the various level of Australian governments still operating at the containment stage. However, given the number of community cases, I can say it is safe to see we are onto the delay stage already. Unless the total travel bane is instituted in the next few days, it is pretty pointless to try to contain the virus anymore.

If the things keep developing at the rate it is currently happening. We will definitely see mass long term school closure. Most of the schools that I know off already issued emergency plans or started canvasing the parents regarding this as well. So I guess Google Classrooms will get a serious workout soon.

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Australian Schools and Coronavirus Another School Closed In Victoria 11th of March 2020

Another day another school closure, Yeshivah-Beth Rivkah Colleges in Melbourne has been closed due to a male teacher recently returned from the US was tested positive for Coronavirus. Willoughby Girls High School in Sydney had been reopened today.

The progress of this Coronavirus is progressing very rapidly now and I previously predicate that mass long term school closure likely will not happen until after Autumn school holiday. At the rate of current virus progress, we may very well see that happening in the next week or two, if the Australian government trying to get ahead of this virus.

What this will likely mean as well is that when we starting seeing mass long term school closure, we likely to see many companies start to encourage and enforce work from home arrangement partly due to the need to look after children that are unable to go to schools.

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Australian Schools and Coronavirus Private School Closed In Victoria 10th of March 2020

Carey Baptist Grammar in Victoria had been shut down for the rest of the week after one of the teachers had been tested positive for Coronavirus. This marks the fourth school in that had been closed down due to Coronavirus in Australia and the first outside of NSW.

Updates on the previous school closures

Epping Boys High School 69 students and staff under 14 days quarantine reopened on Monday
St Patrick’s Marist College in Dundas 150 students under 14 days quarantine
Willoughby Girls High School 56 students under 14 days quarantine

Private schools had also started to scale down on the large events, so the Coronavirus already starting to have a large impact on the day to day operation of the schools.

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Australian Schools and Coronavirus Two School Closed Today In Sydney 9th of March 2020

Two high schools in Sydney have been closed down for today and tomorrow due to three students tested positive for Coronavirus. Year ten students one boy and another girl from St Patrick’s Marist College in Dundas was tested positive for Coronavirus over the weekend. Both of their father has also been tested positive for Coronavirus as well.

Another year seven girl from Willoughby Girls High School has been tested positive for Coronavirus as well, her mother is confirmed positive case as well.

Both schools had been closed at least until Wednesday, this will allow the schools to be disinfected and contact tracing to be conducted by the Department of Health.

Epping Boys High School that was closed on last Friday had been reopened today.

At this point, we can be sure that more school closure like what had happened in the last few days will happen as well. At this point, we will probably continue seeing short closure not full longer shutdown that we are seeing in China, Japan, Korea etc. Looking at social media, some worried parents are keeping their children out of the schools with reported cases. And as previously discussed, if this situation escalated further, we may very well see longer-term school closure especially around the coming Autumn holiday. There is a good argument for mass school closure, however, unless that is carried out with other actions like cancelling all public events etc, it will be rather pointless.

Unless we can somehow contain the Coronavirus in Australia, hiding in your house for three months will not solve the problem. Because if half the population has been infected, you will probably get it at some stage.

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Australian Schools and Coronavirus 6th of March 2020

Continue from yesterday, it is announced that Epping Boys High School in Sydney will reopen on next Monday. The school will be thoroughly cleaned over the weekend. Also, all close contact including staff and students of the infected student will be asked to self-quarantine at home.

There had been some panic in the community demand longer school shutdown and more drastic quarantine methods. I personally at least up to now believe that we had not reached that level yet. The action has been taken so far in this particular case looks to be appropriate without going into the realm of over panic. What people have to remember is that everything has a cost, drastic quarantine or similar methods will have a severe knock-on effect as well.

Increase of social distancing will be great and should start now to mitigate the potential spread of the Coronavirus. Also, education of this virus needs to start now and people need to understand what and how to do with it. Stripping the supermarket shelves of toilet papers certainly is not what the population be doing. However, I do not believe at least at this point it warrants more drastic actions like mass school closure in Australia.

We will have to see how things develop in Australia over the next few months. We need to prepare but not over panic. The key to slow this down and turn into a manageable situation is to be proactive and not just being reactive to it. So things, like increase social distancing and wash your hands, plus really educate people on what to do if they are suspected of being infected by Coronavirus, will be super important.

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Australian Schools and Coronavirus 5th of March 2020

I just saw this on the news today that a year 11 student from Epping Boys High School was diagnosed with Coronavirus. As a result of this, the entire school is closed on this Friday as ordered NSW Health minister.

