 Hi, my name is Patrick Reed, I'm school director at Bridge Mills Goa Language Centre and we're located in Goa City Centre. Okay, Patrick, can I start by asking you about the challenges that the academic, the pandemic has posed in your school or in your classrooms? Yeah, so I suppose challenges for us are similar to the challenges for most schools in Ireland. We looked at the challenges in terms of how they affected our students in terms of being out of the school and going and studying online. The challenges for our teachers in terms of not having that social contact coming into school and communicating with us on a regular basis and working from their homes as opposed to working from their staff room and their community. And then the other challenges facing other people that are connected to us like host families and the agents who send us students and the local society around us who benefit from our students being here in Goa Way. The local coffee shop, the bus company, the bike rental company, the tourist organizations and so on and the financial impact that it's had locally in our local areas. For example, our local coffee shop around the corner who takes care of our students coffee needs at break time and earn around 270 euro per week from our students. So that is immediately gone now that our students are no longer coming to school. So there's an impact, a ripple effect, both on internally with staff and students and externally with other people that we work with. So in that idea of students as part of the community, which I suppose the smaller the location, the more that it's felt, but I think it's true everywhere. How have your students kind of cope with the situation as a part of the community that's trying to cope with it in general. I think it was at the start. It was almost a novelty in that people we thought would be close for two weeks and people would return. So the first two weeks students felt like, well, this is a bit of a holiday and I can just take it easy because I'm going to come back. We'd also to our students that, you know, we would re make up any classes they left that they missed because we wouldn't be teaching online in that two week period. And then as things extended out, we began to realize that we had to provide students support, much more than we thought we would have as students were now isolated from us. And also we had to get them connected with each other, find ways that they could connect via social program and also reach out to them apart from just via the classroom platform. You know, sending them emails in the updates and helping them to find out what was going on in the society in which they lived because they weren't as clued into where to source information and covered 19 from how long a closure would be for what the government supports where how they would, for example, if they were working, how they access finances, were they able to get the PUP. And then the other sides of things where they would have difficulties with, you know, buying food if they didn't have money immediately available to them and providing that social and structural support to students and students who were in host families were supported by the host families and host families did an amazing job of taking the students in. We had students who were, for example, in half board in host families, but the host families immediately get them full board meals so that they didn't have to go out and buy any food. They kept them up to date with all of the policies and procedures that they needed to know they made sure that the Wi-Fi in their houses was working okay so that they could continue to communicate with the school. And that would ring us on behalf of the students and ask any questions that they have. So there was an immediate response within the students community here in Goa to support the students and that was very helpful for us to help our students by getting the support of people around us also. And then as the situation evolved, how did the response evolve? So as we began to realize then, you know, as March rolled into April May and it just continued on, we began then to look at sort of rather than short term, we might be open next week. It could all change to a more medium term view, which was the idea that we were going to be studying online for much longer that students would need that kind of ongoing support on a much longer basis than we had initially planned. And so we had our student support officer who was then in contact with students on a weekly basis. We were telephoning students on a weekly basis individually to see how they were getting on, or if they were at a low level like elementary or pre-intermediate level or it might be difficult for them to communicate with us. We were ringing their host families or we were getting contact details from the houses or apartments where they were living and contacting maybe their housemates to find out how they were getting on if there was any way that we could support them. We also then developed our online materials. We wrote a syllabus specifically for online, which we developed pretty quickly. And so we were evolving our teaching materials as long alongside our student structural support on an ongoing basis in order to keep our students in the loop and supported both academically and also in their social circumstance. And so students then been telling you about the support and the academic and the welfare side, which you both mentioned, what kind of feedback did you get from them about how they experienced it? Yeah, well, the feedback we had and I think it was pretty evenly spread among all students is that students were very happy that the support was provided to them and they felt supported in their living situation in their academic situation. They were very much focused on trying to come back to and study in school because that's what they wanted. They were happy to be supported in individual circumstances, but they missed their colleagues, they missed their routine, they missed their school structure, they missed their teacher. So while they were happy and secure and knew what was going on, there was an overriding ambition by all students and also staff to come back to the school and get the school reopened. Did they express concerns about the health status and the health situation or were they saying, I'm young, that doesn't affect me really? Yeah, at the start we engaged with a number of external agencies. We did some training with Enterprise Ireland. We also did some training with Goa skillsnet and with Fulcher Ireland on COVID-19 policies and procedures and we wrote extensive policies and procedures specifically for students. We also wrote them specifically for host families and for staff and at each stage in the process of writing those policies and procedures, we engaged with the particular cohort that they were focused on. So students were working with us on a weekly basis, giving us feedback on how we were developing our policies and procedures in order to, for example, keep them secure where they currently were, but also on how we were going to keep them secure once we reopened. So I think that then eliminated the worry from students because we weren't just going to present them with the finished document and say, here is the 20 page document that will secure your safety once you return to our school or where you currently are. So they were giving us their contributions, telling us