Page 937 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 May 2020
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Petitions which do not conform with the standing orders—Schooling during COVID-19 pandemic—Ms Lee—
47 signatures.
173 signatures.
These online petitions have attracted a number of passionate remarks:
I have listened to the medical expertise and believe kids need to go back to school.
Another:
I have signed because the new plan is not supportive to the essential parents who need to work and our allocated school does not have before and after school care.
Another:
Sorry, this distance learning is not working for my senior high school kids, not enough teacher contact or support at a critical time in their schooling.
Another:
Kids need to be in school to learn effectively and parents need to be working effectively instead of home schooling.
And yet another:
My daughter cries almost every day because she wants to go to school and also wants to see her friends. Schooling is about far more than staring at a computer screen.
Parents have started each of these petitions out of frustration at the lack of response from government to the overwhelming evidence that schools are safe, in the absence of a response as to whose advice the minister is following in making these unworkable and unsupported arrangements.
Yesterday the Canberra Times published a letter sent by the Narrabundah College P&C to the Chief Minister. It set out clear, detailed evidence to support their argument that keeping students out of college is harmful and devastating and that the college can be made safe for teachers, staff and students. P&C president Jenny Grant Curnow and vice-president Renae Scott say that requiring senior secondary students to learn from home for the whole term is “detrimental to their social health and psychological wellbeing” and that “many of our children are expressing deep concern over their futures and university entrance processes that this disruption in tuition is causing”. I thank the parents who started these petitions for their enthusiastic efforts.
This is just more evidence that the government got its schools policy wrong; that it has failed or refused to acknowledge the damage it is doing to families and to students’ learning. And it is doing it without justification and with no evidence to
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