It's a flurry of buying pens, pencil cases, school uniforms and the latest Bento box. There are shoe fittings and hair cuts squeezed into the schedule as we grab onto the last remaining minutes of the holiday feeling.

But in 2022 it feels like we're holding back. Maybe, just maybe, back to school will look a little bit different this year. Maybe they won't go back at all?

There is no doubt the failure by the NSW government to unveil back to school plans - as was promised - on Friday has left hundreds of thousands of parents, teachers and children across the region in limbo as the clock ticks down to the start of Term One.

Schools are due back in less than a week - Friday, January 28.

This lack of clarity and detail marks a significant failure. It is the same type of "non-decision", arising from a lack of foresight and planning, that saw the Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan flip-flop on his longstanding commitment to re-open his hermit kingdom on February 5.

NSW has thrown the plans of countless people into disarray.

There have been assurances that classroom teaching will be available for the children of essential workers.

NSW has already said surveillance testing of students and teachers using RAT kits would be an integral part of their back to school plans for at least the first weeks of Term One but there is a great deal of fear among families about what a return to school will mean in reality.

It is hard to believe the great and the good are on top of the crisis when much of what they say and do seems further and further removed from people's lived experience.

The federal government's pledge to fund 50 per cent of the cost of non-existent RAT tests falls into this category. So does Dominic Perrottet's assertion that Omicron is peaking across the border at a time when the daily death toll is soaring and the test figures are even more rubbery than a pre-election budget forecast.

People want, need and deserve certainty. And they want it now.