Back to school with no masks – a first since Covid outbreak

LEARNERS at St Henry’s Marist College headed back to school today, Tuesday, January 17 – and with a first since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, learners started the school year without the protective face masks previously required.

Among the students were this year’s returning students and the new Grade 1 learners experiencing primary school for the first time.

Speaking to Berea Mail, school principal Stephen Leech said there were 680 learners enrolled in the school this year with additional late enrollments on the way.

Leech noted that this is the first year since 2020 that the school year has not begun with Covid-19 restrictions, including face masks, in place.

ALSO READ: SPAR shares five tips to make back-to-school lunches stress-free

“It’s lovely to start the year without Covid-19 restrictions. There’s lots of excitement this morning – not only from the little ones but even from our new high school students,” he said.

“Masks were dropped halfway through last year, but we had to start the year with masks, sanitising and other protocols,” he said.

The school year also starts with a new subject in the curriculum.

“We have taken out IT programming and amalgamated it with robotics and a bit of engineering and coding to form a subject we call megatronics. We piloted it last year, and now we have developed it further and integrated it fully into the curriculum. It teaches skills around coding and some basic fundamentals of engineering, as well as the programming and IT that you would expect,” said Leech.

ALSO READ: Umbilo school’s rugby players scouted for international tour

Another innovation is ‘Language across the Curriculum’.

“In our senior phase, there is something called ‘Language across the Curriculum’, which is about subjects working together – instead of working subjects as separate subjects, they can share the knowledge and skills and experience that’s created by working across subjects,” concluded Leech.