Cross-border permits: Call for solution for inter-state boarding students

Rural families say they feel abandoned by state governments that have failed to treat the education of their children as a priority.

Victorian Yanco Agricultural High School students Angus Sadler and Harriette Garner were stranded in NSW after their school was shut down due to the statewide lockdown. Harriette has been reunited with her mother in Melbourne, where they are now in hotel quarantine. Picture: Supplied

After weeks of mounting stress that has left rural Victorian parents feeling helpless, some of the teenage agriculture school boarding students who have been stranded in NSW have this week been reunited with their families, in Melbourne hotel quarantine.

Six Victorian children who attend Yanco Agricultural High School near Narrandera, in rural NSW, were denied border permit exemptions two weeks ago.

Their families had been fighting for the Victorian Government to allow the students to return and quarantine on their home farm properties.

Graytown farmer and fellow Yanco parent Amanda McClaren said all advocacy channels had been exhausted, and the parents were now worried that their children’s education would be severely disrupted next term.

“The mental health anguish that these families have gone through over the past couple of weeks has been horrific,” Ms McClaren said.

“There is definitely a cloud hanging over us about whether we can actually send our kids back to school.”

She and the other Yanco parents are desperate for a national framework to allow interstate boarding students to safely cross state lines to go to school and return home.

“The people who make these decisions just do not understand the regional settings where these children are from,” she said. “I really do fear that this will be more damaging to their mental health than anything else.

“I know Bridget McKenzie is working on a framework. I’d like to think the states would all come to the party in relation to that because there are 1600 students who cross borders to go to school.”

Ballarat Grammar boarding student Iona Cullenward (right) from Hay, NSW, has remained in Victoria, separated from her family during lockdown, for fear she won’t be able to return to school if face-to-face learning resumes next term. Picture: Supplied.

Hay parent Fleur Cullenward is also desperate for a cross-border travel plan for boarding students. Her children, Finn, in Year 9, and Iona, in Year 12, attend Ballarat Grammar School.

She made the difficult decision to bring Finn home during the current lockdown.

“We felt six weeks was way too long to keep him away from home,” she said.

“So now, because Hay is not in the border bubble, we can’t get him back to school, ever, at this stage.”

She said the choice to leave Iona living under strict restrictions in the school’s boarding precinct was gut-wrenching, but necessary to give her the best chance to succeed in her final year of VCE.

“She wouldn’t be allowed to go back unless she went through hotel quarantine in Melbourne for 14 days. Which is ridiculous.”