Former deputy CMO backs call to scrap teacher vaccine mandate

The staffing crisis engulfing the state’s schools could be solved by the flick of the pen to overturn outdated rules banning unvaccinated teachers from classrooms.

A push to allow unvaccinated teachers back into classrooms to address the staffing crisis which is crippling the state’s schools has the backing of former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth.

He declared the time for vaccine mandates was now over and NSW must follow in the footsteps of South Australian schools in allowing unvaccinated teachers to go back to work.

It comes after one-fifth of all students were absent from class on Monday, entire schools have closed this week due to staffing shortages while the total number of unvaccinated substitute teachers who could step in to put a stop to the crisis was revealed to be as many as 9,000.

Upper House MP Mark Latham said allowing thousands of unvaccinated teachers back into schools, which has already been done in other states like South Australia, was the obvious solution to the festering staffing issues which is expected to worsen next term.

“We need these teachers desperately in the system, we have 11,000 teachers all up, who are sitting around or doing other jobs, who want to be teachers in our schools,” he said.

Former Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Coatsworth has backed the plan. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

Staring down the barrel of flu season, Education Minister Sarah Mitchell refused to say if she would seek to change the public health order which bans the unvaccinated from classrooms.

“Vaccination remains an important protection against COVID-19 for all members of the community, including our most vulnerable,” she said.

But that view was at odds with infectious diseases physician Dr Nick Coatsworth who said substitute teachers should assess the risk of catching Covid to their health, not the government.

“If they were prepared to take the personal risk at this point in the pandemic, it should be an individual decision,” he said.

“Mandates have done their job and now that nearly 95 per cent of people nationally have had their primary course, they don’t serve a useful purpose any longer.”

Shooters and Fishers MP Mark Banasiak said it was bizarre that unvaccinated parents were allowed to enter school grounds but qualified casual teachers could not.

“It seems a bit silly when unvaccinated parents can wander through the school to pick up their kids, why can’t a teacher who hasn’t had a vaccine go back to teach, it seems nonsensical,” he said.

Department of Education bureaucrats are working on a “winter plan”. Part of that will be working out how to enact the government’s exemption for teachers when it comes to Covid isolation rules.

“Education is working with Health to understand if it is possible to make these exemption conditions operationally realistic in a school setting,” a spokeswoman said.

Originally published as Former deputy CMO backs call to scrap teacher vaccine mandate