Dear ,
Many of you will have now heard that on Friday August 27th, the NSW Government announced a staged return to school from October 18th onwards. Whilst this is welcome the announcement in itself does not provide a clear pathway forward to a return of schools to camp.
The key points of the announcement are:-
- All students will return by to face to face learning by November 8th, 2021, with the first group returning on October 25th.
- When students return to schools it will be under Level 3 of the 4 stage return to school guideline previously announced (see here for a copy of this plan)
- It was confirmed that if any LGA came out of lockdown before October 25th (when the first group of students return to school) then students living or studying in those LGA’s would return to face to face learning at that time. I note that regional NSW is currently scheduled to come out of lockdown on September 10th. There was no announcement today on any change to this date.
- All school staff will need to have received their second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by November 8th. It would appear that this order is for all school staff not just teaching staff.
Looking forward
I am writing to the NSW Government to seek clarity on 2 matters:-
- Will the Department of Education require service providers, such as camp operators to have all staff vaccinated in the same way they are now requiring of their own staff.
- If this is the case, can CVA members be added to the priority vaccination for school staff that comes into effect early September.
Commentary
The delay in returning to school until midway through Term 4 and the fact that they will return at level 3 restrictions is extremely disappointing. The only encouragement we can gain from this is that, based on various media reports, NSW is likely to be between 70-80% double vaccinated by that stage and thus we can (hopefully) look forward to a rapid easing of restrictions during the last few weeks of term.
The impact of the compulsory vaccinations in schools has potentially significant ramifications for a variety of service providers, including bus drivers, canteen volunteers, etc and thus we will be most interested in the response we receive from our enquiry.
If the Department of Education does require all staff delivering services to schools to be also vaccinated, we will seek legal advice on behalf of our members as to what the implications are of this for existing and future staff.
As always, I am always available to talk through these or any other issues.
Blessings
Graeme
