David Hetherington  00:06

Hello and welcome to Hands Up, a podcast by the Public Education Foundation, that lifts the lid on everything going on in our public schools. I’m David Hetherington, the CEO of the Foundation. You know all those burning questions you’ve had about what actually happens at your child’s school? Well, hands up if you have questions about how COVID affected kids learning. Honestly, who hasn’t?

 

Esther, 9  00:26

I liked home school. I did maths and English every day. I missed my friends, but I could talk to them on Google Classroom. I miss Mrs Faricy, my teacher, as I always felt that I was going to get COVID. But even though I wasn’t at school, I think I’m going to get COVID.

 

David Hetherington  00:26

The COVID-19 global pandemic saw the greatest shock to Australia’s school system since World War Two. States went into lockdown, schools closed and children were sent home to learn. Teachers pivoted quickly to online learning. Some teachers personally delivered photocopied handouts to their students homes. Parents got a rare glimpse of what goes on in the classroom, while juggling their own work from home and wrangling, supervising their children’s learning. All of us had to get creative. But how did two years of interrupted schooling and learning from home affect educational outcomes? How did the pandemic affect children’s social development and well being? How  did teachers cope? And what are the lessons to be learned from this unprecedented shakeup of education in Australia?

 

Powell Family  01:38

Airlie, Airlie. Good job, no don’t give the dog your socks. Actually, you need to go and get your lunchboxes. 

 

Michelle Powell  01:44

So my name is Michelle. I’m from Bulli. I’m a mum of six between 4 and 14. And I’m also a teacher’s aide in high school. 

 

Powell Family  01:53

Go and brush your teeth. Bags, let’s go! let’s go! I’m in the middle, I’m in the middle. All right guys. Get me out of here.. Love you. Have a great day bubs. 

 

Michelle Powell  02:08

Oh, gosh, I it was really surreal I think. Like for me, I was just like, Wow, is this really happening? They all had their boxes. So they will have a little box each with their name on it. They put stickers on it. And we printed out all the stuff every week. And then we would do it. My big girls, they were just on their computers. So they would go down to their rooms. Sometimes they’d be up here with us. But t hey all had their space and their things specific for their home at home learning. And yeah, still, though, it was really hard. I don’t think honestly, I don’t think there was one day that I got through all of the work with each of them. Because it was just really hard for me to juggle, like I had to do my work. And I had a year seven and a kindergartner. And that was really hard having one in Kindy. And she’s got additional needs as well. So that was really difficult for me. The best thing was that her handwriting actually did improve over that time. So that was a really good thing. But she missed out on so much like, like socially and so much learning. She’s still not reading. She’s now seven, and she’s in year one and she still can’t read, hardly at all. And that’s because of some cognitive things. But she just didn’t get, because she didn’t have that support then, I think it’s really, it’s really pushed her back so much. Yeah, with the devices. Luckily, my two high schoolers, they had their devices because they needed to have it going into high school. The other ones it was actually really hard because, I did, I borrowed a laptop from my mother in law. Then I had an old laptop here, that was an old football one that their dad used and then we had our computer. But things just kept going wrong with them. And a lot of the time, they would just be like, Oh, stuff it. So I ended up just printing everything every week, and I was spending about 50 bucks a week on my old printer, printing out this stuff. So then they the school changed it and on a Friday, you’d go and you’d have your time slot pick up the paper. So I found that way better than doing it online. They’re, they’re eating more, because they’re at home, like there’s washing, more washing because they’re wearing all these clothes and going outside in the mud or whatever. So I found there was more work to do at home when they were here. And it was it was really stressful for me. I mean, I went through a separation as well so that that put a lot of extra stress on it too. And I think too, as a mum trying to teach the children and do normal life and having emotional burdens on yourself and trying to hide that from the children. I think, I just didn’t have the patience to sit there. So I don’t think that I served them very well when it came to little ones when it came to learning because I just didn’t really have it in me either. So that probably had a lot to do with Diesel not getting a lot of work done in Zyla not catching up, because yeah, like it comes down to the parents doesn’t it? Like when you’re at home during the work with them, and they can’t do it themselves then it’s kind of on you. It doesn’t matter what bits of paper they’ve got. Like it’s just, it’s us that has to get it all done. So I do think that had a lot to do with them, the ones that did struggle

 

David Hetherington  05:12

That’s Michelle Powell from Bulli, just north of Wollongong. Just as learning from home affected her six children in different ways, the impacts on children around the country vary. Some kids thrived, some kids struggled, depending in part on how much support they had at home. Some studies found that COVID exacerbated the educational divide between poorer and wealthier families. But others found that students didn’t fall behind academically as we had initially feared. Professor Jenny Gore and her team undertook extensive research to look at the effects of COVID-19 on students and teachers in New South Wales public schools in 2020. I know I was surprised to hear that numeracy and literacy outcomes were similar to 2019, the year before the pandemic, and that students hadn’t suffered from learning loss during that first year.

