Siblings of kids who test positive for COVID-19 will be able to attend school this term, as long as they take daily rapid antigen tests that remain negative for five days and tell the school they are household contacts.
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The NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell has outlined how the lifting of isolation rules will work in schools, confirming that students and teachers who live with infected people will be able to attend class without isolating.
However, if there are serious outbreaks of COVID-19, she said schools may be directed to move to online learning, or implement other short-term measures like separating cohorts, limiting school visitors, mask wearing for all adults and high school students or stopping large gatherings.
Under the rules, household contacts of COVID-19 cases will be required to notify the school that someone in their home is sick, and must do a daily rapid antigen test before school for five days.
Staff and secondary school student household contacts must then wear a face mask indoors, and primary school students with sick relatives are strongly recommended to do the same.
Ms Mitchell said the NSW Government was taking a common sense approach to winter school settings and was well prepared to manage potential increases in cases of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses in schools.
"School is where our students learn best and we need to do everything we can to make sure that face to face learning continues with minimal disruption as we move into the colder months," she said.
"The removal of isolation requirements for household contacts will support continuity of teaching and learning in schools."
She said schools could expect another drop of free RATs early in the term to support compliance with these new settings.
"Schools will continue keeping windows and doors open wherever it is safe and practical to do so, because we know fresh air is an effective way to keep airborne viruses out," she said.
One Illawarra teacher* said she thought the lifting of isolation rules would make it harder for schools to keep on top of COVID-19 outbreaks.
"Last term, you knew if one family had COVID that they were all going to be off," she said.
""Our parents were quite good at keeping their kids home - but now, even knowing one sibling has COVID, they will be able send their other kids to school.
"So it will harder to keep track within the school of who has it, and then those kids are going to be sitting in a class with 25 or 28 kids.
"In primary school you're not going to get children wearing masks, so I think there will be a spike again of cases."
She said she expected Term 2 to play out in a similar way to Term 1, with high staff and student absences due to COVID.
"There will possibly be more transfer between classmates, and therefore still teacher absenteeism and student absenteeism," she said.
"We've got our whole school Anzac ceremony this week - and we've only done that sort of assembly once this year so far," she said.
"So we've had a lifting of restrictions and then we'll be sticking them all together - there's got to be some consequence of the restrictions changing."
She said under critical worker exemption rules introduced last term, teachers had been allowed to return to school if they tested negative while their household contacts were positive.
However, under these rules they had been encouraged to work from home if possible and had been able to decide within the school if returning to the classroom was safe.
"One thing that concerns me is that we haven't really found out if there is an option to work from home if you live with someone who is sick," she said.
"If my family member got raging COVID now, I would feel quite uncomfortable going to school knowing I could transfer it, so I think even with the lifting of isolation rules, it is still going to add to a lot of absences anyway."
Ms Mitchell said the department was taking extra steps to ensure accredited teachers were available to cover sick leave where needed.
She said non-school based teachers, retired teachers and final year teacher education students were being deployed into classrooms across the state.
"Recruitment of teaching staff into non-school based roles will be paused and work will be taken off schools' plates so they can focus on core teaching and learning," she said.
*Under NSW Education Department rules, employees are not allowed to speak to the media without approval from the media unit, so the Mercury has chosen not to name the teacher in this article.
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Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
