I understand your confusion.

The thing is, we have been at school, but all the classes have been at home.

Each morning, my teenagers have dragged themselves out of bed to check into their homerooms, look through what coursework needed to be attempted, then planned what they felt they could tackle.

Somewhere else in the region, with hands poised over their keyboards were my daughters' teachers, ready to answer questions, mark assignments and provide feedback.

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These brave teachers, many of whom were managing small children, primary kids, or teens of their own at home, hosted the occasional video conference where all the self-conscious teenagers left their cameras off and didn't say a thing for fear of embarrassing themselves.

Not quite the productive classroom environment produced in person.

Rather than walking from classroom to lockers every couple of hours, chatting with friends and chewing over the subject content, teens across the state have wandered from bedroom to refrigerator, to loungeroom to refrigerator to the mailbox and to the refrigerator chewing over whatever food they could find that was acceptable to their demanding appetites.

The dishes alone have nearly done my head in.

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I know there are students who whizzed through their required bookwork quickly and had loads of time to spare. Those students were not living at my house.

My girls struggled to get through the workload, battling distraction and lack of motivation and began slipping into sadness and defeat.

Everyone needs these school holidays to just take a break from the relentless requirement to self-manage and structure a day of educating others, and oneself, at home from the epicenter of their own kitchen.

These school holidays I feel delighted not to feel disappointed that my Year 9 feels she cannot present her Spanish oral via Webex and hasn't got anywhere near her Art or Health subjects.

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Total disengagement is totally understandable at this stage and I've no idea how families in extended lockdowns have coped.

For the mental and emotional health of our whole community we need to see the end of this isolation so we can relearn how to be social.