A large cohort of students from Macgregor Primary School in Canberra's north-west will return to remote learning from today, due to a shortage of teachers.
In an email to families on Wednesday afternoon, principal Belinda Andrews said the school was "unfortunately" unable to run some face-to-face lessons because too many teachers were isolating with COVID-19 or were household contacts.
The email said, as a result, students in years 4, 5 and 6 would be learning from home until next Friday.
"Your patience and kindness is appreciated."
Face-to-face lessons will continue as normal for all preschool and kindergarten students, as well as those in years 1, 2 and 3.
"Children of essential workers and vulnerable children will still be able to attend school and be supervised while accessing the same remote learning program," Ms Andrews said.
The decision by the ACT public school comes just under a week after teachers at both Queanbeyan and Karabar High Schools across the border threatened ongoing strikes if staff shortages in the region were not addressed by the NSW government.
'No longer tenable': ACT Education Directorate
Mark Huxley is the ACT Education Directorate's executive group manager for school improvement. He said it was hoped a week of remote learning would see the school through its most stretched staffing period.
"It's always hard to predict the impact of COVID and how it travels in the community ... so we assess where the school's up to in terms of staff availability on a daily basis," he said.
"Macgregor [Primary School] has been doing an amazing job and has gone above and beyond to manage the impact of that for a number of weeks now and it just so happens that it's reached a point where it's no longer tenable to maintain access to the entire site for all students.
"We'll continue to monitor that with the principal as we get notice of when people are expecting to come out of quarantine ... we're expecting that will take a week at this stage but we'll continue to review."
The week of remote learning means senior primary students at the school would not return to campus until one day before the school holidays, though Mr Huxley said they may return for that final day.
Mr Huxley said teacher availability was a national issue, to which the ACT was "not immune".
"I think there's a relatively small number of casuals available now ... and I think that existed coming into the pandemic already," he said.
"Our schools are normally in the position where we can respond to 'normal' sorts of absences ... but what we're using now is an exceptional doubling down as a result of the impacts of COVID.
"But there isn't a magical supply of additional teachers out there at the moment and we're absolutely using a range of strategies to address the current concerns in the community."
Macgregor Primary the first, but probably not the last: union
Australian Education Union ACT branch secretary Patrick Judge said it was "unfortunate" for Macgregor Primary to be the first Canberra school in this situation, but it was not unexpected.
"We planned for these circumstances before we started this term, and we probably had a better run than we thought we would have, but we knew in all likelihood we would reach a point where COVID infections and isolations were such that a school would have to at least partially close."
Mr Judge said as winter approaches and health authorities predict an increase in COVID-19 cases, more school closures could be on the cards.
"It's not a position that we want to be in and we'll continue to have those discussions about how we relieve pressure and avoid school closures where we can, but we have to be realistic that moving to remote learning is something we will have to do from time to time."
