Since the commencement of this pandemic, unlike healthcare workers, aged care workers or pharmacy employees, teachers in Australia and in many other countries around the world have not been legally considered to be essential workers. I must ask “Why?”.
I would argue that, as a former teacher, school leader and the husband of a current teacher, teachers in our Australian schools are absolutely essential. They are the backbone of our children’s education learning journeys and their ultimate success as valuable members of our community.
Recent History
According to The Washington Post:
“Essential workers are people who do jobs that are considered essential by government officials to maintain public health and safety and keep critical infrastructure operations working when parts of the economy have been shut down.”
In 2020, in the United Kingdom, some teachers and teaching assistants, as well as social workers, were deemed to be essential workers. In the UK, as well as in Australia, when there were shutdowns to stem the spread of the disease in 2020 and again now in the current lockdowns, schools remained open for vulnerable students and for children whose parents were deemed to be essential workers. United States President Joe Biden has ordered states to prioritise vaccinating teachers so that schools can reopen safely, saying: "Let's treat in-person learning like an essential service that it is."
When the COVID-19 situation first unfolded, we were advised by our governments that the risk of contracting COVID-19 from children was minimal. However, we are now 18 months down the track and the situation has changed considerably. We have recently had two teachers in Melbourne and one child diagnosed with the Delta strain of COVID-19. This new strain is far more infectious than the original or even the Alpha strain and it has all the same symptoms. In addition, recent information from the ABC regarding cases in Indonesia notes:
“According to the official data up to June 2021, the total number of children in Indonesia who have been infected was around 250,000 — or 12.6 per cent of the total cases. Throughout the pandemic, 676 children have died from COVID-19 — about 1.2 per cent of total deaths. Alarmingly, 50 per cent of the children who died were under five years old.”
The ABC has also recently reported that the Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the landscape had "shifted" when it came to the transmissibility of new variants of concern among children. He said:
"Singapore has closed schools because they're dealing with the Delta Indian variant that has affected children more significantly, more severe illness and more transmissible with children.”
According to an opinion piece in The Age, and I wholeheartedly agree, teachers and other school staff should be prioritised to receive access to COVID-19 vaccines. This is not just because teachers and school staff are in close contact with children, the children’s parents and guardians and numerous support staff every day. It is also because teachers who are vaccinated will have far less of a chance of becoming ill (and being hospitalised) and being unable to care for their students. In addition, it may also reduce the overall risk of transmitting the virus too. This was also our position in an earlier School Governance article. Basically, if governments want to keep schools open, having the staff vaccinated will mean that the staff will be safer and feel safer to remain in their critical roles of caring for our children.
Finally, and there has been considerable research to back this up, learning loss during extended school closures has directly affected students. The NSW Government suggests that the state closures in 2020 resulted in students losing between two and four months of learning. As a result of the recent COVID outbreak in Sydney, that over recent weeks has had a high number of cases concentrated in three local government areas in south-west Sydney, the NSW Government has prioritised vaccinations for teachers, support staff and administration staff who work at schools in that area. The opinion piece in The Age also states:
“The NSW Government’s decision to make teachers in Sydney’s worst affected areas eligible for the vaccine, regardless of their age, is a welcome first step. Now we need all governments to commit to vaccinating teachers and school staff as soon as possible.”
What Are the Teachers Saying?
In May 2020, The Educator opened a world-wide survey asking teachers 16 open-ended questions about how COVID-19 has affected them and their students. The most frequently mentioned issue for Australian teachers was maintaining quality in pedagogy and curriculum delivery during times of school closures and a move to online learning.
When asked in the survey, “How has COVID-19 impacted your teaching and learning?”, responses most commonly referred to technical issues, then the pragmatics of teaching and workload. Overwhelmingly, teachers from early childhood to higher education experienced a significant increase in their workload. One teacher said that the sudden change to online learning created “endless paperwork and programming issues” and “has been relentless”. Another said: “It is draining. Exhausting. Time consuming. The work never stops”. Yet another said, “I don’t want to teach anymore”. The impact on the mental and physical health of teachers was the next most frequently expressed issue— after the technical, pragmatic and workload issues.
Finally, one early childhood and childcare teacher said:
“The government has largely ignored the realities of EC [early childhood] environments, the impossibility of social distancing with children under five, and the fact we have high exposure to bodily fluids”.
In a recent ABSA "Lights Out" publication, CompliSpace noted: “It has been said that schools can be a petri dish of disease.” Early Learning classrooms and even lower primary classrooms fit this bill perfectly!
Advice for Schools
The Centre for Disease Control and Infection (CDC), in a recent online science brief noted:
“In the United States through March 2021, the estimated cumulative rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 symptomatic illness in children ages 5-17 years were comparable to infection and symptomatic illness rates in adults ages 18-49 and higher than rates in adults ages 50 and older.”
This is a ‘must read’ document for all school administrators regarding the nature of COVID-19 transmission in schools, ECE programs, and their surrounding communities.
Finally, according to the CDC, reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in schools and ECE programs is a shared responsibility. The CDC advises that schools can limit transmission by layering the following effective prevention strategies:
