Parents deserve the assurance of knowing that the teachers, and especially school leaders, are taking every step to make schools as safe as possible, including being fully vaccinated.
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For weeks on end, the Chief Minister claimed such a mandate was unnecessary, considering the high vaccination rates across the general population and among the teaching profession.
It's extremely concerning that a school principal would not be following the advice of the established health authorities in getting two doses of a COVID-19 vaccination.
It's entirely appropriate that such an individual would not be in a position to continue to lead a school community back to on-campus learning in a time of heightened concern and anxiety.
As Canberra schools prepare to welcome students back to campus after a long lockdown, families are experiencing a wide range of emotions.
On one side, children are itching to get back to see their friends and to learn in the format that engages them best. Their parents are desperate to get back to the school routine in our new COVID-normal lives.
On the other side, many parents are not fully convinced it's time to send their unvaccinated children into a school environment. A number will keep their children home in the hope that a vaccine will soon be available for children under 12.
The vaccine mandate for primary school and early learning staff was designed to provide that last layer of defence against the virus and provide piece-of-mind to parents and other school staff that everything had been done to keep the virulent delta variant out of education settings.
If the survey of public school staff is accurate in that 97 per cent of teachers are on their way to be fully vaccinated, that still leaves up to 114 teachers who might not be vaccinated.
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The ACT government took much longer than other states to decide to implement a vaccine mandate for teachers and early learning staff.
Schools were only given two-and-a-half weeks' notice of the first dose deadline on November 1.
The Education Directorate is still working through the process for teachers to give their vaccination status or else apply for an exemption or redeployment.
After this belated decision, the government now needs to follow through with the direction in a firm way to ensure that schools are as safe as possible.
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