Quarantine exemptions for some interstate boarding students

The Queensland Chief Health Officer has granted border exemptions for some boarding school students, allowing them to visit their families in the September holidays and return to class. SEE THE CONDITIONS

Queensland’s chief health officer has granted quarantine exemptions for interstate boarding school students after a campaign revealed “heartbreaking”conditions for families separated by the hard border.

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From Term 4, primary and secondary boarding school students returning to Queensland from interstate will not have to quarantine, provided they meet certain conditions, a letter from Chief Health Officer Dr Jeanette Young seen by the Courier-Mail reveals.

Rose Mayne from St Hilda's Southport (centre) with brothers William (age 16) and Lachlan (age 14) from The Southport School, are among the boarding students who thought they wouldn’t be able to see their families and return to class. Picture: Richard Walker

The exemption would apply for boarding school students who travel between their school and their home and back by road, as long as their residence is within a NSW or ACT local government area without a known COVID-19 case within the past four weeks.

The students would have to stay within their properties for the duration of school holidays, and no visitors are permitted to their homes as a condition of the quarantine exemption.

It comes after The Courier-Mail revealed that dozens of parents from rural New South Wales shared heartache and anxiety as they faced separation from their children for months.

The parents penned letters to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk begging her to provide a solution for boarding students to not have to quarantine for 14 days if they went home for the holidays.

The Courier-Mail also revealed that nine principals from boarding schools across the Darling Downs lobbied the Queensland Government for border exemptions.

Principals of Boarding Schools across the Darling Downs rallied, including Toowoomba Anglican School’s Simon Lees, Fairholme College’s Linda Evans, Concordia’s Adrian Wiles, Toowoomba Grammar School’s Peter Hauser, Downlands College’s Stephen Koch, St Ursula’s College’s Tanya Appleby, Scots PGC College’s Kyle Thompson, and St Saviour’s College’s Sharon Collins. Picture: Kevin Farmer

The school leaders said teenagers were facing either being trapped at school over the holidays or a significant mental health challenge in quarantine, and that parents would even be forced to change schools.

Under the exemption conditions, students from an area with no known case but who are flying into Queensland to return to school would still be subject to quarantine conditions.

And any pupil that comes from a local government area where there have been reported COVID-19 cases will still have to quarantine at the boarding school or with a parent or guardian in a government-nominated hotel.

The border and quarantine exemptions apply to a parent or guardian who is driving into Queensland from either an ACT or NSW LGA with no known cases, to collect their child from a Queensland boarding school permitted they travel into and out of the state on the same day.

The direction from the Chief Health Officer said that the road transit would have to occur by the most direct route possible, and they would have to begin their return route on the same day.