Central Coast Year 12 students worried about returning to class next week amid Covid scare

Year 12 students are worried about returning to class next week with uncertainty surrounding which schools will or won’t be heading back to face-to-face learning.

Year 12 students have written to the Central Coast’s state politicians to voice their concerns about resuming face-to-face learning as early as Monday.

It comes as confusion and uncertainty surrounds which schools will return to classroom learning next week given the constantly evolving nature of the Delta strain outbreak of Covid.

Three students, understood to be siblings, forced the closure of Lake Munmorah Public School and Morisset High School last week after they tested positive.

Another two students at Fennell Bay Public and Jesmond Public schools have also tested positive with staff and students told to get tested and isolate while those schools were closed for deep cleaning.

Morisset High School was closed for deep cleaning after a student tested positive. Picture: Supplied.

Wyong State Labor MP David Harris said he received a letter from the leadership group from Gorokan High School this week expressing their concern about returning to school.

Mr Harris said a recent virtual briefing with Education Minister Sarah Mitchell left attendants “with more questions than answers” about how face-to-face learning was expected to resume.

Year 12 students in the eight Local Government Area hot spots in Sydney have been offered the Pfizer vaccine and will be allowed to sit their trial HSC exams from home.

However Mr Harris said our Year 12 students have not been given access to the vaccine and it remained unclear whether they would be able to sit their trials from home.

Year 12 students are worried about how they will prepare and sit their HSC. Picture: Gary Graham.

According to the Education Department’s latest guidelines it will be up to each school to manage how Year 12 students resume their studies from next week.

“Year 12 students and those sitting HSC exams will not be able to return to full time learning on school site,” the Department’s guidelines state.

“Students will be limited in their access to schools for essential curriculum and wellbeing activity, where it is essential for the student to engage with the teaching or wellbeing staff or school facilities, and only individually or in small groups. Students will not be permitted to attend school for more than one session (2 hours) per day, and not 5 days a week.”

Year 12 students will go back to school for a maximum of two hours a day and not five days a week. File photo.

Central Coast Council of P&Cs spokeswoman Sharryn Brownlee said each school was communicating with their Year 12 students about how classroom learning will resume “and some are doing it better than others”.

“Year 12 students are feeling overwhelmed and worried if they will miss out on (learning) something they will be tested on,” she said.

Ms Brownlee said there was a lot of frustration from teachers and students about the vaccination rollout and the lack of local availability for Pfizer doses.

“It’s much more stressful this time around,” she said of the lockdown.

“This is the most stressful it has been.”

Central Coast Council P&C spokeswoman Sharryn Brownlee said this lockdown was the most stressful for families and their children doing home schooling.

Ms Brownlee said most students and parents wanted to get a HSC result based on their school assessments rather than an external exam.

It comes after the P&C wrote to both the federal and state health and education ministers in the last school holidays, after an initial two-week lockdown was announced, urging the government to prioritise the vaccination of all teachers so students of all ages could get back into the classroom.

She said the current guidelines for each school to determine how Year 12 students return to class would prove logistically difficult, particularly for schools such as Gosford High School, where about 45 per cent of its students travel up from Sydney.