 

Jenny Gore  05:59

My name is Jenny Gore, I’m Director of the Teachers and Teaching Research Center, and a laureate Professor of Education at the University of Newcastle.

 

David Hetherington  06:08

What was your greatest fear at that time? When schools were closed and students were sent home? What did you imagine the impact on educational outcomes could be?

 

Jenny Gore  06:19

I think there was widespread fear that students were going to miss out on a lot of learning and, and that would set them up not just in the short term, but in a much longer term way for all kinds of possible difficulties. And so there was that widespread fear for student learning. And I guess I was also pretty concerned about what it would mean for teachers having to so quickly change the way they work, and not just in small ways, you know, in a really substantial way.

 

David Hetherington  06:51

And in the intervening period, you’ve done a number of studies on the effects of that episode and remote learning on both students and teachers. I understand that one of the unexpected findings, perhaps is that the impact on academic outcomes for students wasn’t as bad as we feared.

 

Jenny Gore  07:09

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s actually, I think, a really positive story. There was as as we were saying, really huge concern about what was going to happen. And there was a lot of projection. And this was a brand new circumstance with having the whole system closed down, not just even in in one location, but across whole states and across the whole country and across almost all countries of the world. So those projections were really alarming. And we were hearing stories that, you know, students could suffer as much as the year’s learning loss. And so it was really gratifying to find that overall, we really didn’t see much of an impact of the 2020 COVID year on student outcomes. We studied year three and year four students in a host of New South Wales primary schools. And what we saw that was on average, there was no loss of learning or no lower outcomes than there was in 2019, in reading or in mathematics, and we actually prefer to avoid the word learning loss or the term learning loss, because it really implies that kids lost something. Well, they didn’t lose, they still grew and their outcomes were still better over time. It’s just that they may not have been quite as great as they were free, a cohort of kids who were not affected by COVID in 2019.

 

David Hetherington  08:34

What do you think are the main reasons for that?

 

Jenny Gore  08:36

Yeah, I think that partly, it was a relatively short term period of closure. And also that teachers and families worked so hard to make sure their kids were going to be okay. And I also want to call out school leaders there. I think, you know, school leaders felt enormous pressure to try and make sure everything was okay. I think that’s one of the reasons so a relatively short period of closure. We’re talking about mainly sort of eight, eight to 10 weeks. I think the other issue is that when kids returned to school, in particular, there was that real intensive focus particularly on literacy and numeracy outcomes. And almost everything else in school stopped, like all the stuff that punctuate school life excursions and concerts and sports days. None of that was happening anymore. Families were banned from coming into the classroom, to help with reading groups and things. So it was a very narrow kind of curriculum in some ways. And I know some teachers talk about Groundhog Day, it just felt like here we are getting more literacy, more numeracy. So I suspect that that narrowing of the curriculum also had an effect. And I’d be very quick to say my conclusion, therefore, it’s not that we should narrow the curriculum all the time, because I think there are some really negative consequences as well for kids not being able to actually do school as they usually do.

 

David Hetherington  09:58

You just mentioned that the those outcomes were the same in in metropolitan and regional areas, and that children who perhaps live in more disadvantaged areas didn’t fare worse. Can you talk a bit about the reasons for that? Because I would have feared, I guess, as I thought about the shutdown, so that it’s those children who are most marginalised, who might suffer the most in terms of learning outcomes.  But I understand that wasn’t the case.

 

Jenny Gore  10:24

No, I mean, we did find that the more disadvantaged students did suffer in year three in maths. So you know, there is a caveat there. And I think we have to always be quite careful in interpreting the results and the limitations of the results here. But we know that there were really intensive efforts to support kids in the most difficult circumstances and, and heroic stories of teachers, you know, hand delivering packages to homes, providing devices to families that didn’t have them, and so on. I know that some teachers felt really worried about some of their students, if they were not engaging online, they just didn’t know what was happening for some of their vulnerable kids. And that caused a lot of stress for some teachers. But I think then teachers really went out of their way to try and phone homes or even visit homes to make sure that the kids were okay.

