By Adam Carey
Retired and inactive teachers, principals and support staff are being urged to head back to school in term 1 to help keep children in classrooms amid an expected staff shortage due to COVID-19.
A central pool of qualified school staff will be recruited to help plug gaps when current staff must isolate due to COVID-19 infection or exposure.
Retired and inactive teachers are being called on to step in and help keep kids in classrooms in term 1.Credit: AP
The Andrews government will also call on people with administrative experience as well as allied health professionals to join its pool of stand-by staff that schools will have access to when their own employees are forced out of action.
The pool will only be available to government schools, which educate roughly two-thirds of Victorian schoolchildren.
Anyone who joins the pool must hold a valid working with children check or Victorian Institute of Teaching registration, and must be fully vaccinated.
The Andrews government said staff will be deployed to local schools on a fixed-term basis to fill any short-term gaps caused by teachers, school leaders or education support staff who contract COVID-19 and need to isolate.
School staff have already been exempted from isolation rules that require close contacts to isolate for seven days, so long as they show no symptoms, although education unions have rejected the exemption, arguing it will make schools less safe.
Education Minister James Merlino said the staffing pool would enable schools to fill COVID-related vacancies at short notice, helping them to stay open and reduce disruptions to learning.
“Every sector is under pressure from the Omicron variant, and education will be no exception, but we’re taking action early to make sure staff absences don’t mean huge disruptions for students’ learning,” he said.
Mr Merlino called on retired or inactive teachers, school support staff, allied health professionals and administration workers to “support our schools in 2022” and apply online.
School leaders said Victorian schools had been struggling with a shortage of casual relief teachers for several months.
Colin Axup, the president of the Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals, questioned where the pool of stand-by teachers would be drawn from.
“The concept of a central pool is a good idea: the question is, where are they coming from?” he said.
Mr Axup suggested that registered teachers inside the Department of Education and Training should be seconded into schools.
Victorian Principals Federation president Tina King said the success of the callout would hinge on inactive and retired staff members’ willingness to re-enter the school environment amid high COVID-19 infection rates.
“The medical experts are saying, in terms of kids catching COVID, that the symptoms are pretty minor, but adults do suffer adversely if they do catch COVID and that is going to leave the workforce depleted,” she said.
“So if there is going to be a pool, it needs to be a deep pool.”
The government is preparing to release its return to school plan in the next few days, ahead of the first day of school on January 31.
It has said there will be no return to remote learning. Families will be encouraged to test their children for coronavirus at home, using rapid antigen tests jointly paid for by the federal and state governments.
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