By Leow Si Wan & Corrie Tan

SOME 500 students and 20 teachers of Raffles Institution (RI) Boarding School have been quarantined for a week from yesterday.

Two confirmed Influenza A (H1N1) cases have surfaced there in the past few days.

The RI campus in Bishan, made up of the boarding school, secondary school and junior college, has 4,500 students.

Confining the boarders within the school reduces the inter-mingling that takes place when the students cross from one school to another for meals and activities, said a spokesman.

A check with 15 other schools and junior colleges indicated that the first day of Term 3 went mostly smoothly yesterday.

It was the first day, following the month-long school holiday, that the Ministry of Education's measures to limit the spread of H1N1 applied to the school-going population.

The schools reported that most students who had returned from vacations in flu-hit countries on or after June 22 were staying home, complying with the leave of absence granted them. They accounted for 2 per cent to 3 per cent of all students.

A third of the schools contacted had one or two students who should have stayed home but turned up for school.

Some did so because their parents did not know about, or misunderstood the Education Ministry's instructions; others went to school hoping they would not be caught lying about their travel history.

They were told to go home.

Among those sent home was Lim Wen Xuan, 11, of Mee Toh School, who returned from a cruise last Monday. Questioned at school, the Primary 5 pupil said the ship had stopped in Indonesia, which is on Singapore's list of flu-affected countries. He was given a mask and put in a classroom to wait for his parents.

His mother, who declined to be named, said she allowed him to go to school because the family had already been home for a week, and because the stop in Indonesia was 'brief'.

Among those who lied was a junior college student who said he did not travel during the holidays. He was found out and barred from sitting for a common test; a primary school principal said a pupil turned up for enrichment classes this month and tried to hide the fact that he had just returned from Thailand.

What can a school do? Nothing much, it seems. As Outram Secondary School's principal Choy Wai Yin said: 'We have to trust parents and we will do our best to monitor the well-being of our students.'

The schools reopened prepared yesterday: Many had had the premises disinfected, and yesterday put their students through a lesson on Influenza A (H1N1).

At the entrance, security personnel or staff kept an eye out for unwell students. Those who had been to affected countries were isolated and sent home; those who had stayed home through the break but had a fever were told to see a doctor.

Assemblies and staff meetings were cancelled, and recesses were staggered to avoid mass gatherings.

Education Minister Ng Eng Hen predicted yesterday that the closure of classes and schools 'will be quite a common occurrence' but that we ought to 'have life go on as normal', unless advised otherwise by health authorities.

So far, two schools - Presbyterian High School and Westwood Secondary School - have been shut because of H1N1. They open next Tuesday.

Presbyterian student Rachel Ong, in Secondary 4 and due to take the O levels in three months, said she saw why her school needed to be closed, but said priority for e-learning should be given to those in graduating batches like hers. She said: 'The system cannot support so many students and it hung several times.'

Still, she is making the most of the situation - by hitting the books to prepare for the preliminary examinations.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.