 

David Hetherington  11:20

Are you aware of any any research around whether these outcomes were  similar in other parts of Australia, or other parts of the world? Have other academic studies been undertaken?

 

Jenny Gore  11:32

Yeah, there have been some other studies, not much in Australia. And in fact, we were one of only six studies in the world that had data, rigorous empirical data on the impact of the first year of the pandemic, on kids’ learning. But most of the studies that have been done around the world are showing that students are further behind, and that that tends to be a greater proportion of students in disadvantaged contexts who are affected. So why are we different? I think it’s because actually, the quality of education in Australia is really very good. I think the dedication of teachers here is very high. And we also had a relatively short period of school closure, compared to other parts of the world, not so much, Victoria. And we also I think, suffered a little bit less with all of the anxiety around illness, because you know, the death rates and the transmission rates were not as great here.

 

David Hetherington  12:33

So that’s something I want to pick up on, Jenny. Academic outcomes based on, based on this research, didn’t suffer as much as, as we may have feared at the outset. But what do you know about the well being, the mental health, the resilience of students and how they fared in terms of their, their emotional well being?

 

Jenny Gore  12:53

Yeah, we didn’t collect direct data on that ourselves. But we did talk to teachers about their experience of students well being. And as I said, we mainly focus on year three, and four kids. And there were some teachers who even talked about children who were self harming, at that young age, partly because of the extreme anxiety and the isolation and things that they were feeling. And I think that’s one of the real consequences of this pandemic. When kids are off school, they can usually turn to the people in their lives, whether it’s schoolmates or grandparents or, you know, family friends, or whatever, for comfort. Whereas in the context of especially the first lockdown when everyone was so fearful, you know, kids didn’t even get to hug people very often and, you know, really missed having the sleepovers with friends, and all of those sorts of things that bring them joy, and help them to feel connected. So there was the experience during the school closure. But there was also the experience when kids returned to school and what teachers reported to us, it’s that kids were anxious, their behavior had changed. They seem to have forgotten how to do school, they were less engaged, they were more disruptive, there was more negative behavior in the playground with kids having silly little fights with each other of a kind that teachers hadn’t experienced prior to the pandemic. So I think the loss of connection, the loss of social skills, the sort of forgetting how to be in school was part of the whole experience that teachers confronted when kids returned to school in term, three or four of 2020.

 

David Hetherington  14:42

Can only suspect these experiences will, wil live with them their entire lives. So if we if we jumped forward a little bit earlier in 2022, you released a report about the impact of COVID-19 on teachers. And you found that not only did the pandemic place a much greater pressure on teachers’ workloads, but that it led to declines in morale and efficacy. Can you tell us a little bit about what drove that?

 

Jenny Gore  15:11

I think the decline in morale, which is measurable, we’re talking about really vigorous evidence here and statistically significant differences. I think the decline in morale was really about not feeling valued and feeling under such pressure and feeling overlooked. When it came to things like just the support the real practical support that teachers were receiving. And I know for school leaders, this was a real factor as well, school leaders were receiving memos at midnight, about things they were meant to enact by the next day, kind of unreasonable demands, in some ways.

 

David Hetherington  15:50

So just to be clear, this is not support from the community from the local school community. This is support from the education establishment.

 

Jenny Gore  15:57

Yeah, yes, it is. And that’s not to blame the Department either, because everyone was just trying to figure out how we cope and survive, and then even beyond that thrive, under conditions that were just so unfamiliar to everyone. But I think that that’s what really took a toll on teachers. And, you know, this idea that teachers need more than thanks, is certainly something that came up in the interviews we did with teachers. And it was also an issue where teachers were being supported with resources that were designed to help them. But I still remember an interview we did with one teacher in a rural area. And he said, the examples that were being given might have been highly suitable to urban context but were completely unsuitable for his context. And all it did was make him feel worse that he knew he couldn’t deliver for his kids, the kind of learning experiences that were happening in the city. For a lot of teachers that was just really challenging to try and feel, especially when they were so disconnected from kids while they were learning from home, to really feel that they were giving them their best. And it was just so different for teachers.