their worries and concerns, giving us valuable feedback so that they help develop the policies and procedures that were specifically focused for their specific needs. And then in having to kind of meet those challenges and come up with those solutions across all areas of what you do, what would you say you've learned as professional as an organization along the way? I think the one thing that connects all of the things that we have done, whether we're dealing with agents, staff, host families, students and whatever it is, communication, the value of ongoing communication has been so worthwhile in this whole process. So we've always had good communication with students and staff from the point of view of being together in one place and almost taking for granted that because people are here because we talk to them regularly that that's something that is something we automatically do. But when everybody gets dispersed into their separate corners it becomes very important to improve your communication in terms of making people feel secure, developing new policies and procedures, letting people know what's going on. So the value of communication from my point of view directly with staff, from our point of view directly with students has been so important and that's something we've really focused on on a weekly basis, reaching out to every member of staff, every student or host families and letting them know what's going on. And also reaching out to them on a weekly basis, even if there's nothing going on, to tell them that no, we have nothing new to tell them but we're still here for them when we're still here to support them. Absolutely communication is key and it's key that it's clear and it's easily understood is the challenge. But then from where we are, how do you see it developing, kind of in the medium in the long term, what's going to stay with us, what's going to revert to where it was or what kind of else might come into play. Yeah, well I think in terms of the structure of the business and how we're going to be working I think 2021 is going to be similar I think in many ways to 2020 in terms of online provision being part of the educational component. And I think it's not something that will necessarily replace the face to face, because there are completely different kinds of academic approaches to teaching online as to face to face. And people who choose face to face courses are not people who necessarily want to study online. But I think given how things are going and how the virus will develop in 2021 I think the online provision will become part component of face to face teaching through 2021. I think also the adult market are likely to be the ones who will return first potentially I don't see the junior market recovering in 2021. So I think a lot of online teaching provision will be with those adult learners on a phased basis depending on how countries are getting on, whether they're in lockdown or out of lockdown. And then I think into 2022, once things have developed a bit further, and perhaps we have a vaccine or better way of dealing with things that I think we will go back to face to face provision, of course, but I think they will always remain a part of online learning as part of that face to face provision now that we can see how it works, whether that's before students arrive and after students have left, or as a blended part of the ongoing learning the students will will take with us. And those students who will be coming back to us. In terms of the things that are in our control because obviously there's lots of things that are that are outside of our control. What questions will they be looking for reassurance on that wouldn't have been a feature. And when they're making that decision, which school do I go to or where is the right place to do my studies. What's on their mind, do you think and what do we need to kind of reassure them about. Yeah, one of the things that we've seen in feedback from agents for example in terms of booking programs for 2021 is that there is an increased interest in finding schools which are located in non large urban areas due to covert 19 instance rates. So you know people are already looking and saying well large population centers have large numbers of students who may carry more risk. So in order to decrease risk, I think students are looking for and agents are looking for places where there are low covert numbers and that's going to be a feature I think of bookings into 2021 and into 2022 health and security for students. And I think second of all, flexibility from the point of view of the, the language school where they're going, and is it possible to cancel close to the arrival date without penalty I think will be a very important factor in terms of students booking because students could get sick at any time and they don't want to then have to pay for something that they can't avail of. And I think support from the provider will be very important in terms of how students are going to be supported once they're here. And then this last question to kind of wrap it up as you were describing there we went from this is going to be a two week thing to it's going to be a six month thing to who knows two years. And how have you kind of got to grips with sustaining the motivation of staff and students to kind of keep plugging away at the challenge when it's not going to resolve itself quickly. Yeah, I think I had a very interesting conversation very early on in late March of this year with our enterprise aren't representative in the West of Ireland, who pretty much spelled out to me his vision of how things were unfolding and he looked at a six month, a 12 month and an 18 month projection. My initial reaction to that was this is a two week thing. This is not a six month thing. This is not a 12 month thing. This is not an 18 month thing. But he kind of, I think set the basis for me early on in terms of looking at this as a much larger longer issue than I had initially seen it so from the start to end of March we're going to be able when I started weekly communications with staff with students. I was already looking at a 12 month 18 month long term view. And so then with that, I think honesty in terms of where you are is very important, telling people the facts as you see them the facts that they're being presented to you and not giving people false hope is so important, because when people false hope, or false start dates, then when you miss the start dates becomes extremely difficult for you to then go back to people and say, well okay I know I thought we would do this by October we're now going to do this by next January. So I think keeping in view the reality of what's going on gathering as much data as you can sharing that information with your staff and students, so that they can see that they can see what you could see. So you have an idea of where you're getting your reference points from, and the projections that you're making, and then you can formulate a medium and a long term plan and keep people on board with you because they know that you're revealing information to them. That is accurate. That is the information that you're receiving. And I think that's what we're going to continue to do honesty in terms of the information we find communicating with everybody that information in keeping the long term view in mind of how we're going to develop and how we're going to get there over the next 12 months. Thank you.