Families won’t know for weeks whether children will be able to go back to school, Opposition slams lack of plan

Families won’t be told whether children will be going back to school until the third week of January, the Education Minister says. But the Opposition says that’s not good enough.

Families won’t be told until the third week in January whether they will need to keep their children at home when schools return from holidays at the end of the month.

There was still not enough information on the Omicron variant of Covid-19 to decide whether schools would adopt remote learning or introduce other restrictions, Education Minister John Gardner said on Monday.

“We will have a much stronger understanding in a week or two,” he said.

“Our first preference is, has always been, and will continue to be … for kids to be in a classroom face-to-face. We’re very eager to deliver that as much as possible.”

However, it was too early to rule out the possibility of telling parents their children could not attend school sites.

SA Opposition leader Peter Malinauskas, who is isolating at home after contracting Covid, said the state government should have planned ahead.

“Everything is going wrong. The one (thing) that I think every parent around the state is worried about ... is what is happening to schools?” he told ABC Radio Adelaide on Tuesday morning.

“Here we are weeks away from schools returning and we have the Education Minister on TV last night saying we’re working out a plan.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I’d have thought you’d have worked out a plan before we opened the borders. We knew children weren’t able to get vaccinated.”

Mr Gardner said he expected students, families and schools to readily accept whatever rulings are made, as they had when masks were made compulsory indoors for staff and secondary students last year.

Schools would be ready to host pop-up vaccination clinics if SA Health wanted to use that avenue after children aged 5 to 11 become eligible for vaccinations from January 10.

“It may well be that that is a part of the mix in term 1 and 2,” he said.

South Australian Minister for Education John Gardner. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Emma Brasier

Premier Steven Marshall said the government was “keeping all options on the table” for schools.

“I’ve asked the chief medical officer for Australia, Paul Kelly, whether the AHPCC (Australian Health Protection Principal Committee) could provide some standard advice to all states.

“It is something we’re concerned about but we’re not in a position yet to let parents know how that’s going to occur,” Mr Marshall said.

“... Hopefully in the next week or so we’ll be able to provide a further update to people in regard to what the start of term one is going to look like.”

Mr Gardner said the issue of adequate ventilation in schools was being managed.

Often the simplest solution was opening classroom windows but the Education Department had purchased air purifiers which could be deployed where necessary, such as if a bushfire was in the vicinity and windows needed to be shut.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he was in discussions with state premiers about conditions at schools.

“So this is another phase,” Mr Morrison said on Monday.

“We’ve changed gear. We’ve got to keep changing gear.

“We can’t look back to some of these things we were doing before as the way to manage it.

“We’re managing in a different way so we can live with the virus. People can stay at work, kids could go back to school when school starts again.”