In my recent Gazette columns I addressed several topics unrelated to Corona however the pandemic remains at the forefront of everyone’s mind.

Many members of our school community are expatriates in Hong Kong and have been particularly affected by the crisis. Many international and local companies and their employees are suffering economically. Our families are challenged by the severely restricted travel conditions that make it difficult for them to visit their loved ones overseas. Especially now, as Christmas approaches, there is growing concern that families will not be able to visit their relatives, children will not see their grandparents, parents will not be able to welcome back their children living and studying overseas.

The German Swiss International School with its international clientele and with its German International Stream has been hit by the recently imposed travel restrictions. Many GSIS families are living in Hong Kong for a limited period of time and many of our teachers are from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, UK, Australia, etc. – some of them have come to Hong Kong by themselves to work and live, but their children, parents and other family members live predominantly in Germany, Europe and other countries all over the world.

For all members of the school community, i.e. students, parents and staff, the School has opened a door in its decision to extend the Christmas vacations by one week, as well as the subsequent week of online learning; everyone can decide for themselves as to whether or not they want to take a trip home under the given conditions. Every family and staff have the possibility to leave for two weeks, provided that their home countries allow entry without quarantine, and then to go into quarantine for two weeks back in Hong Kong.

The recent mandatory hotel quarantine imposed by the Hong Kong government will likely have added some uncertainties to your travel plans. Many of you may also not have made a final decision yet and may opt for last minute. At the moment, despite the restrictions, a significant number of teachers still want to use the Christmas vacations to visit relatives.

In view of the above, and also in order to keep everyone’s options open, we will not and cannot reverse the vacation arrangements made. This is to avoid going back and forth on the matter, but I also want to confirm and keep our commitment we have made so far. A survey, as often requested, would not change the situation, as this decision cannot be based on numbers, but needs to be based on compassion and moral responsibility. Please also keep in mind that a survey would always be to the disadvantage of expatriates wanting to travel, as many members of the school community are based in Hong Kong and would not travel either way. A survey would therefore not accurately reflect the situation.

Our decision is not supposed to encourage travel, but to leave a door open. It is also a commitment from the School as an employer to its staff. The pandemic has already cost us teachers, who for family reasons were no longer able to remain in Hong Kong and at GSIS. We do not want to lose more teachers, but on the contrary, we want to signal that GSIS is a workplace that does not lose sight of the well-being of its employees even in difficult times. And we would like to continue to be a workplace that attracts motivated and first-class teachers and supports them also in times of crisis.

However, depending on further developments, we will make a final decision by mid-December on whether and to what extent we can offer on-campus classes.

For the Primary and Secondary departments, we consider an online phase of one week to be feasible in view of the special circumstances and in order to keep the above-mentioned opportunities open to everyone. However, we will continuously monitor the situation and make adjustments if necessary.

You can regularly read in the newspaper about the catastrophic economic impact of the pandemic. The example of Lufthansa shows that it incurred a loss of two billion euros from July to September 2020 alone, and that sales plummeted by 74 percent due to travel restrictions. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr recently stated that "people around the world have a great longing to travel again soon" and called for a relaxation of government travel restrictions. He also asked that health protection and freedom to travel be facilitated by the widespread use of rapid tests.

I very much hope that rapid tests will get us out of this situation soon and will prevent further complications.

Compared to the economic, social and psychosocial damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, at GSIS a potential week of online learning to support part of our community should be manageable.

In this respect, I would also like to thank you for your comprehensive feedback on online learning in the past months, which has helped the School to further develop a high quality online programme. We have survived four months of pandemic-induced online learning. We will also master the five days of online learning that were scheduled for the above reasons and will help members of our school community who would like nothing more than to visit their families over Christmas.

Our students have already had to do without many things in the past months such as outings, excursions, music and theater events, festivals, sports events or assemblies. We also had to cancel our Discovery Week. Through this we may have gained extra ‘school’ time but we lost a considerable amount of time for joy and community activities. Due to the cancellation of almost all events, the additional week of online learning will not take away any of the total presence learning time in this academic year. But we should give this small Christmas present to these parents, students, teachers and staff who see a chance to travel, even if they are not a majority.

In recent weeks I have heard, read and exchanged many opinions, comments and arguments on the topic by e-mail, in personal conversations, KPR meetings and at the meeting with the KPR Secretaries. I always had the impression that there was a great deal of understanding for each other's arguments in general. However, it has also been shown that all arguments, no matter from which side they come, always find their equal counter-argument and thus create a certain endless loop. Since the ‘end of the loop’ has to be reached at some point, I hope that this article was able to show a little bit of the complexity and difficulty of the situation and therefore I would like to finally ask for your understanding for the decision of the School, which was agreed on by School Management and approved by the Board.

But now I wish you a nice weekend

Ulrich Weghoff
Principal
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