Hello All,

We certainly found ourselves in interesting and challenging times with the COVID – 19 pandemic experience leading our Catholic school parents to become the facilitators of our children’s schooling at home activities throughout this term.

In this report I wanted to reflect on my personal experiences both as a Health Care worker, combining this as a stay at home parent of 2 children with my son in grade 6 and my daughter in an all girl’s high school at year 8.

As a Health Care Worker, I am extremely grateful for the people across Victorian communities and their resolve to stay at home where possible and practical. Making sure you maintained safe movement around the suburbs and regional centres we live in, schooling from home, and working from home when able to do so has had a huge impact on how soon we have been able to transition back to some sort of normality.

By staying at home we really have saved lives, as evidenced by the “flattening of the curve”, the resilience and commitment by all Victorians has given us as Health Care workers a moral boost to work even harder to care for your loved ones in their time of need. These measures, along with safe social distancing, have shown our community as world leaders in the fight against suppressing this disease from our population where possible until a vaccine is developed. Thank you all sincerely.

Once I transitioned to work from home and became the nominated parent to support our kids in my family, both the opportunities and some difficulties faced while in isolation has been challenging for all of us. Coupled with, and what I have observed, is the different nature of demands between primary and secondary school Catholic education, it certainly was a new learning experience.     

Just like we would at work or in our personal lives, we've had good days and challenging days learning at home as a family. Our experiences ranged from missing the odd online meeting to all of us trying to zoom in at the same time for attendance of work and school commitments!

I have a new found appreciation of what schools do for our children including daily organisation, curriculum teaching expertise and keeping the children engaged for extended periods of time. I also see a new found level of parent engagement and leadership which has been acknowledged publicly by the media, politicians and by our education diocesan leaders.

Last week an Education Summit on the COVID 19 remote learning at home experience was announced by the State Education Minister James Merlino. CSPV are seeking “a seat at the table” to give feedback on the experiences of parents as we represent the parents of Catholic school children across Victoria.

We encourage parents to provide as much feedback as possible to contribute to improvements in education. I see the future being brighter for parents in education, with opportunities to have parent voice heard on a state level and at a system level in Catholic Education.

I am very proud to be a member of our Victorian community. As a Catholic School parent and Chair of CSPV, as well as being a Health Care worker in the diocese of Ballarat, I thank you for all your efforts across this term, certainly a year none of us will never forget!