Currently, this is just a one day closure, all students and staff are asked to self isolate for the weekend. Further announcements on the future steps regarding this will be announced over the weekend.

This is the 25th case in NSW and number is going up rapidly so it is safe to say community spread has been going on for a while. A lot of new cases are popping in Northern Sydney around Ryde, Macquarie Park area. Just mentioned Epping Boys High School is around this area as well.

Things are deteriorating pretty fast and there almost certainly will be more cases popping up and in schools as well. So I would expect to see more school closure in the next few weeks, particularly around the Northern Sydney area. With the rate things are going, I would not be surprised to see individual school closure even before the Autumn holiday in April.

If things are deteriorating at the current rate, we almost certainly will be starting to see mass school closure in parts of Sydney and other areas of Australia as well.

So basically let’s all buckle down and this is going to be a real wide ride. I think we need to do what is needed to slow this Coronavirus down to avoid overloading the hospitals. So if school closure will be required then so be it. At this moment widespread school closure is premature, but with the rate things are changing, we may have to make that decision within the next few weeks.

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Australian Schools and Coronavirus

I figured that I may as well jump on the Coronavirus bandwagon and talk about it as well. First a bit of background, Australia is a country with almost all of its people coming from every part of the world. Hundreds of thousands of new immigrants decided to settle in the country every year. What this means is that people in Australia very often have a strong connection with their home country and travelling oversea is very common. The fun part is that if hosting any sports competition with any random countries, you will liable to find a good supporting crowd. The bad part is that with an outbreak like Coronavirus in any part of the world, we are likely to see imported cases in Australia as well.

So far in Australia primary and secondary schools had not been affected at all, all schools in every state had been operating as normal. Because prior to the last week, the majority of the known cases are concentrated in China, so Australian government has already banned all traveller that had been in China within the last 14 days that is not a citizen or permanent resident plus immediate family.

There are a lot of students in Australian schools whose family originally come from China, what this means is that many will have visited China during the summer holiday over Christmas. The basic rule that was implemented was that any students returned from China are recommended to stay at home for 14 days before returning to school. With worsening of the situation in other countries, particularly South Korea, Italy and Iran. I will not be surprised that a similar recommendation will be rolled out to students arriving back from other countries as well. Because of the school term had started already, so this should not affect many people until term 2 start in mid to late April.

Because now the Coronavirus had spread to countries like South Korea, Japan, most of Europe and looks to be spreading in the US as well. So I would expect more similar 14 days self-quarantine recommendation will be happening in April. Ironically, we may see a relaxation of travel restriction from China and tighten with many other countries.

So far we do not know how Coronavirus will behave whether it will be like the regular flu that starts to die down when summer comes. If that is not the case, we may eventually see extreme cases of temp school closure. So far we had not seen that happening and the chance of that happening is small as well. However, with the coming of the winter and flu season, we very well may see that extreme scenario happening in parts of Australia.

When it is at the university level, there is a bit of crisis going on right now due to a large number of Chinese students unable to travel to Australia. If this persists any longer it will potentially deal a heavy blow to the Australian Tertiary Education sector. I expect with the pressure mounting and Coronavirus being largely controlled in China, travel restriction for China other than Hubei province will likely be lifted soon. I also expect the recommendation of the 14-day self-quarantine after entry into Australia from China will continue for some time as well.

At the end of the day with Coronavirus spreading to every part of the world, travel restriction with specific countries is increasingly irrelevant. Unless Australia stops all oversea arrivals, it is almost next to impossible to prevent Coronavirus from taking hold locally. What we may end up seeing in the near term are all students that come into the country may be required to stay at home for a 14-day self-quarantine period before attending the school again. Of course, we have no way knowing how severe Coronavirus will impact Australia yet to make any real predictions.

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Australian Public Education System

Australian Public Education System and how it works, I will only discuss public/state school in this article and leave the private schools for another day.

School education

School education in Australia is divided into primary and secondary. The secondary levels also further divided into secondary and senior secondary school.

Primary school runs from kindergarten/preparatory to year 6 or 7 depending on which state you are in.
Secondary school which is generally referred to as high school or junior high school goes from year 7 to 10 or 8 to 10 depending on which state you are in.
Senior secondary school which can be referred to as senior high school goes from year 11 to 12, luckily this is consistent across the states.

What is compulsory school education in Australia? Each state is slightly different but very similar.

