CLOSED by Covid-19

Some advice for schools

Some advice for schools

Photo by Jose Fontano on Unsplash

By Dr Stephen Whitehead

OK, any hesitancy is over, the question ‘open or closed’ has been resolved. You have just been given 24 hours in which to enact closure; perhaps longer, perhaps less, but an indefinite period of closure is now in front of you.

For educationalists charged with preparing their school for closure, this article is a summary of some of the best advice circulating the web .

Your first and probably biggest question, is ‘how long for?’.

It may be the biggest question but best to disregard ‘how long’, well almost. Assume the worst and plan accordingly. You can always get back into the swing of full classroom teaching once the virus has disappeared.

But that won’t be in just two or three weeks.

China had its first coronavirus infections identified in December. By the middle of January all schools were closed. At time of writing they remain closed at least until middle of April. A total of three months, and that despite the fact that China infections have dropped rapidly in the past week or two.

Which is why EDDi suggests you use the China approach as a yardstick — plan for three months closure, minimum. But review the situation regularly.

Internationally then, many schools have been closed for months. During this time they have been tweeting, tik-toking and zooming — forced to teach across time zones, many teachers haven’t been sleeping.

They have though shared wealth of resources for schools, such as those in the UK about to close/in the early weeks of closure.

The team at EDDi have complied some of the best advice for you:

1. Managing Communications: The first task is to avoid panic and hysteria. Concise but accurate information needs to be given to all staff, students, parents. Kellett School in Hong Kong produced video messages to convey a more personal, empathetic connection than emails or letters. Pastoral leaders and members of the SMT should reach out to every family, phoning them to ensure they know the school is looking to support them. Being proactive with communication is vital. Don’t wait to be inundated with questions, queries and concerns, especially from parents. Ensure that all foreign staff fully understand any decrees being issued from the government, with translations where necessary.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

2. Protecting the Parent-School Relationship: Any international school caught up in the vortex of Covid-19 and having to handle multiple emergency issues simultaneously must ensure it doesn’t marginalise its most important stakeholder — the parents. They’ll be under just as much stress as you but without the benefit of being able to decide issues such as the school remaining ‘open or closed’. One way of handling this is to have a dedicated member of SMT charged with ensuring that parents are kept in the loop on all decisions, infection updates, online teaching adjustments, emergency contact details, examination changes, and dealing with any questions that might come up regards ‘fee adjustments’ etc should the school shut down for any lengthy period. The parents will also need guidance on how to handle their children’s long-term confinement to home, albeit with the schools ‘virtual timetable’ operating.

3. HR Issues: The first question of anxious staff will be ‘am I getting paid if the school closes for three months?’ Depending on the specific contractual agreements of individual staff, the answer really needs to be ‘yes’. The school will (hopefully) have received fees from parents for the period up to the closure so there should be no financial issues in continuing to cover staff salaries. Failure to do this will most definitely result in bigger issues for the school leadership than the coronavirus.

Ultimately, whatever the length of closure, the aim must be to have the school up and running immediately it is safe to do so. Again, this is a communication issue so the HR department need to be proactive in giving all staff assurances on salary payments, as well as guidance on getting tested, and what to do in the event of being infected, e.g health insurance, hospitals, etc. SMT, middle management and HR should also ensure they keep a record of all staff off premises and contact them on a daily basis, not just to give them moral support and check their physical well-being, but to assure them the school is acting in an empathetic manner regards its staff, many of whom will be isolated not only from the school itself but from their families overseas.

Photo by Roland Samuel on Unsplash

4. Maintaining a SMT presence: The ideal scenario is where the senior management team continue to attend at the school during school hours. So even if the teachers are at home, the school continues to have a physical presence in staff minds and in practice. This also enables SMT to liaise together and deal with issues quickly and effectively. The school day can also thus be replicated, with a given time period each day for a virtual ‘open mic’ meetings with teachers and administrators. Maintaining the appearance of school life, if only virtually, not only ensures staff have a daily routine to adhere to, it strengthens the sense of connection between staff. In turn, this will improve moral and staff well-being. The ultimate aim must be to realise the school rhetoric of ‘community’ into practice and reality. What happens during school closure, how SMT deal with it, and how teachers feel about the experience, will also have a big impact on whether teachers decide to return home at the end of their contract, leave to go to another school, or stay.

5. Essential Staffing and Maintenance: What no school leader wants is to have to close down a school, vacate it for several months, only to come back and find the rats have eaten through the school wiring, there’s a dead dog in the swimming pool, thieves have stolen the Apple laptops, and pigeons have taken roost in the school kitchen. The only way to avoid this unpleasant scenario is to ensure the daily rota of cleaners and security guards continues unabated.

6. Basic Checks ahead of Closure: Before you close the doors on staff and students, make sure your schools contact database is up to date. Ask parents to confirm email addresses and ensure students too have emails and social media info updated. Most schools will already have emergency closure planning, but it’s unlikely they’ve planned for being closed over a lengthy period and right in the middle of exam season. This is one of those areas which can make or break a school’s effectiveness during closure, therefore it requires planning for well in advance of an emergency. But whatever, it is worthwhile identifying a small team of managers whose task it is to not only keep the contact database updated but to ensure that all information is posted on the school website. For most parents, the school website is the first place they’ll visit for information.

7. Boarding Schools: The UK Boarding School Association offers the following advice: “consider the logistical arrangements for keeping boarders safe, fed and watered, under any such restrictions, especially if a case should develop within the school community.” Does your boarding school have a guardian system, whereby each student is allocated a local guardian they can stay will if needed? If this system is in place then now is the time to utilise it. If not, then boarders will need to stay on the premises but will be restricted in terms of movement. For more detailed advice from the BSA regarding the C-19 emergency, go to this link: Boarding Schools Association

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

8. Worst Case Scenario: We hate to say this but it is likely some international schools are going to lose staff, if not students. If the mortality rate is under 0.5% then that is still an awful lot of people who won’t be around when all this is over. How are schools going to handle this? Who, if anyone, will be attending funerals? Where will funerals take place? Whom is responsible for informing families back home that their loved one has passed away? Does the school have records of next-of-kin for its staff and students? If not, it needs to have because for many foreign international school teachers their school is not just their place of employment it is their de facto ‘home community’.

Whom in the school will be checking on the health of any staff or students who are in hospital and experiencing the severest symptoms of this virus? Again, this is one of those (less pleasant) areas of management and leadership which cannot be easily devolved beyond SMT. But to help school leaders in this emotionally fraught exercise then schools need to have in place a professionally trained bereavement counsellor, or at least someone trained in grief/trauma counselling. Of course, we all hope this individual is sat at home with nothing to do, but just in case…

The situation is, of course, rapidly changing. Any advice risks quickly being overtaken by events. However, the above should stand the test of time and, when things return to ‘normal’ should leave the school in a stronger place — the word too, hopefully.

By Dr Stephen Whitehead

This article will also appear in the next Educational Digest International.