Premier Provides More School Details

THE Premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, has said

“…from May 11, from week three of term two, students will start going back to school,” said Premier Bekejiklian.

“Initially it will just be a day a week and then progressively two days and then we hope by the end of term two we will be in a position to be going back to school in a full time capacity by term three,” she said.

“Will it be the same as kids going to school under normal circumstances, no it won’t, we’ve made sure we’ve used this time not just to build up our online capacity, in case children, a proportion of them do need to keep learning from home, but we’ve also made sure we have enough hand sanitisers, soap and all those things which make a school community feel safe, not just be safe,” she said.

“Schools will also have capacity for temperature checks where they feel it’s appropriate, there’ll also be extra cleaning of playground equipment and other things during the day and this is to ensure not only is our school community safe, but everybody feels safe within them whether you’re a parent, student and of course our teachers,” Premier Gladys Berekjiklian said.

The government is recommending schools aim to have a quarter of students return each day and the importance of trying to have siblings attend on the same day to ensure the process runs as smoothly as possible and approaches such as children returning by house colours or alphabetically. 

The Premier said she recognised in smaller communities it may be possible for more than a quarter of the students return to school and stressed individual schools will have the ability to make practical decisions for their schools.

Other recommendations include staggering drop off and pick up times and recess and lunch.

Casual teachers who worked 10 days during term one will be eligible to work up to two days per week, ensuring there is more certainty for casual teachers and support staff and extra support available for schools.

Students who have continued to go to school each day, can continue to go to school each day as normal. 

Dallas McInerney from Catholic Schools New South Wales said, “there are terrific leaders…right across our 600 schools in New South Wales, they are the ones best placed to make the decisions of what their schools should do from week three onwards and we look forward to working with the government and the department during that period.”

Geoff Newcombe from the Association of Independent Schools said, “just like all schools are very keen to get their students back to a normal traditional method of teaching and face to face engagement.”

Dr Kerry Chant, chief medical officer, said they had done studies at schools where there had been cases of covid-19 and learned that while children can contract the virus, the transmission was mainly occurring between adults and confirmed any teachers or students with any symptoms would be able to access testing.

“We know children do spread flu, we know children do spread other respiratory viruses and any parents among you probably understand that, because when children get sick it often spreads within the family,” said Dr Chant.

“We are not seeing that same pattern in relation to children in covid-19, however we are aware that interactions between adults and the broader community, so we want to take every opportunity to minimise the parent connection, those points of gathering where we are bringing parents together for the drop off of children, making sure that they don’t become defacto community gatherings,” Dr Kerry Chant said.