Mt Albert Grammar headmaster Patrick Drumm has halved all classes from one hour to half an hour during Auckland's level 3 lockdown. Photo / File
Mt Albert Grammar headmaster Patrick Drumm has halved all classes from one hour to half an hour during Auckland's level 3 lockdown. Photo / File
Most Auckland schools are swinging straight into Zoom classes again, saying the city's sudden three-day lockdown is "no holiday".
Schools across the age and decile range say they are either running classes remotely already or planning to start them from tomorrow.
"It's learning as usual in most schools around Auckland," said Auckland Primary Principals Association president Stephen Lethbridge.
Auckland Secondary Principals president Steve Hargreaves said two-thirds of his Macleans College students came into school on Sunday evening to collect their books and equipment within two hours of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's announcement that Auckland was moving into a level 3 lockdown from midnight.
He said the Ministry of Education gave schools a "heads-up" at 6.45pm, 15 minutes before Ardern started speaking.
"Touch wood, it's not more than three days, but we have to set up routines and protocols as if it's going to go longer."
Steven Hargreaves says two-thirds of his students came in to collect their books and equipment on Sunday night. Photo / File
The college is working on its usual timetable, with all classes running remotely and students connected with Zoom passwords for each class.
At the country's biggest school Rangitoto College, principal Patrick Gale said all classes started via Google Meet at 9am on the usual timetable. Almost all students, including new Year 9 students, are already set up with laptops and passwords.
At 10am he said: "I've just been into a Year 9 [virtual] class, only one student was missing."
"We have a three-day, 72-hour plan, and another plan if we have a longer lockdown, with a slightly different structure."
Mt Albert Grammar headmaster Patrick Drumm has halved all classes from one hour to half an hour during Auckland's level 3 lockdown. Photo / File
Our second-biggest school Mt Albert Grammar has halved its direct teaching time from five one-hour classes a day to five half-hour classes each morning, starting tomorrow.
"We are just using today to allow staff and students to set up and fire up their online learning programmes," said headmaster Patrick Drumm.
"They are all logged on now with their online learning, it was part of the induction process at the beginning of the year."
He said the school found that the system of five half-hour classes in the mornings worked well in the last lockdown, leaving students free to work on their own in the afternoons.
Low-decile schools are also better prepared than last year, when the Ministry of Education rushed to provide thousands of free laptops and home internet connections to students who didn't have them.
Kiri Turketo, principal of Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Ōtara, said all students were set up to work at home from the end of last year in case a lockdown occurred.
Asked if students all had devices, she said: "Not 100 per cent, but we have good enough. I ended up buying some of my own with school funds so that we have enough. We will continue to be hopefully first in line if the ministry does another device rollout.
"We are communicating with families and students and we have a skeleton crew at school who are able to support students should they need to come in and collect devices.
"If they don't have connectivity at home, they are able to stay at school as well."
She said it was "business as usual" for her students - "no holiday for us".
Shirley Maihi of Finlayson Park School, the country's biggest decile-1 primary school, said most of her students in Years 5 to 8 would keep learning via Google Classroom.
"There will be a few who do not have connectivity, and for them, and for the juniors, we have set up some activity programmes on our Facebook page," she said.
"We are not sending out hard packs [of books and paper-based activities] yet. So we will limp through the three days and see what happens. If it continues after that, we will put hard packs into homes starting on Thursday."
She said all teachers have set up systems to group-text their students' parents.
"Most people have cellphones," she said.
Stephen Lethbridge says his teachers are teaching remotely in small groups of up to 10 students. Photo / Michael Craig
Lethbridge, who is principal of decile-10 Pt Chevalier School, said his teachers were not running whole-class lessons but were setting up sessions for smaller groups of up to 10 students via Zoom, Google Classroom or Google Hangouts.
"What we are doing with our teachers today is checking who has devices and can connect at home. We'll make sure we can use what we have at school and get that out to those that need them," he said.
But he said the youngest children would also need help from their parents.
"We do lean heavily on parents, but it's also a window [for parents] into what classes are really like. Classes are not places where every child sits down and is quiet and does work by themselves for long periods of time."
All schools contacted said very few students have turned up at school today needing supervision because their parents are working - "five or six" at Pt Chevalier, "a few" at Sir Edmund Hillary, three at Finlayson Park, one at both Macleans and Mt Albert Grammar and none at Rangitoto.
"In the last lockdown we did [have some students turn up," said Gale. "We opened the doors today but no one has arrived. I think the weather might have had something to do with it."
