Coronavirus, Schools

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:21): My question is a supplementary to the Minister for Education. What is the government doing to ensure that teachers, students and parents at the school gate are observing social distancing rules?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (14:21): I thank the member for the question. This is an important question. It's one that has been discussed between myself and Professor Spurrier on at least one occasion, and the education department continues to engage with our public health professionals.

The challenge arises of course because one of the social distancing mechanisms that we are seeking to do at many of our schools is to reduce the number of adults presenting on the school grounds as a matter of course. For a number of weeks now, I don't think all but most of our schools—maybe all of our schools in South Australia—have had a standard process where adults have been requested to only present on the school grounds if there is a particular need for them to do so.

In some circumstances, that has been identified where you might have a young student in the lower years or a student with a disability, a student with some level of need. The parents are welcomed in certain schools on many occasions to go onto the school grounds to assist that child get to the classroom, but the majority of parents in South Australia have been asked to wait at the school gates if they are coming to the school to collect their child or, indeed, to drop them off.

Schools are being provided with advice to support their parent communities, and they are also exploring some other areas where there are particular areas of concern identified at the school level. Some schools are exploring whether to stagger the end of school time or not. There are schools where this is not a problem and there are schools where this is a problem, and our local education teams, the education directors and the various secondary or primary leaders, are working with principals as appropriate on a case-by-case basis to meet the needs of individual schools.

Where there are concerns, where there are still behaviours at pick-up or drop-off time that are not the behaviours that we are seeking, we are working with schools to support them in whether there needs to be a change of practice. This is not a universal application across the state because the circumstances in each school are different, but there are certainly a couple of schools where members of the community have expressed concerns, which are understandable, and we will work with the AHPPC advice—the advice from our public health officers—to find ways to solve those challenges as and when they arise.