Thousands more children are going to school each day as Covid-19 case numbers drop.
Wearing facemasks has made a difference in preventing the spread of respiratory illnesses in classrooms, Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto principal Sandy Hastings says. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Simon Rogers
Principals had worried August would be the worst period for winter illnesses but Education Ministry figures showed attendance averaged 82.5 percent for the first four weeks of the current school term, an improvement on 79 percent for the last five weeks of the second school term.
That equated to about 38,000 more children in class each day.
Canterbury Primary Principals Association president and Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto principal Sandy Hastings said Covid-19 cases at her school had fallen away.
"We've got nobody in our school at the moment that we're aware of with Covid, so that's a real positive and it's been like that more or less for about three weeks now and that's the first time since March that we've been in that situation," she said.
"Illnesses among staff are still high, among students not quite so much. We've got 90 percent of our kids here this morning and that's really good and that's better than it was through Covid, we were down to about 76 to 80 percent."
Wearing facemasks had made a real difference in preventing the spread of respiratory illnesses in classrooms, she said.
But staff were still getting ill or having to stay home with sick children and finding relief teachers to cover for them had become a lot more difficult, she said.
"Up until now in our school we haven't had days where we haven't been able to get a reliever if we've needed one and in the last three weeks we've had three or four days where we haven't been able to get a reliever so that's a new situation for us," she said.
Hastings said it was likely some relief teachers were no longer available because they had taken full-time jobs to help schools cope with new enrolments by five-year-olds. Other, older teachers had stopped relief teaching because they were worried about catching Covid-19.
In Northland, Tai Tokerau Principals Association president Pat Newman said more children were back in class but staff absences were the worst he had ever seen.
He said if teachers called in sick and there were no relief teachers available, some classes had to double-up.
"Staff-wise it's diabolical," he said.
"It's worse this term for staffing than I've ever known it in my whole 40 years as a principal and that includes last term. So many of our relievers were either sucked up with the Covid stuff and then what's left has been caught up with the illnesses and been pulled into schools as permanent [teachers] so there's a real shortage of relievers out there."
In Auckland, Ōtāhuhu College principal Neil Watson said attendance was still below pre-pandemic levels but had definitely improved since term two.
"This term we've seen a steady increase of students coming back to school and for some of them the first time in a long time attending at school and we're really pleased with that," he said.
Watson said staff absences had also reduced a lot since last term, but were still relatively high compared to pre-pandemic years.
"What we're seeing with absence patterns is a degree of the usual winter illness, probably down but the issue is the isolation period, seven days as opposed to what would normally two or three days for flu, or even pre-pandemic staff would turn up with a bit of a flu and they'll soldier on for the day but those days are gone," he said.