 

David Hetherington  17:11

And what do you see as the ongoing effects of this for morale?

 

Jenny Gore  17:15

Well, I think we all hoped that 2020 was going to be the end of it, it was a little blip in our lives, and we could get back to normal. And I think teachers are absolutely worn out. Now, after two years of these challenges, and even now, you know, term one, a lot of people are saying is the worst term of the whole lot, so far term, one of 2022. Because…

 

David Hetherington  17:38

I think there’s a feeling that the light at the end of the tunnel keeps getting further away.

 

Jenny Gore  17:42

Yeah, exactly. And we’ve got all the illness now that, you know, we’re kind of letting COVID run its course or whatever. So there are so many teachers away from school. So many shortages among casuals available to schools who had, you know, have had teachers off sick and so on. So it’s just just super challenging time. And I think that the consequences for teacher morale are really dramatic. We’ve got some evidence from a particular study we’re doing with a local, very disadvantaged High School. And they’ve been doing some really positive work in the school to lift outcomes and boost teacher, teachers collaboration and so on. We’ve seen the morale in that school absolutely plummet at the end of last year and early this year, just because of the conditions I think that teachers are facing right now.

 

David Hetherington  18:32

So what lessons can we draw from all this? What measures might we put in place to to ensure that teachers and schools have the support and backup systems they need in the case of future pandemics, future disruptions of this kind? Because even with things like flooding, we’re seeing, you know, there’s dislocation amongst widespread communities where we’re multiple schools in, in a geography are shut down and we’re having to go to this backup nature of teaching and learning.

 

Jenny Gore  19:02

Yeah, it’s really tricky. But the work that we did, looking at what happened in 2021, has really given us some comfort that we have already managed to put in place some better supports, at least when it comes to student learning. So again, we would have thought that the cumulative effects of two consecutive years of disruption to schooling and even a longer period of school closure in 2021 might have had a more negative effect on student learning, but it didn’t have that. What’s really interesting, though, is that for the cohort of kids in the most disadvantaged schools showed three months additional growth in maths and two months additional growth in reading, compared to kids in 2019. That was a really counterintuitive finding. And that’s astonishing. How do we explain that? I think there are two or three main explanations. One is all of the extra resources that have gone into particularly trying to ensure that there’s not a great learning loss. The tutoring scheme in New South Wales has put $780 million additional funding into supporting learning outcomes, particularly for students who were my most likely affected, whether it was just the money, but also all the other initiatives that were put in place to try and make sure that the resources were in place for kids could be a part of why we saw that result. Another explanation is that schools were closed in term three in 2021, which means that kids had two terms at school that were pretty much uninterrupted. And it may well be that teachers and school leaders worked really hard in those first two terms to ensure that kids were really getting all of their learning needs met, especially in areas of literacy and numeracy. And I think also, it was the second year, and everyone was practiced with how we do online teaching and learning, whether that’s in families, or teachers and school leaders, you know, and the system was better able to prepare people. And then I think the third major explanation is that we found that kids in those disadvantaged schools were actually in school, more than kids in the higher SES schools. So they were actually only out of school for about eight weeks on average, whereas kids in some of the more advantaged schools were, were missing more like 12 or 14 weeks. And I think that’s partly because those children were more likely to be the children of essential workers, who didn’t have all the options of one parent staying at home or have grandparents or other people who could look after the children. So they were more likely to have to send them to school. And perhaps, that experience of face to face additional face to face time with teachers may have been able to really just support their learning and ensure that they were not further behind. In fact, they were further ahead than we expected them to be.

 

David Hetherington  22:05

So that’s fascinating. So something’s gone on there, presumably that has led to a kind of a jump in the outcome of these students who’ve had to live through this strange hybrid of remote learning, on site learning, and all the chopping and changing in between. 

 

Jenny Gore  22:22

Yeah that’s just for the kids in the disadvantaged schools, those in the others were doing pretty much as we would expect them to do. And I think the paper we’ve actually just sent out for academic peer review, we argue that perhaps COVID was actually a catalyst for really investing in more equitable outcomes in Australian schools in a way we’ve been talking about for decades, but never actually managed to do. And so yeah, it’s not a small thing to put, you know, nearly 800 million extra dollars into schools to support this kind of tutoring initiative. And to provide all of those other resources, perhaps that has made the difference. And there’s a really strong argument for pressuring governments to continue to providing that level of support, because we really can narrow the equity gap if if this is what we’ve seen in the second year of the pandemic. So even though we saw a little bit of the narrowing of the gap, if you like, we still have an enormous amount of work to do to better support students from disadvantaged circumstances to achieve more equitable learning in Australia.

