Students in Years 4 to 6 at Macgregor Primary School will study remotely for the next week, owing to a shortage of teachers due to COVID.

The ACT Education Directorate has not been able to replace staffing requirements for Years 4, 5, and 6 groups, so the pupils have been asked to stay home for the next week until staffing numbers return to normal, said Yvette Berry, ACT Minister for Education.

“Macgregor hasn’t done anything wrong,” Ms Berry said. “They’ve just unfortunately been more impacted than other schools. And so the decision was made for the safety of everybody, and to ensure that good quality education could continue, that for this particular cohort, the Years 4, 5, and 6 would go into remote education.”

Pupils will be welcome to return for the final day of term next week. Some families cannot have their children at home, so those students will be supervised at school to have remote education.

Ms Berry said she was proud the remote education tools the Education Directorate developed had been used over the last couple of years not just by the ACT school and parenting community, but internationally as well.

Ms Berry said the Education Directorate had planned for these circumstances since school went back to campus earlier this year; in fact, she had expected it to happen much sooner, somewhere in the ACT.

“We were seeing our COVID numbers in the community rise, and so we expected that to be the case in our schools as well,” Ms Berry said. “But we planned for that, and I don’t think it was luck that we’ve been able to get this far.

“It’s been because of our management, the plans that we’ve had in place from the year, and the incredible work that our school communities do every day to manage the circumstances as they arise within their schools.”

Safety guidelines introduced in Term One will continue, Ms Berry said. “They’ve held us in good stead, keeping our schools as safe as we possibly can, and providing reassurance to parents and families that our schools are safe places for people to go.

If parents are concerned about coming into contact with COVID carriers, they can obtain RAT tests from schools, or take a PCR test.

“Be reassured that all the systems and processes that we have in place within our school communities have worked in managing and mitigating COVID infections, but continue to remain vigilant,” Ms Berry said.