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The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times
National
Sarah Lansdown

Public school COVID rules to change as staffing crisis deepens

Education Minister Yvette Berry said the Education Directorate had planned for remote learning in case of staffing shortages. Picture: Karleen Minney

Mask mandates for public school teachers and students and restrictions on visitors are expected to ease when school COVID-19 guidelines change today.

Policies on preventing mixing between cohorts and vaccine requirements for teachers were also on the table as part of a two-week consultation between the Education Directorate and teaching workforce.

The easing restrictions in schools will come into force as three ACT schools have switched partially to remote learning because of a lack of staff.

Education Minister Yvette Berry warned more schools could turn to remote learning.

"It's something ... that we have planned for from the start of this year and particularly now going into the flu season we are likely to see more schools will need to move temporarily to remote education," Ms Berry said.

Opposition education spokesman Jeremy Hanson said the ACT government was to blame for a teacher shortage which predated the pandemic.

"There's more confusion, there's more chaos in our schools and there's no doubt that COVID contributed, but we went into this crisis with a critical shortage of teachers and in particular relief teachers," Mr Hanson said.

"And so now we have a situation where kids can't go to school. It's not good for kids, it's not good for parents and it's certainly not good for teachers."

There were 210 cases of COVID-19 among kindergarten to year 12 students across 60 public schools in the week ending on Sunday.

An ACT government spokeswoman said teacher absence numbers could not be provided at this time.

The territory recorded 1085 new COVID cases in the 24 hours to 8pm Wednesday, while 70 people were in hospital with the virus, the second highest number of hospitalisations since the onset of the pandemic.

Margaret Hendry School, Charles Weston School and Cranleigh School have reverted to online schooling for some cohorts.

Year 5 and 6 classes from Charles Weston and years 3-6 from Margaret Hendry will learn from home until at least Wednesday.

Students from the Mulungang and Ganyi groups at Cranleigh specialist school will also be remote learning until Monday.

Australian Education Union ACT branch president Angela Burroughs said the move to remote learning was evidence that agreed COVID safety plans were being put in place.

"It's a positive sign that staffing levels of our schools are being closely monitored to ensure they can operate and if they are not able to operate we are moving to alternate arrangements," Ms Burroughs said.

At the end of term 1, WorkSafe ACT inspected five ACT public schools over concerns staffing shortages were leading to escalating occupational violence.

Calwell High School, Amaroo School, Kingsford Smith School, Namadgi School and Wanniassa School were visited by the safety watchdog, however, only Calwell High School has received prohibition and improvement notices.

Years 7 and 8 at Calwell High School are not allowed to attend the campus until the Education Directorate has satisfied the demands of the prohibition notice.

Ms Berry could not say when the students would be allowed back to school.

"The school has been working really hard to reset, to check that all of the systems that they have in place, meet the recommendation requirements under the WorkSafe provisional improvement notices," she said.

"So we're doing that work. The school is working really hard to deliver on that and then once WorkSafe are satisfied that students can return to school then the families will be informed of that."

Ms Berry said WorkSafe had conducted investigations at other schools but she was not aware of further notices.

Ms Burroughs said there was greater willingness to move to remote learning since WorkSafe ACT's intervention.

"We're still hearing that relief staff are difficult, nigh on impossible to find," Ms Burroughs said.

"This shortage [of teachers] did not occur because of COVID, it was exacerbated by COVID."

- with Alex Crowe

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