Thank you for the 2020 educational highlights package in the NT News (28/12). The resilience, resourcefulness, creativity and coping strategies developed and practised by school staff and students in countering this most challenging of years deserves high praise. That has been the way management has occurred all around Australia.

The 2020 year in education has been an Australian and indeed a worldwide educational year with significant difference to those of the past two or three decades. Students, staff, schools and their communities have had to cope with forced change like never before.

Some have coped better than others, but fir all there was a significance that made this year one that stood out. For the most part, the standing out was for all

the wrong environmental reasons.

And in terms of 2021, we need to consider the upcoming school year – now just three weeks into the future – in cautionary terms. COVID-19 is still a part and parcel of the Australian way of life.

The impacts it has had will continue to have an influence on our institutions, including schools.

We will need to proceed with caution; there can be no throwing our hands in the air, declaring there is no longer a need to worry. To act with a false sense of security would indeed be foolish. It would also send the wrong message to students.