Rita Panahi: Principal pays heavy price for brave lockdown stand

The Andrews government has been merciless in punishing those who challenge the wisdom of their lockdowns but the treatment of principal Tim Berryman is disturbing.

Tim Berryman is the perfect embodiment of the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished”.

The principal of Fitzroy Community School is paying a heavy price for taking a courageous, selfless stand. His teaching registration has been suspended and he stands accused of posing “an unacceptable risk of harm to children”.

Three separate authorities, the Victorian Institute of Teaching, Department of Health and the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, are applying the blowtorch to Berryman for allowing a handful of desperate parents to send their children to school during lockdown. The suspension comes before VIT has concluded its investigation.

Calls for Berryman to be punished began in earnest in August when he, along with two other principals and leading child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, penned an open letter to Dan Andrews calling for primary schools to be reopened immediately.

“Closing primary schools harms our children while failing to deliver a clear benefit. Keeping children home is damaging their wellbeing and hindering their learning,” they wrote.

That sort of impertinence is not acceptable in the socialist republic of Victoria.

Fitzroy Community School Principal Tim Berryman is paying a heavy price for taking a selfless stand. Picture: Jason Edwards

We have seen the Andrews government be merciless in punishing those who challenge the wisdom of their ruinous and repeated lockdowns. Restaurateurs and outspoken lockdown critics Paul Dimattina and Chris Lucas copped $10,900 fines in the first hours of Lockdown Six for alleged breaches that appear spurious at best. But what is happening to Berryman is particularly disturbing.

Here is a rare educator who joined the hundreds of doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists speaking out about the shadow mental health pandemic. The open letter came after a report by the Victorian Agency for Health Information revealed a 51 per cent jump in the number of teenagers rushed to hospital after self-harming and suffering suicidal thoughts in 2021. The secret report by the Victorian government agency, obtained by the media, showed that in the six weeks to March 28, more than 300 children and teenagers a week were presenting at emergency departments with mental health issues.

Then there were the shocking statistics from Kids Helpline in June showing that attempted suicide rates among Victorian teenagers had soared by 184 per cent in a six-month period. Children have spent 18 months living under enormous stress and instability. In this environment it is appalling that only three principals had the courage to sign the open letter. Berryman is accused of inviting parents to send their children to school and of accepting students that are not eligible.

Under Victorian guidelines only the children of essential workers, or those deemed to be vulnerable, are allowed to attend school during the lockdown.

Last month, a Covid outbreak at Fitzroy Community School grew to 62 cases with two still active. Most of the cases were asymptomatic with three students and at least two adults feeling ill, according to Berryman, who maintains that two-thirds of the around 60 students attending were the children of essential workers and the remainder were in the vulnerable category.

Outspoken lockdown critic Paul Dimattina copped huge fines in the first hours of Lockdown Six for alleged breaches. Picture: Alex Coppel

“All I’ve done is put children first,” he said. “I am confident that I will be cleared by any investigation … I’ve been fully within the rules for the whole of the lockdown.”

For taking a stand for distraught children struggling with prolonged isolation and mental health issues he has copped severe abuse and reputational harm. But what Berryman advocates is backed by plenty of infectious disease experts who have argued that schools, particularly primary schools, should not be closed during lockdowns given the very minor risk Covid-19 poses to healthy children.

Paediatric infectious disease specialists Dr Benjamin Lee and Dr William V. Raszka, writing in the journal of the American Academy of Paediatrics last year, concluded that school should be open to “minimise the potentially profound adverse social, developmental, and health costs that our children will continue to suffer.” And, schools remained open in a number of advanced countries throughout the pandemic regardless of whether they were locked down or not. Sweden never locked down, Denmark did but both had similar experiences with children attending school.

Steve Templeton, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology, wrote last week that school closures had caused far more harm to children than good and he cited the Swedish data.

“Primary schools remained open in 2020 Sweden, with no masks, no deaths, and no adverse consequences for 1.8 million children. Teachers had an average risk of infection compared to other occupations,” he wrote.

Whether you agree with Berryman’s open letter or his actions, there’s no doubting that he is informed and cares deeply for his students and the wider school community. He is on the right side of history.

IN SHORT

Talk about poor timing. Victorian teachers in government schools have voted to take industrial action if their demands of a 7 per cent pay rise for each of the next three years and a 6.5 per cent increase to superannuation are not met. The audacity!

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist