Today’s announcement that all staff in schools across New South Wales must be vaccinated by 8 November creates significant potential problems for Christian schools.
The most recent COVID-19 Recovery Tracker report (ORIMA.com.au) at the end of July indicated that 15% of those unvaccinated don’t intend to get vaccinated, and a further 11% will get vaccinated only if they have to.
“If the staff in Christian schools are representative of the wider population we can expect up to 10% of teachers and other staff to have genuine concerns about vaccination”, said the Christian Schools Australia Director of Public Policy, Mark Spencer.
“Christian schools, indeed any schools, will struggle to continue to provide high quality education if that number of staff refuse to be vaccinated”.
Earlier this year Christian Schools Australia wrote to the Federal Government to seek priority for school staff in the vaccination rollout.
“Making school staff a priority for vaccination we have fully supported,” he said, “but mandating vaccination is a significant step beyond this”.
“Is the risk to staff and students in a school significantly higher than when they are out shopping or in the broader community?”
“Schools have followed stringent procedures to ensure that schools have been COVIDsafe”, Mr Spencer said, “we are urging the NSW Government to give further consideration to mandatory vaccinations for school staff”.
ENDS
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