Rita Panahi: All Victorian kids must return to classrooms for face-to-face learning in term four
School-age children in Victoria must return to face-to-face learning in term four to put an end to the hysterical policy making that is adversely impacting their education, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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Young Australians will ultimately pay the heaviest price for the nation’s coronavirus response.
Saddled with ruinous national debt that will take decades to pay back, Gen Z and Gen Alpha will be burdened with higher taxes, diminished prosperity and opportunity as Australia plunges into a deep recession that is already the worst we’ve seen since the Great Depression.
A recession due to federal and state government policy based on hopelessly flawed modelling that dramatically over-estimated the need for intensive care facilities.
The grave errors in the modelling by the Peter Doherty Institute were uncovered by a team led by James Cook University professor of infectious diseases modelling, Emma McBryde.
On top of the economic and social hardship, school-age children in Victoria are having their education adversely impacted by hysterical policy making that is not rooted in evidence or science.
When term four starts in early October, all Victorian children should be back at school. Any kids or teaching staff with pre-existing health conditions can continue with distance learning but that should be the exception, not the norm.
As medical experts and researchers around the world have learnt more about the virus and how it impacts children, the calls to reopen schools have increased.
Even the UK’s chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty, who has been criticised for his overcautious advice, has pushed for all pupils to return to the classroom highlighting the “overwhelming” evidence that missing school causes more harm to children than COVID-19. Prof Whitty also noted that the data shows “there is much less transmission from children to adults than adults to adults”.
The UK’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries has said coronavirus poses a minuscule risk to children who are at greater risk of harm from other infectious diseases than coronavirus.
“In fact the risk from seasonal flu, we think is probably higher than the current risk of COVID,” she said. Indeed studies have shown that children are at “far greater risk” of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19.
We don’t close down schools during every deadly flu season but the state government is damaging the academic progress of around a million students for a virus that is less deadly for them than the seasonal flu.
Wouldn’t it be smarter to protect older Australians and those with pre-existing conditions than to subject children to months of isolation and home schooling?
Paediatric infectious disease specialists, Dr Benjamin Lee and Dr William V. Raszka, writing in the journal of the American Academy of Paediatrics, concluded that school should be open to “minimise the potentially profound adverse social, developmental, and health costs that our children will continue to suffer.”
After reviewing data from Australia, France, China and Switzerland, Dr Raszka said: “After six months, we have a wealth of accumulating data showing that children are less likely to become infected and seem less infectious.”
Infectious diseases physician and Professor of ANU’s school of medicine Peter Collignon has said that children under 15 record fewer infections than people in their 20s and above.
Prof Collignon has noted that even in Sweden which has widespread community transmission the number of students infected was relatively small.
“Although Finland closed schools for most children and Sweden did not, and despite Sweden having been more affected by the outbreak overall, infection levels in children in both countries were very similar,” he wrote.
In Sweden, schools have remained open throughout the pandemic for all students under 16.
Prof Collignon explains that as long as teachers take sensible precautions, such as socially distancing from other adults or wearing masks, the risks of infection can be managed. Victoria’s strategy of bringing back VCE students before other year levels has been criticised for being “the wrong way around”.
“There really isn’t a good reason to shut primary schools and infant schools. Because in terms of total transmission they are not very significant, but it has tremendous educational and social implications,” Prof Collignon said via newsGP.
Year 12 students are understandably worried about having the most crucial year of their schooling hindered by multiple, prolonged school closures. But it’s not just VCE students who are being disadvantaged.
Kids in year 3 to 10 have missed the most school this year and will be behind their counterparts interstate. Many vulnerable students, including those with a chaotic home environment not conducive to distance education, will fall through the cracks.
A Save the Children report released on Thursday found the pandemic is having a “devastating impact on the education of children from poorer backgrounds”.
There’s a wealth of scientific data and expert opinion advising against school closures and yet Victorian students have been condemned to inferior remote learning for months.
It is possible to minimise contact between adults, both parents and teachers, and allow schools to re-open safely for term four.
IN SHORT
Queensland’s politically motivated border closures are causing despair among ordinary folks but not AFL officials or Hollywood stars. Tom Hanks was granted a special exemption to bypass the regular quarantine hotels and complete his two weeks in a ritzy Broadbeach resort. Hanks also got rare access to hydroxychloroquine when he was last in Australia and infected with COVID-19.
RITA PANAHI IS A HERALD SUN COLUMNIST