Dear leaders of Australian governments,
In the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic we now have evidence that it is safe to allow schools to be open for face-to-face learning. The national cabinet commitment to re-open schools is at risk, however, and needs to be reaffirmed by every jurisdiction, with measures taken to reassure Australian families that schools are safe to return. As such, we call upon all federal, state and territory governments to recommit to the return to in person schooling without delay for term 1 2022. We believe this to be critical for the following reasons:
A delay to return to in-person learning is not a proportionate response, notwithstanding the Omicron outbreak. Our Australian data confirms COVID-19 is a mild disease in children, that the few hospitalisations are short-lived, and that the overwhelming majority of children recover from this virus without adverse effect. There is no medical case for face-to-face learning to be suspended awaiting the vaccination of 5 to 11-year-old children, although all children should be offered access as soon as practical.
A delay to returning to in-person learning ignores the obligation to deliver the best education possible to children, greatly disadvantages the least privileged and causes unnecessary anxiety and harm. For some children, schools are the safest place to be, essential for socialisation and vital to their learning. Children are the “lost voices” of this pandemic. The right of children to an education based on in-person learning and healthy social interaction with peers is now one of the highest policy priorities for Australian governments to limit the long-term adverse impact of this pandemic.
A delay in returning to in-person learning puts children’s mental health at risk, with additional increases in the risk of child abuse, obesity, and delayed social and emotional development. The lifelong impact of this is not known. These issues are more difficult to quantify than COVID-19 case numbers, but they are just as real and demand to be assigned a higher priority given their importance to secure a healthy and prosperous future for communities.
Children and especially adolescents have borne the major mental health burden of the pandemic with a worldwide surge in cases of mental ill health and of life-threatening presentations to emergency departments for suicidal risk and emerging mental illness. The major health impact of COVID-19 for children and young people has been on their mental health. Their educational scaffolding is a key protective factor for their mental health and their future.
At this stage of the pandemic we must acknowledge and follow the principle set by both the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, that in a pandemic “schools must be the last to close and the first to open”.
All teachers should have had an opportunity to be vaccinated against this virus, providing them with very high protection. Teachers are at no higher risk than the general adult population, and it is likely that schools pose no increased risk of transmission compared with the
