CORONAVIRUS —
SCHOOLS — BOARDING SCHOOLS
398. Hon DONNA FARAGHER to the Minister for Education and
Training:
My question is somewhat similar to
that of Hon Alison Xamon. I refer to the reopening of WA public school
residential boarding facilities and the inconsistency in approach being taken
to visiting arrangements by some colleges.
(1) Can the
minister reconfirm that college managers and agricultural college principals
are to manage requests using their discretion but should accommodate requests
for short-term contact visits such as an appointment or a short visit with a parent
outside a facility?
(2) Can the
minister advise why students who return to boarding are not permitted to leave
the college during term when the Australian Health Protection Principal
Committee guidelines on risk management for reopening
boarding schools and school-based residential colleges state that
out-of-facility visits, including home visits, should be reduced rather
than banned?
(3) Can the
minister confirm that visiting arrangements, both short-term contact visits and
home visits, are subject to the week 3 review currently being undertaken?
Hon SUE
ELLERY replied:
I thank the honourable member for
some notice of the question. I will make some general remarks because I know
that she has been contacted by a number of parents about this issue, and I suspect
others in the house have as well. The first thing to note is that the advice
all along from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee has been
different about residential facilities and schools. From the beginning, the
AHPPC has provided advice that residential facilities present a higher risk
than schools, so the provisions and measures put in place to address
residential colleges were always going to be different from those for schools.
Secondly, the approach that we have
taken about how we deal with public health changes that we introduce in Western
Australia is to do it in a staged way. The theory behind that is if we do too
many changes at once and there is an outbreak, it is hard to do two things. It
is hard to identify the source of the outbreak and it is also hard to wind back
the relevant measures because we do not know exactly what has happened. We took
the AHPPC advice, as always, as the framework, and adopted a set of measures
specific to Western Australia. I think it is worth noting that I have checked
closely with my colleague, the Liberal Minister for Education in South
Australia—we may or may not be in a nightly competition about how many
students each of our jurisdictions has back at school, and he may or may not be
winning—and its system of having students going back to school is
similar to ours. It has not opened its residential facilities yet, and neither
has Queensland, although it has plans to. New South Wales has not opened its
residential facilities, although it plans to. In Victoria, no schools are open
yet, although it plans to. In Tasmania, nothing is open yet, although it plans
to. Therefore, Western Australia and New South Wales have led the way in having
residential facilities open at all.
The health advice is that we need to
put in place different measures to address different issues. I will also make
this point before I provide the specific answers to the member's
question. I saw research today that shows that 80 per cent of the world's
children have had their education seriously disrupted by COVID-19. From this
government's point of view, we want children back learning where they
learn best, which is in the classroom, as soon as possible and as safely as
possible. I know that the measures put in place around residential boarding
facilities in particular have caused some angst for parents. I understand that;
I really do. But this is about getting the settings right and doing it in a cautious,
measured and staged way. We have said all along that we will review these
provisions, as with all of the school provisions we put in place this week, and
we are doing so, and we consulted broadly with a range of groups yesterday.
I will deal with the specifics of
the honourable member's question.
(1) Yes.
(2) States
adopted their own measures within the framework of the AHPPC guidelines to meet
each state's context. The Department of Education took a cautious and
measured approach to the reopening of residential facilities, including the
management of out-of-facility visits.
(3) All school
arrangements, including those for residential colleges, will be reviewed this
week.