 

David Hetherington  23:31

Jenny, that’s been a fascinating set of insights. We wish you all the best with your with your future research because we know how very important it is. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today. 

 

Jenny Gore  23:40

Pleasure.

 

Zyla, 7  23:46

I had easy homework because I just had to go find colours and shapes.

 

Airlie, 8  23:54

It was like boring because I’d rather be at school. And when we’re learning at home, all I can think about is the break.

 

Michelle Powell  24:05

(Laughing) Not me though, there was a lot of food going around.

 

Airlie, 8  24:09

And then we had we had break time not in break time, like actual break time.

 

Michelle Powell  24:19

Each of them, it’s so different. So Zyla and Diesel, definitely it’s the academic stuff. They’ve they’ve missed out on that. They’ve kind of fallen behind there. Talara, definitely the social side. She’s, she’s probably more shy now I think than what she would have been if we had have had a normal kind of introduction to you seven they missed their school camp. Kalani, doesn’t seem to have affected her she’s a new nine now. Yeah, look. I because like I say so many positives came out of it too, because I’ve cut down on the sport. I’ve cut down on how many things they’ve done after school as well. I think I’m more laid back now when it comes to certain things and what I was before. But generally it was just hard. It was really hard. It was just it was a lot with so many different ages. And I mean, I think even people I spoke to with two kids, it’s hard because it’s all relative. It doesn’t matter how many kids you’ve got, like, you’ve still got to try and manage your life around school and around everything else that’s going on. So yeah, it was just hard.

 

David Hetherington  25:29

So while some of Michelle’s kids did well, academically, some are still catching up, and some struggled socially. But above all, hers is a story of resilience and flexibility like that of so many families and school communities across Australia. Professor Jenny Gore’s research also shows that students from disadvantaged backgrounds didn’t fall behind further academically, largely due to that extra funding support. But is it a different story for student well being? The Australian Primary Principals Association, the peak body for principals from primary schools nationally, released a report in early 2020, showing an increasing level of anxiety amongst primary kids. And that was even before COVID. So how did the pandemic affects students social well being and mental health?

 

Malcom Elliot  26:13

My name is Malcolm Elliot, I’m the President of the Australian Primary Principals Association. I live here in Tasmania, that’s where I’m coming to you from.

 

David Hetherington  26:22

I think if you cast your mind back to, to February, March 2020, there was a real fear that as the pandemic bit and in particular, at the point where different jurisdictions close their schools and sent students home, that this would have a real detrimental impact on learning outcomes, and the students are really at risk at falling behind. Research shows that it hasn’t borne out exactly like that, that students didn’t fall behind academically the way we feared. And are you surprised by that?

 

Malcom Elliot  26:53

Well, at first, I was a little surprised. And then when the first NAPLAN data came out, after a year, that was encouraging, you know, it showed that there was little if any degradation in achievement, some in numeracy, and some in a couple of the other areas, and it varied a little bit from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But it was encouraging. Also, alongside that was the realisation that it didn’t matter really what happened, we were going to have to adapt in schools anyway. And that when the children return to schooling, that we would have to pick up from wherever the children were at. And so schools were ready for it. Plus, we were buoyed by the support we were given by parent communities. And for once, the teaching profession got a little bit of recognition for what it actually is, and what it does contribute in the development of the children in support for families qnd in growing the nation.

 

David Hetherington  27:48

I’d imagine that’s the peak national body for primary school principals, you’ve got a good bird’s eye view of the relative impact of COVID. Have you noticed a market difference in kind of levels of foundational learning, perhaps in states where states and territories, where the lockdowns were deeper and longer? Victoria, obviously, perhaps New South Wales, relative to those places that didn’t have the very pronounced lock downs in 20 and 2021?

