A decision late this afternoon by the government will give principals the option of allowing year 12 and 13 students back to school early for face to face learning during alert level 3.
The Ministry of Education is working through the legal requirements tonight and will be able to confirm tomorrow the date students can return.
Auckland Grammar headmaster Tim O'Connor has been imploring authorities to allow flexibility especially for students so close to crucial assessments.
On Friday he said 11 more full school days out of the classroom would be expensive, especially for students sitting Cambridge examinations. He didn't want 2020 to be a wasted year for students.
"I'm ecstatic. It's great news," he told Checkpoint about today's announcement.
"Our young men will be ecstatic about this .... it gives them the opportunity to get prompt responses from teachers. Anything we can give them they'll be grateful for."
He said the decision was complicated because the government would have to work through the Health Order to give students a dispensation to return and he expected this to happen tomorrow.
It would mean a lot of organisation to ensure physical distancing of one metre inside and two metres outside, classes of 20 or fewer and teachers only being associated with one group of students although the bubble of students could have more than one teacher.
"It might mean students aren't with us for the entire day..."
"Any form of face-to-face contact is great for our young people."
Asked if the decision favoured high decile schools and unfairly disadvantaged schools with fewer resources, he disagreed saying it offered schools greater flexibility to be able to make decisions for themselves and their community.
He said one of the critical groups schools needed to be helping were students on vocational pathways who did a lot of practical work as part of their courses.
"They will fall behind very quickly indeed."
The decision does not mean that year 12 and 13 students have to come to school every day.
"Any face to face contact is better than none."
He urged all other Auckland schools to consider returning at least some of the students so they received some contact.
He said he wanted to congratulate the Ministry of Education for its decision.
He said he would be awaiting final arrangements from the Ministry tomorrow but his leadership team had been working huge hours to prepare for several scenarios, including the one of having senior students return.
He has already seen some general guidelines which were "restrictive but manageable".
"We'll be good to go from Wednesday."
RNZ
