Health
Proper consultation with teachers needed – The Age
If the government expects teachers to do a “brilliant job again” this term, then it needs not only to support children and teachers at schools but also to ensure those working in education are consulted.
On Sunday, Premier Daniel Andrews announced that children in years 11 and 12, some in year 10 and those with special needs would be returning to school this week across metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire, even as most other children in those areas are to resume learning from home on July 20.
“We can’t have the best part of 700,000 students, as well as parents, moving to and from school, roaming around the community as if there wasn’t a stay-at-home order or as if there wasn’t a lockdown,” Mr Andrews said.
The Premier emphasised that the decision to make exceptions, which also include the children of essential workers and vulnerable children, was the “direct result of feedback from parents”. It was not until Deputy Premier James Merlino took the podium that any mention was made of the role of teachers.
From the beginning of this pandemic, what role if any schools play in transmission of COVID-19 has been a vexed question. Globally, evidence has suggested that children do not spread contagion in the same way as adults, and this week a study from Saxony in Germany led a senior scientist involved to suggest that “children may even act as a brake on infection”. In April, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the risk to teachers “is not in the classroom their risk is in the staff room”.
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