Queensland hard border denies boarding students equal education
As families rally behind a #nobordersforboarders campaign, more than 400 rural and remote children face exclusion from school in hotel quarantine at the start of next term.
QUEENSLAND Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk today added the Northern NSW town of Moree to the border zone, granting less restrictive travel rules to some boarding school families.
But parents in neighbouring postcodes, including Warialda mother Wendy Mayne, are still angry about the plight of their children, whose right to an equal education has been quashed by Queensland’s hard border.
Wendy’s daughter and two sons, who are in Years 12, 10 and 8, face a mandatory two-week quarantine in a Queensland hotel upon their return to school, if they dare spend the school holiday break with their parents on the isolated family farm.
The Mayne family runs Texas Angus north of Warialda near the NSW-Queensland border, and their three children, Rose, Will and Lachie, attend boarding school on the Gold Coast.
They are one of hundreds of rural families who desperately want their children to be able to spend school holidays safely at home.
Yet Queensland’s hard border restrictions and designation that all of NSW outside the border zone is a COVID hotspot mean the teens face the same quarantine rules as travellers from Sydney or Melbourne.
“If we were in that border bubble, we could access our children,” Wendy said, explaining the farm was less than 10km from the boundary of the border zone.
“Instead, if they come home, when they go back we have to fly to Sydney, Sydney to Brisbane, get a bus from Brisbane to a quarantine hotel on the Gold Coast, and have to sit in that room for 14 days.
“That is what we are being faced with at the moment.
“Our district, Gwydir Shire, has never had a COVID case here.”
Some postcodes in the shire are considered part of the border zone, where residents have more freedom to cross into NSW. The Maynes’ postcode, 2402, has not been included in the zone while neighbouring Moree, 2400, was added today.
They are not the only rural family becoming increasingly desperate and angry over the refusal of state governments to recognise the damage inflicted on rural boarding students by the current hard borders.
With just two weeks to go until the end of term three, there has been little dialogue from state health authorities on the topic of travel exemptions for boarding students despite a rising tide of unrest.
The term ends on September 17 and a #nobordersforboarders movement on social media has gained momentum in the past week.
The issue has been brewing for months, with NSW and Queensland chapters of the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association lobbying for boarding students’ circumstances to be considered back in April.
ICPA NSW president Claire Butler renewed calls for a unified approach to educational travel permits when NSW announced tightened border restrictions in August.
“What we’ve wanted all along is a consistent approach across all states,” Ms Butler said.
She welcomed the recent expansion of the NSW-Victoria border zone, which eased travel for day students from Victoria who attend schools in NSW, but said more needed to be done by all states to support the education and mental health of children from remote properties.
“We are seeing high levels of anxiety,” Ms Butler said. “Children, when they go away to boarding school, they need to come home to recharge. They get filled up again. They can go again for another term.
“It is very hard for these kids. Especially the younger ones.
“We are really very concerned about mental health now.”
NSW Senator Perin Davey and federal Regional Education Minister Andrew Gee earlier this week weighed in on the debate, urging state governments to work out a solution that allows children to go home without compromising their education.
An ICPA-conducted survey showed 443 students who live in rural and remote NSW, Victoria and Northern Territory were affected by interstate travel restrictions.
Ms Butler said the locations of those families and their ability to guarantee on-property isolation of their children during school holidays had been provided to state and federal governments.
She said Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had previously declined to offer any exemptions to boarding students.
She said today’s announcement by Ms Palaszczuk created “haves and have nots” in the local community by helping only those families that lived in the town of the 2400 postcode.
Wendy Mayne said the fact 443 rural students were being denied two weeks of equitable education was shameful.
“Northern NSW boarding students are a small minority group,” she said. “The people up here, the parents, are furious.”
Wendy doesn’t like to think about the alternative holiday plan they have put in place to spare their children from unnecessary exclusion from school.
“With our children, they will be going to stay with friends in Queensland,” she said.
“I am terrified that if they have an accident, we won’t be able to get there. I think that is a parental right. I think it is taking away basic human rights what they are doing.”
Wendy said rural families in her region were willing to do whatever it took, including daily health checks, video check-ins, at-home isolation and periodic COVID tests, so that children could come home during the school holidays and return safely to school at the same time as their school peers.
Ms Butler said the ICPA had tabled workable solutions to state governments, but had yet to receive collaborative feedback.
“There has got to be a way – parents are willing to have their child monitored,” she said.
“Schools in Queensland are prepared to provide that safe corridor to the border.”
Wendy still holds out hope a solution will be offered.
“I thought we were putting up a reasonable workable solutions,” she said. “I just don’t feel as if they are listening at all. Or they don’t want to listen.
“We are just hoping that she (Ms Palaszczuk) will give the exemption for them to come home, rejuvenate, spend time with their families, feel secure, feel safe.”
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