Schools battle bugs amid new wave
Schools are just hanging on till the end of term, with huge numbers of staff and students off sick. They’re battling Covid, influenza, RSV and tummy bugs, while staff are also having to care for ill family members.
With experts warning New Zealand is seeing the start of another Omicron surge, it’s hoped the school holidays in a week will act as a circuit breaker before the virus runs rampant.
At Whangapara¯ oa College in north Auckland, principal Steve Mccracken estimated one in five staff were away each day.
“We are struggling to hang on to maintain normality in terms of the openness of school,” Mccracken said.
“We’ve got a significantly higher proportion of staff and learner absence than normal. But our staff are doing a pretty amazing job around covering classes, keeping things operational.”
Attendance was around 70-75 per cent on any given day, which was 10-15 per cent lower than normal at this time of year. Illness had “accelerated substantially“over the past four weeks.
Staff absences were also about 10 per cent up on last year due to a combination of Covid, other illnesses, and people “rightly“being more cautious than they had been in the past about coming in sick.
The school had managed to avoid rostering students home and mostly was avoiding combining classes, thanks to the “extreme goodwill“of staff who were filling in for each other, he said. But a number of students had missed a significant amount of learning time.
“We’re pretty concerned leading into NCEA around what that is going to do for our senior learners’ achievement.”
At Weymouth Primary in Manurewa the school has been “hit big time“, principal Saane Faaofo Oldehaver said.
“On average we have 10 staff away out of 50 staff and student attendance is around 72 per cent daily.” Nearby Rowandale Primary is also struggling with many kids and staff off sick. Principal Karl Vasau told the Herald the influenza virus was having a “huge effect“on the community, including teachers and students.
Vasau said the flu was “decimating“schools like his, and for some students including his own son the flu had been tougher than Covid.
“We’re talking about getting children back to school — it’s just an endless struggle.”
Macleans College principal Steve Hargreaves said every school he’d spoken to had been “heavily impacted by illness”.
At his school in east Auckland, 45 out of 250 staff were away one day last week. He estimated half might be staying home to look after family members, usually children, or isolating because their family members
were Covid-positive; the remainder were ill themselves with Covid or something else like the flu.
“We need to pull out all the stops to cover classes and keep the school open,” Hargreaves said.
But Macleans is refusing to roster students home.
“We think it impacts the students too greatly in terms of social isolation, impacted academic progress, and then the return to school and absences so we are keeping the school functioning on campus.”
Those experiences are mirrored around the country, with some schools forced to move completely to online learning.
The most recent figures available on the Government’s Education Counts website show from June 20-23 — ahead of Matariki Weekend — about 80 per cent of students attended school each day across New Zealand, including roughly 3 per cent who were learning from home.
That’s down from a peak attendance rate of 88 per cent at the start of the year, although it’s much better than the peak of Omicron in March.
Back then just 61 per cent of students were attending school on a given day, including 18 per cent who were learning from home, the Education Counts figures show.
Relievers also remain in short supply. A survey by the NZ Principals’ Federation found 60 per cent of schools had been able to get half or fewer relief teachers than they needed this term. More than a quarter of schools couldn’t get any relievers at all.
Of the 429 principals that responded, one in five reported they had used between 75-100 per cent of their entire relieving budget for the year.
And that’s before a winter wave of Omicron, which experts warn has now begun and could see as many infections as the peak of the first wave in March.
President Dr Cherie Taylor-patel wrote to members that sickness was wreaking havoc on school staff, who had used nearly double the sick days compared to last year.
The federation had called for the Government to pay 100 per cent of Covid-related sick leave and wanted relief budgets increased, she wrote.
“Hopefully, the mid-year July holidays will be a circuit-breaker that gives staff and students time to relax, recover and get well.” — NZ Herald