Please see the latest news for us in New Zealand and also for Worldwide School.

On Thursday 26th March New Zealand started 4 weeks (at least) of total shutdown.

The borders are also closed to everyone except New Zealanders. We are not sure when they will re-open.

Today New Zealand had 89 new cases of Covid-19, bringing the total number of cases to 797.

92 people have now recovered from the coronavirus.

Thirteen people are in hospital, two are in ICU in Wellington and Nelson. All patients are stable.

There has still only been one death.

There is a possibility that after the 4 weeks shutdown New Zealand will not just have flattened the curve - but may have eliminated Covid-19 from the country.

We certainly hope so - but it will be hard and needs the co-operation of all people in New Zealand right now.

We are now about to finish our 2nd week of Online classes

We have received NZ government accreditation for our online courses through NZQA. The government is working very quickly to be sure students receive quality, legal course delivery in this difficult time. Students are expected to attend the same as they would a face to face class.

We will be able to continue to offer Online classes for as long as the shutdown is in place.

The feedback from many of our students has also been incredibly positive. They are enjoying their lessons and finding being able to keep studying, see their teacher and talk with their classmates to be much better than they expected.

Here is one such feedback we received today:

Hi !

I'm good now because my online classes are very fun.

Before taking classes, honestly, I was concern about online classes are not so much fun, and even hard to take lessons as usual. But actually online classes are really good.

So, every day I have to stay in my home, but it's not boring!

They will also need this online social interacting and time with teachers and fellow students.

From this week we will are offering some of our social and activity programmes online.

We ran Wednesday Pubnight online. We had 2 full Houseparties running for 2 hours.

We ran Thursday Yoga class online.

And we will also offer Friday afternoon options online as well!

For many students this is of course a worrying time and we are doing all we can to support them and keep in touch - and keep them studying.