As students and teachers fall ill, many principals are struggling to cover classes and some schools are reinstating mandatory masks to curb the spread of the virus | JordsBaker marywardy
, compared with almost 92 per cent in the same period last year, which is around the usual rate. That fell to 80 per cent last week. A spokesman for the NSW Department of Education said the student attendance rate was 90 per cent for the same week in 2021. There are 823,000 students at NSW public schools.
“I’m getting colleagues who are increasingly stressed about the increasing number of classes they’re having to put under minimal supervision,” said Secondary Principals’ Council head Craig Petersen. “Principals are frustrated by the high numbers of staff sick and the high numbers of casuals. “School has never been the driver of the epidemic,” he said. “Of course it spreads in schools, and when it’s raining you’ll have more crowding and more transmission of virus, undoubtedly. Transmission is occurring in the community and households.”
He said the settings in schools were the best available, and there was no evidence that air filters or masks would “be game changers right now”.While the surge in cases posed a significant staffing challenge in schools as well as hospitals, it was not leading to the same hospitalisation rates as the Omicron outbreak over Christmas.
Ilina Lovely’s children Natasha, 11, and Spencer, nine, are both at home after Natasha caught COVID-19 for a second time.Spencer said he found his first day of isolation on Tuesday tiresome. “It’s very boring and not as fun, it’s quite a bit hard to learn without your teacher,” he said.