 

Malcom Elliot  28:13

We’re going to have to look more closely at the data as it emerges. Now, in some places, the impact was negligible. Obviously, for a while there Western Australia, being isolated as it is, and the strategies adopted by the government meant that there was little interruption to learning and schooling was able to continue largely unaffected. Tasmania was largely unaffected. Again, the effect of isolation being the the island state meant that we had barriers that we could stick with which protected education. But behind all this obvious stuff, and when we’re talking about outcomes for children, was the impact on students experiencing disadvantage, the circumstances of resources available to parents, including physical resources, like rooms to study in, just as an example, were not the same across all families across Australia.

 

David Hetherington  29:05

I’m thinking here of students from non-English speaking backgrounds, students in rural and remote communities, those without ready access to laptops and connectivity. Can you talk a little bit about how those families navigated the schooling through the pandemic?

 

Malcom Elliot  29:23

Oh, this is a matter of great sensitivity and, to some extent, sadness, David, because it really highlighted and highlights still the differences between family circumstances in this country where there’s genuine wealth. But there were many, many people many 1000s of families and children negatively affected by having to try to share devices, if they had access to them. By having to share space, and the time of parents who were doing their absolute best to supervise the learning and these sorts of things bite deeply into the self esteem of the learner, the self esteem of the family. While we’re talking today about impacts on children’s learning and and the outcomes for them as young people, we’re also talking about the long term impacts on families, whatever their configuration, and on our society in general.

 

David Hetherington  30:22

Even before the pandemic started your organisation, the Australian Primary Principals Association, had commissioned a study on anxiety amongst students, which I think you released just before COVID hit, which showed that anxiety was on the rise. And obviously, everything that’s happened in the kind of succeeding two and a half years, would have exacerbated all that. Can you talk a little bit about what you see, the effect on student wellbeing has been?

 

Malcom Elliot  30:49

We found in the study, which we released in January 2020, that young people were at primary school age, were noticeably exhibiting signs of mental ill health. And not only that the signs of ill health in their families, in their parents, were becoming clearer, and were having a bigger impact on the children at school as well as family life. So that was a very big concern for us. Bearing in mind, too, that we were coming out of that period of the terrible bushfires, and they’d already been a 10 year drought. There are a number of businesses, people’s families, particularly on the Eastern Seaboard, but in other places around Australia, where already, life was difficult, but it was made much, much worse by those things that happened. And then on top of it, there’s a pandemic. You know, so we’re talking about climate change, which is having a huge impact on people. And it’s also having an effect on the way that people see their futures, including children. The children desperately wanted to get back to school to be with their friends. So in some instances, they just made friends, because they just started school. And for other children, of course, they have relationships with their teachers and other friends. And that’s really, really the main thing. And once they can resume those relationships, and that brings an air of normality to them, they can resume their learning. And now we desperately need continuity, you know, a good long steady run at teaching and the opportunity for the children to learn.

 

David Hetherington  32:18

So apart from the simple fact of bringing children back together in one shared space, what else might schools need to do to address that, that well being effect?

 

Malcom Elliot  32:30

Well, it’s the sense of belonging. And I think it’s here that we need as a whole nation, really to get with the program, that the opportunity of this pandemic, and the terrible impacts is to show a sense of solidarity and care and concern for each other.  So quite apart from what can be done in schools and in schools, there is plenty of opportunity to join in activities of various types, you know, from being in a rock band, I was just in a  primary school today, and as I, when I arrived, there was someone having a go on the drums and someone else playing the bass guitar. And so those children are back together and playing in the band, which is a big thing. Footy teams, netball, you name it, anything like that. And then the informal groups that get together in the sandpit. All those sorts of things are really important, but then outside that, and this is the really big issue that we’ve got to face here that we tend to want to talk about education or school education, in its own microcosm, looking inside the schools. But in fact, schools are very socially dependent. So that’s something that we as a whole nation have got to really embrace to get kids reconnected, with people in lots and lots of different activities that help them feel that they belong to a developed society.

 

David Hetherington  32:47

Absolutely.  So just continuing on this theme of well being for a moment, I’d like to ask you about the well being of principals and teachers throughout this pandemic. Can you talk a little bit about your members, the teachers they work with and how they’ve fared?

