Page 991 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 May 2020
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for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Minister for Sport and Recreation and Minister for Women) (3.18): I can inform members that today I announced a carefully considered plan to return ACT public schools to on-campus learning. The community’s fantastic response to the pandemic means that we can be more confident now to transition back to school campuses, alongside the easing of other restrictions.
Yes, of course the health advice was important but there were other factors, based on local need, that were taken into account in the government’s decision-making around our schools and a transition to online education, and now a transition to school campus learning.
Our public schools will begin a staggered return to on-campus learning, starting on 18 May with kindergarten, preschool and years 1, 2 and 7, with senior secondary students and colleges doing a combination of on-campus and remote learning. On 25 May years 3, 4 and 10 will join them. All students will be back on 2 June.
This is a carefully planned and considered approach—listening to parent representatives through their P&C councils, to teachers and school principals through their unions and to the Education Directorate, and keeping in mind what is happening across the rest of the country as well—back to a campus education. That is exactly what the Chief Minister and I said in last week’s joint announcement that we were considering if the circumstances changed and allowed us to do that.
With the easing of restrictions across the ACT and across the country, and more to come after national cabinet tomorrow, we can take these carefully measured steps for our schools to ensure that they can continue education and a return to campus education. The safe and supervised sites will stop operating on 18 May. Students who were attending those sites will attend their usual school for supervision and remote learning until their year group returns.
There were a number of reasons why those safe and supervised hubs were delivered in the ACT. One was that our geography allowed it and there was not too much of a distance to travel for parents and children to attend those schools. It was the best option for us to deliver a high standard of education to everyone at one time, with the outlook which, back seven or eight weeks ago, was six months or more of lockdown. It would have been very difficult to adequately staff 89 schools while also providing a high standard of remote learning. The hubs allowed for a more orderly and managed approach to supervision for the students who needed it.
I was not going to ask our teachers to attempt to deliver two models of education. That would be unfair. Our hub schools, the safe and supervised sites, allowed for an orderly and managed approach to support parents and carers who needed supervision for their students and children while learning remotely.
I understand that the safe and supervised school sites did not work for everybody. Of course I understand that. This is a complicated issue that we are addressing together as we navigate our way through an international health pandemic. It has been a difficult time for everyone—I understand that—with heightened levels of anxiety, which
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