What Dan Andrews needs to reopen Victorian schools

Daniel Andrews has refused to outline when a plan to reopen schools will be announced, as he revealed what it will be based on.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has refused to outline when a plan to reopen schools will be announced, saying face-to-face learning would be linked to case numbers and hospitalisation rates.

Parents anxious about whether classroom learning will return at the start of term four in October will be forced to wait longer for details of the government’s plan.

Mr Andrews last week raised hopes that a road map for school reopenings would be announced this week.

However, he said that he was still waiting on modelling from the Burnet Institute before a decision would be made.

Daniel Andrews says he does not want to open schools only to have to close them because of cases. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Mr Andrews said on Tuesday that school reopenings would be based on case numbers at the time and the amount of hospital beds occupied with Covid-19 patients.

“There’s been an enormous amount of work being done … the Burnet are doing some modelling for us,” he said.

“There will be two lines on the graph, essentially, there’ll be the number of cases and how they’re going to grow.

“And then there’s the amount of hospital capacity that we have and how it flexes up.”

Victoria recorded 246 cases on Tuesday, with that number likely to increase in coming weeks now the state has abandoned its Covid zero policy.

He said there were “parts of the hospital system you can turn off” such as elective surgery, but that came at a cost.

Education Minister James Merlino, centre, was expected to be a key figure in the planning around school reopenings. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

And he was unable to clarify whether an entire school would be closed if it recorded a case, or just the classroom or year level would be sent home, when schools reopened.

“We’ve been very clear that term three will not be returned to face-to-face learning

term four will have a detailed plan,” he said.

“But again, that’s got to be based on evidence, it’s got to be based on how many cases are in the community.

“If we have many, many cases in the community, much more than we have now … then that’s going to limit our options around school.”

He said he didn’t want to open schools and then have to close them because of cases.

NSW announced last month that schools would start to return on October 25, despite cases soaring above 1000 a day there.

Kindergarten, year 1 and year 12 students would be first back, followed by the rest of the school community in November.

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Originally published as What Dan Andrews needs to reopen Victorian schools