Ballakermeen High School’s head teacher has praised the response of students, parents and teachers to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Adrienne Burnett was speaking at the school’s annual prize day at the Villa Marina on Wednesday afternoon.

Mrs Burnett began by telling everyone how she has now worked as a teacher in six decades, having began her career in 1979.

She said that in an average year, teachers not only teach, but they are part-time social workers, parent liaison officers, lunch supervisors and hall monitors.

’If that wasn’t enough, If that wasn’t enough, along came coronavirus and your teachers, like the rest of the world, faced an unexpected and frightening scenario,’ she added.

’Unlike students who have only ever known a digital world, some of us adults are not as technically minded.

’When school closed, we had to quickly learn different ways of working, so we could post lessons online, trying to make it easy for you to follow, even though the job of teaching usually happens when we are in a classroom, explaining things and interacting at a very human level.

’Your teachers responded brilliantly. They found ways to explain things without being there in person. They were also working with the exam boards, calculating centre assessed grades to ensure that exam results reflected your ability and not a future stolen from you by coronavirus.’

As well as this, some teachers even managed to hold virtual geography fieldwork lessons, drama sessions and even assemblies for Years 9 and 11 as well as staff ringing to check how students were doing.

Mrs Burnett praised how parents responded to home schooling, saying: ’At secondary level, teachers specialist in one or two subjects. Your poor mums and dads had to help you with far more subjects and I must pay tribute to how well they did.’

She also congratulated the students themselves and thanked Education Minister Dr Alex Allinson and Health and Social Care Minister David Ashford for their work and support during the lockdown and exam periods.

Mrs Burnett finished by paying tribute to teacher Carol Synnott who died earlier this year. She said Mrs Synnott ’was incredibly caring, and saw it as her responsibility to nurture and inspire young people’.