 

Malcom Elliot  33:58

Well, there’s been some upside to it all. And that is that teachers and children have been able to demonstrate to families the true nature of their bond, through education. So the vast majority of teachers are in education because they want to be and because they really like children. And that’s, that really shows and they’re very, very dedicated to the task. So the caliber of the teaching fraternity in Australia really came to the fore. And it’s been recognised in the main, children really like their teachers. And they really like learning and they want to learn with their friends. So we saw all that. But then we also saw the demands on our teachers where I think it was forgotten the teachers are people too, and that we all have, many of us have families of our own. Many of us have elderly members of our families, a lot of teachers are getting older. And for this, the circumstances the social circumstances around the pandemic weighed heavily on them. So I think that these sorts of things became very big burdens for teachers. And we knew that some for some children, their place of safety is and was at that time their school, not their home.

 

David Hetherington  35:12

In a sense, you get this, you get the idea that there’s there entirely different ways of teaching and learning that were kind of innovated through this pandemic. Will some of them endure? Have we found new and different ways to do learning, using some of the remote tools or these flexible approaches that that were forced upon us?

 

Malcom Elliot  35:34

Those learnings will continue. I think the big question is whether they will be systemically adapted and adopted. Because we face this issue now of school running from effectively, let’s just call it nine in the morning to three in the afternoon. But what we’ve learned, and we’ve seen in terms of practical experience is, that some children learn better in the morning, in the afternoon, and on and on. For some children learning on their own is better for part of the time and learning at home on their own is better, at least part of the time when, rather than being at school the whole time. And how we can adapt to that is a very, very big question. And we need some pretty solid work done on that. And we need a lot of confidence from the community to be able to do that. Because this is not really what we’re used to from schools, we’re used to the children being at the school from nine to three. We’ve also got a generation of teachers, not necessarily all of the young teachers are digital natives and not necessarily all of the older teachers or digital dinosaurs either. But we’ve got people who’ve led the way in terms of the use of digital technologies and ways of communicating with students, which are really leading edge.

 

David Hetherington  36:47

Perhaps a final question, Malcolm, I wonder what message you might share with parents and carers who may have been worried about how their children have fared, during this pandemic period. What would you tell parents who were kind of reflecting on those things?

 

Malcom Elliot  37:04

During that period of the lockdowns was really important to keep saying to parents, don’t put yourself under too much pressure, because the first and most important thing you must do for your children is love them. And to know that as you go forward into the future, that your best, your best will be enough. Secondly, though, to go to the question of perhaps some sort of gap in learning is that gaps can be closed, and gaps will be closed. And it’s quite a natural thing for human beings to continue to learn. So there’s been an interruption to some forms of development. They’ve been in contact with educational materials provided by educational experts. And that’s what your country’s teachers are. So they’ll continue to learn and the gap will close. If there is a gap, in fact, in their development, and that there’s every reason to be optimistic about that. But we can’t take our eye off the ball and schools are ready to work with you. And in all things in life communication is absolutely critical. So talking with your your schools and understanding what it is that your child is experiencing, will give you heart and will give you some ideas about what you can do at home to help your child develop, as you hope that they will.

 

David Hetherington  38:18

Malcom, it’s a very positive and uplifting note on which to end our chat. Thank you for your for your leadership and for sharing with us.

 

Malcom Elliot  38:26

Thanks very much for having me.

 

David Hetherington  38:30

That was Malcolm Elliot, the President of the Australian Primary Principals Association, speaking to us from Tasmania. Before him, you heard from Professor Jenny Gore from the University of Newcastle and Michelle Powell, mother of six and soon to be teacher’s aide from Bulli in the Illawarra. My name is David Hetherington, and you’ve been listened to Hands Up, a podcast from the Public Education Foundation that answers all your burning questions about our public schools. We’ll put a link to both studies from Professor Jenny gore and her University of Newcastle team and the mental well being study from the Australian Primary Principals Association in the podcast shownotes. Our website is public education foundation.org.au where you can learn more about our work supporting young people with scholarships and in advocating for a high quality well resourced public school system. Hands up was produced by Jennifer Macey and Olivia Roseman with editing by Holly Forest, sound engineering by Jason Nicholas and research by Melanie Morrison. We’d like to acknowledge our former colleague Janine Miguez-Shaw, who was a source of inspiration for the podcast. Thank you to the New South Wales Teachers Federation for their support, and for allowing us to record in this excellent podcasting studio. A big shout out to the students and staff in the instrumental music program,  at Fort Street High School in Sydney for composing, performing and arranging a wonderful theme music. This podcast was produced on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the first kind and original teachers and knowledge holders of this land. Thanks so much for listening.