eNewsletter 2021 Term 3 Edition (CSOW 2)

There is new advice on events and tours during the current COVID-19 restrictions. The following advice was received and shared with Principals late yesterday in COVID-19 Principals Update #104

Q: What advice is there about Open Days/Tours/Open Nights/Come and Try either held during the school day, after the school day has finished or on the weekend? Catholic Schools Open Week is a key event in our calendar.

A: The advice is that after hours tours or weekend events at a school are possible. If these are to occur then all the necessary safety precautions (small group size, distancing, mask wearing, QR codes etc) should take place. Minimising the number of adults on the site at the one time will also be preferable. 

It is not advised that tours occur during the school day because of the presence of many students. Leaders should be conscious of the principle to separate students from visitors and apply distancing whenever possible/practical.

Q: What advice is there about Come and Try days?

A: These are possible as long as the visiting students abide by all the safety precautions of other students in the same year level eg secondary students must wear a mask.

Catholic Schools Open Week will still continue to shine a light on your school and Catholic Education more broadly.

While this new information is disappointing, the good news is that most call-to-actions on our campaign advertising say “Book a tour”, “Enrol now” or "Discover more" – and all of these actions are still possible.

If your event was planned for during the day there are a number of options:

• Personal calls – book families in for a personal conversation with the principal on the phone and/or video call
• Move your event online – you can host an online event using the webinar facility in Microsoft Teams – if you need help with this please contact us
• Online Q and A – pre-record a video for families with your most common questions and answers
• Conduct a virtual tour - use Facebook live to conduct a tour of your school
• Send a video greeting from your students – record a video from some of your students saying what they love about your school and that they hope you’ll be able to see it for themselves really soon
• Move your event after hours – you may be able to reschedule your event to after hours (Please be sensitive to the fact that some families may still feel uncomfortable attending tours at this time)
• Reschedule your event – Tell your families you’re rescheduling to a time when they will be able to get a better experience of the school in action.

You will know what is most appropriate in your context. If you need more advice please contact Courtney Garfoot (Courts).

We're preparing a list of virtual tours on our website.

If you have one and yours isn’t listed please contact Corrin Wakely-Young.

We’ve added a form to our website on the Catholic Schools Open Week page - we’ll be putting people in touch with their nearest schools.

Now might be a good time to check your website and see how clear and easy it is for someone to book a tour or make an online enquiry.

We will be updating the tours listing on our website this week.

If you are changing the date and/or time of your tour please email Deanna Bator and we will update your listing on our website.

Do you require some school-specific digital assets to promote your school during Catholic Schools Open Week?

Please complete and submit the form below to request these from our Marketing and Communications Team.

Now is a great time to activate your pop-up, if you haven’t already, to capture the contact information of prospective families for tours. 

A pop-up is shown when the users first enter the website. For CESA Boylen websites, this can be changed through Web Template (see page 64 of the User Guide for instructions). We recommended creating a form with an introduction such as:

We currently have the event on [XXXX Date]. Please complete the form below if you're interested in attending. If we move it online, we’ll let you know.

And the following fields:

• Name
• Phone number
• Email address
• Consent to add them to your mailing list

If you have any trouble with this, don't hestiate to contact Siobhan Evans or Courtney Garfoot.