Compulsory education in Australia goes from kindergarten or preparatory level to year 10. It is also by law required for everyone to be in one of the following until they turn 17. Each state can be slightly different, they are generally as follows.

In school or registered for homeschooling
In approved education or training (e.g. TAFE, traineeship, apprenticeship)
In full-time, paid employment (average 25 hours/week)
In a combination of work, education and/or training.

ACT, for example, will require all children to be in school until they are 17 or complete year 12.

When you finish year 10 students get the school certificate and when finishing year 12 one gets the high school certificate which is commonly known as the HSC. Please also note different states can call this differently as well but the concept and function of the certificate is pretty much the same.

This above is fairly consistent across all states and territories in Australia. What can be different across states and territories are the age you can start school and the cut-off dates.

For example with NSW, the cut off date is July 31st. The first year of school in NSW is called Kindergarten – or more colloquially, ‘Kindy’. NSW kids are allowed to start school on the first day of the first term as long as they turn 5 by July 31 that year. All NSW children must be enrolled in a primary school in the year they turn 6.

A lot of parents particularly in well off areas will decide to hold their children back and only enrol their children to the kindergarten until they are close to six. What this means is that there could be a very significant age gap between kindergarten students up to eighteen months. The main reason why parents do that is that they feel their children will be more mature and also better at competing in junior sports. If you have not known before, Australian are crazy about sports, it is a big deal in schools and day to day life as well.

With Victoria, the equivalent to kindergarten is called preparatory school children are allowed to start school on the first day of the first term as long as they turn 5 by April 30 that year. If you live in Victoria, your child must be enrolled in a school in the year they turn 6, which is the compulsory school starting age.

South Australia and ACT cut off date is also 30th of April.

Queensland, Western Australia and NT cut off date are 30th of June.

South Australia turns five before the 1st of May.

Tasmania must be five by 1st of January.

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High Rise Schools in Australia

The newly reopened Arthur Phillip High School which is a high rise school with a 17-floor building. This is first of the many and with the pressure of the ever-expanding population, high rise schools will be a more common sight in the coming years.

Personally I prefer schools that are only 4 to 5 floor at max, this way it can still easily traversed by stairs rather than having to rely fully on elevators. The newly built Arthur Phillip High School having to stagger each year’s recess and break time. I guess this is to avoid crowding with the stairs and elevators. I am sure most of you had some painful experience with waiting for elevators. Crowded stairs also are really dangerous if not managed correctly.

Arthur Phillip High School is will also have an open-plan environment, this one is very interesting and can potentially a detriment. Anyway, it is good to see the NSW State government making steady investment and progress in dealing with the exploding student population.

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NSW Selective High Schools Works as Intended

There had been a lot of controversy with the NSW Selective High Schools and with a large number of articles plus opinions attack its existence, also whether it serves the intended purpose.

The main point of the attack is that Selective High Schools students are mainly from the high social-economical background rather than serving the general population as intend.

First, the main criteria published in the Myschool website is called ICSEA which is called Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage, the main items in this index are parent’s education background and geographic location of the school. Whether the family is rich or poor has no direct bearing in this index. I have done a number of previous blog entries on this topic already, so I will not go into this in more detail.

Now, we got all these out of the way, you can view the articles on SMH which is called The Sydney suburbs sending the most students to selective schools.

NSW Department of Education’s own research that only 10 per cent of students in selective schools had parents who did not have post-school education.
There were also few students from the city’s richest suburbs such as Bellevue Hill, Double Bay or Milsons Point, suggesting families in those areas are still opting for private schools.
While selective schools have high rates of socio-educational advantage – which means students’ parents are educated, a key factor in schooling success – the figures show that does not necessarily equate to wealth.

Please note, what shown above is pretty much what anybody who had experience with selective high schools will tell you as well. This shows the students that study and apply themselves will get in rather than determine by how much money their parents have. We should be encouraging health and fair competitions, rather than create artificial access restriction that disadvantages one group or another.

For all the bad raps that standardized tests are getting these days, they are still the fairest and best way, for now, to provide opportunities to people that deserve them. That could be Selective High School tests and HSC or other similar tests.

We do not need to destroy what has up to now an avenue for children of middle-class parents to advance with their aspirations by crashing the existing selective high school systems. The reason why some parents are pushing their kids into selective high schools is that they themselves are a big beneficiary of education and understand what a good education can do for you.

As a society, we need to emphasise the benefit of education and continuingly promote it and never let up. Particularly with more automation entering Australia and the world, we will need more highly skilled people, a good and quality education is the only way to achieve that.

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