By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Victorian students will be returning to school in a phased opening starting Tuesday 26 May.
From that day, Prep, Grade 1, Grade 2, specialist school, VCE and VCAL students will return for face-to-face teaching.
Special arrangements will be made for 36,000 Year 10 students who study VCE subjects to also attend school.
Other students between years 3 to 10 will continue learning remotely until Tuesday 9 June.
Premier Daniel Andrews said that schools were declared safe but would be different on their re-opening – including staggered pick-ups and drop-offs, and staggered lunch and playtimes.
Schools will implement social distancing between adult work stations, with an extra $45 million invested in daily deep cleaning in Terms 2 and 3 including frequently touched surfaces.
There will also be provision for hand sanitisers and PPE equipment at schools.
Teachers will be targeted for voluntary Covid-19 testing over the next two weeks. Staff over 70 years or with underlying health conditions would be allowed to work from home.
School sports, assemblies, camps and excursions will not resume, drinking fountains would be closed.
All students were expected to return, except for students or families with underlying medical conditions or who are immuno-compromised, Mr Andrews said.
It would be “really difficult” to concurrently run a remote learning system for 50 per cent of students and a face-to-face teaching system for the other half.
So far during Term 2, up to 98 per cent of students were learning remotely from home – the remainder in classrooms.
It had made a “profound difference” to reducing the spread of coronavirus, Mr Andrews said.
Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, said that schools had always been considered “safe”.
Remote learning had been introduced due to the “uncertainty of the contribution of transmission by kids having onsite face-to-face learning”.
The “precautionary” gradual return to school was appropriate given that new Covid-19 cases were “low and remaining low,” Professor Sutton said.
Overnight, three new cases of community transmission were recorded, and one in 5000 tests uncovered a positive case.
Generally, if a coronavirus case is linked, a school would close for up to a few days to allow for contact tracing, Professor Sutton said.
Public-transport travel was considered safe due to the lower numbers of patrons, he said.
Mr Andrews said the staggered returns would allow the Government and Chief Health Officer to evaluate the impact of schools reopening and the relaxation of public and private gathering rules.
“As a father of three kids who have been learning from home, I know this has been a really challenging time for many families,” Mr Andrews said.
“Thanks to everyone’s efforts in sticking to the rules and getting tested, we’re now able to start getting our kids back into the classroom.”
Education Minister James Merlino said early childhood long-day-care and kindergartens had remained open.
He expected the 30-40 per cent kindergarten attendance rate to rise as schools re-open.
Meanwhile, Victoria’s recorded coronavirus cases rose to 1509 – with 17 new cases on 11 May and two reallocated interstate.
Eight of those cases were linked to the Cedar Meats cluster, which now totals 85. The other nine cases are under investigation.
