Question Time

Coronavirus

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:20): My question is to the Premier. What is the Premier's health advice regarding schools remaining open?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:20): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. The AHPPC advice that we received on Sunday night remains very clear on this: they want our schools to remain open and they want our students to be at schools. They are very adamant about this. We accept this advice.

We have been in recent days announcing that we will provide more flexible options for students when parents decide that their children are better suited to staying at home. We note that some schools already have excellent capability in this area to provide more flexible options for online delivery of curriculum; and, in fact, I think that some state schools, as well as private schools—independent schools—are moving towards that at the moment.

We are rapidly developing the capability across our overall school network for a combination of both online and hard-copy learning materials. We want to make sure that if there is any absence from school that students are still getting a quality education. We feel very concerned about students who may be away from school, potentially for a prolonged period, being without an education. We take our obligations in this area very seriously.

Nevertheless, some parents have decided that they would like to take their children out of school. I make the following points: if a parent does that, they have an obligation to make sure that the student is supervised; that they are undertaking their studies; that they also recognise that that period of time they are out of school may not be for just one week or two weeks, like we are used to with term breaks, or even six weeks or seven weeks like they might be at the end of the year. This could potentially be six months, so this is a heavy responsibility on those parents. But, if they choose to, they will be supported.

This, of course, will reduce the pressure on our schools and allow even further social distancing. But Professor Brendan Murphy could not be clearer on this: if we had 277,000 school students in South Australia who were no longer at school and were out in the community and were not supervised, we would be very significantly accelerating the spread of the coronavirus and simultaneously undermining our ability to deal with that further outbreak. So, the advice is very clear. Having said that, he makes it very clear that that advice was as of Sunday night and it could change as we progress through this virus.