Students who had tenuous social ties before the lockdown may have lost them altogether. While parents worry about social media, online contact is said to have helped preserve social connections for many students and made it easier to adjust.

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Ms Plumb said many students would also be aware that reports had been made and the year was drawing to a close, and therefore might find it difficult to focus on schoolwork or learning.

“I guess schools that focus on wellness, these are the ones that will see student engagement more successfully than those that go back to learning and the way it was before the lockdown,” she declared.

High School Principals Council chief Craig Petersen said after last year’s lockdown, students needed to rebuild relationships and teachers needed to restore expectations for classroom behavior.

“We anticipate that there will be students who have been very isolated, have spent a lot of time in their rooms, not interacting with anyone else,” he said.

“The first priority will not be to do check-in evaluations: it will be to do well-being checks, to see how they travel, to have a positive experience at the start of the school year and to have a good environment, then to focus on teaching and learning. . “

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The national clinical advisor for Headspace, a youth-focused mental health organization, said any kind of change can create feelings of stress, anxiety, worry, fear and lack of what was before.

“It’s really important that we recognize that not everyone will find this time difficult; some will be excited and happy to be back, ”he said. “Often feelings of stress and excitement, elation have similar physiological feelings.

“We can remind young people that it is a difficult time, it is a natural and normal feeling of challenge in our lives. We will do it. “

Rex Alameddine, a 10th grade student from Cremorne, is not worried about returning to class as he had contact with his fellow students during lockdown.

“It’s just like a very long vacation for me, so I got a lot of rest, I went on my boat, I surfed, everything to get out of the house,” he said. declared.

“It will certainly be weird not having seen some of my friends for four months, but I don’t think that would have changed.”

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