Exams cancelled as Covid wreaks havoc in Queensland schools
Fears are growing about what the Covid lockdown will mean for Year 12 students, as pressure mounts for teachers to be included as a priority group in the vaccination rollout.
Education
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School will be forced to cancel senior exams as thousands of students are again sent home to learn, with pressure mounting for teachers to be included as frontline workers in the vaccine rollout.
The Delta outbreak has wreaked havoc on South East Queensland schools with five forced to shut completely after recording positive cases.
Indooroopilly State High School, Ironside State School, Brisbane Grammar School, Brisbane Girls Grammar School and St Peters Lutheran College in Indooroopilly have all reported positive cases of either students or teachers.
While external senior exams are not held until October, it is understood some schools across the 11 local government areas in the lockdown have been forced to postpone internal senior exams.
Queensland Teachers’ Union secretary Cresta Richardson said she understood there was some concern around the disruption to learning, particularly for year 12 students, but assured parents that teachers would work to ensure their children were given the best possible chance to succeed.
Education Minister Grace Grace said Queensland schools had contingency plans in place that had been implemented over the weekend.
“The priority for the government is to minimise the disruption of all our students’ studies,” she said.
Chief health officer Jeannette Young has not ruled out vaccinating school students, but said her priority remained vaccinating older Queenslanders, who were more at risk of serious illness and death as a result of contracting the virus.
“New South Wales is aiming to vaccinate older students because the modelling shows that they’re the group that actually then spread (the virus),” she said.
“At the moment the data … suggests vaccinating 12-to-15- year-olds doesn’t give you a lot more protection. So eventually, yes, we will of course be vaccinating younger students down to age 12, but at this point in time, it’s more important to vaccinate older people.”
The Therapeutic Goods Administration has only approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine for children aged 12 and over.
Five of the 18 cases in the Indooroopilly cluster are children, while one in four Covid cases in the current NSW outbreak has been a child under 19.
Dr Young did not answer questions about whether teachers would be included as a priority group in the vaccination rollout, but Education Minister Grace Grace said that was a decision for the federal government to make.
But Ms Richardson said the current outbreak ravaging schools was evidence teachers needed protection urgently.
“Given that our members come into contact with a lot of people on a daily basis, this has been evidenced by what is going on now, then it reinforces our calls for our teacher and school leaders to be a priority working group for the vaccination rollout,” she said.
Schools included in the South East Queensland lockdown will open only for children of essential workers and vulnerable students. Online learning will start on Tuesday.
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