SCHOOLS have worked tirelessly to adapt their school curriculum to online learning as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, but many students are heeding government advice and heading back to the classroom this week.

Xavier College Head of Campus John Cameron said 546 secondary students, or just over half of the college’s student body, had returned on Monday.

It follows advice by SA chief medical officer Professor Nicola Spurrier that children are not at an increased risk of COVID-19 by attending schools, and families should feel comfortable and safe to send them.

Barossa schools, which were closed last term because of a cluster of local COVID-19 cases, were also permitted to reopen, as of today.

“As a college we had predicted that we would have a ‘soft start’ to term two with potentially 50 per cent of the students returning and 50 per cent of the students engaging with our ‘Online Learning Platform’ at home,” Mr Cameron said.

“Over the next two weeks we expect to see an increase in the number of students physically returning to the college.”

Xavier College is one of several local schools which will continue to support student learning at home, with all students having access to an online program of work.

“The college has made it a key priority to work closely with our community to ensure their individual needs and circumstances are fully catered for,” Mr Cameron said.

“Xavier College is exceptionally well-placed to successfully provide students with a stable, reliable Online Learning Platform with the view to providing our students with continuous learning whether they are onsite here at the college or if they are learning at home.”

Meanwhile Trinity College, which had a pupil free day on Monday, has implemented a plan to see it return to traditional classroom learning in just a few weeks.

All learning is being carried out online for the remainder of this week, ahead of a mix of online/classroom learning for the next month, when student attendance is expected to be between 60 and 70 per cent.

In a letter to families, Head of Trinity College Nick Hately said the traditional school system is expected to return much faster than anticipated.

“Online learning will remain a significant feature as we navigate term two, but with significant numbers of kids back in class, we will be able to utilise a much greater range of teaching methods,” he wrote.

“As a community we are all in this together.”

SACE subjects modified

THE SACE Board has announced a further 22 subjects have been modified to help support teachers deliver learning to students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The changes mostly affect school-based assessments, which make up 70 per cent of a student’s assessed work, and will include the option for teachers to reduce an assessment task.

An initial 13 SACE subjects were also modified at the end of Term 1.

End-of-year exams are still planned to take place, with a final scheduling decision to be made in the middle of this year.

LearnLink crashes

Students of State Government schools faced issues accessing their online learning on Monday.

The government’s online learning portal ‘LearnLink’, which provides access to Office 365 apps, displayed error messages for many users throughout the day.

It is understood the outages didn’t affect existing log-ins at school sites, but largely people or students trying to connect from home.

Similar outages were experienced by interstate students when they returned to school in the previous weeks.