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Disadvantage widens
Pandemic will harm students’
future prospects if schools don’t
reopen soon, expert warns.
By Wade Zaglas
A
stark warning has been issued by a
senior health education expert that a
widening chasm of multigenerational
disadvantage will develop between our
children if Australia doesn’t urgently reopen
all schools.
“Other states and territories should follow
South Australia to reopen schools … If
we do not, Australians will be paying the
price for generations to come,” Dr Leila
Morsy, from Flinders University’s Prideaux
Centre, said.
Currently, the issue of whether to open
schools for Term 2 is directed by a state’s
premier or territory’s chief minister, and
there is little consistency between them.
“Towards the end of last term, many
schools partially or entirely shut their
doors to students and started delivering
instruction online,” Morsy said.
“State and federal policymakers have
not yet set a date for reopening school
buildings to children, despite current
evidence suggesting that children seem to
be negligible spreaders of the disease.
“The longer that Australian schools
remain closed or partially closed, the worse
our gap between advantaged and less
advantaged students will become.”
Morsy highlighted that the children
most at risk of “losing ground” over school
closures – despite online learning programs
being rolled out – are those whose parents
18
obtained lower levels of educational
attainment, Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander students and students with
special needs.
Due to the technological and
connectivity requirements to engage
successfully in online learning, she argues
children from low income families and
those from rural and remote areas will also
be negatively affected.
“This gap in achievement between
advantaged children and their less
advantaged peers will not be limited to
academic achievement, but will reach into
children’s health outcomes; non-cognitive
skills, including self-motivation and self-
determination; enrolment and completion
of high school and higher education; and
future adult earnings,” Morsy said.
“For many children, school is a safe place
to go during the week. For many who
come from difficult circumstances, it is
perhaps the only safe place. When schools
are closed, at-risk children will suffer greater
exposure to violence, abuse and neglect.
“These adverse experiences are predictive
of a range of depressed academic,
behavioural and health outcomes, including
difficulty paying attention, and greater
risk of aggressive and violent behaviour,
eczema, obesity, respiratory infections and
teen pregnancy.”
The health education expert was
particularly concerned that a level playing
field did not exist in online learning across
Australia.
“These schools will struggle to support
students online; their students are less
likely to have fast internet at home that
allows for downloading and uploading
documents and streaming educational
content; and many will lack a quiet place to
do schoolwork,” Morsy said.
“Schools with greater resources
– including independent schools,
government and church schools serving
more affluent families – have rapidly
designed high-quality online learning for
their students. Many students who attend
these schools have high-speed internet at
home, their own device, and a designated
place to do schoolwork.
“Middle-class parents and carers,
especially those who are highly educated,
would probably have been supporting their
children’s time-out-of-school by supervising
online learning and engaging in home
schooling.
“They may have provided additional
educational and social resources such
as apps, board games, conversations,
musical instruction, walks through the
neighbourhood, educational television
programs, reading books aloud, following
recipes to cook meals, looking at art
collections online.”
However, Morsy warned that some
middle-class parents and carers might be
doing very little to support their child’s
learning.
“But, on average, home academic
support will be greater for children from
advantaged backgrounds.”
Morsy, whose career in teaching began
at a public school in the Bronx in New
York teaching middle-school writing, told
Campus Review that the current health
advice from Australia’s chief medical officer,
Professor Brendan Murphy, remains the
same: schools pose a negligible risk for
transmission of the COVID-19 virus from
student to student and students to adults.
However, the academic does
recommend that we must continue to
scrutinise the latest data and adjust our
approach accordingly.
On the debate over which students
should return to school first, given the
staggered approach, Morsy said: “It’s
vital that our early childhood learners
do not lose any more of their classroom
instruction.
“It sets them up for life.”
This is in contrast to calls for Year 12
students to be prioritised, a move NSW
secretary of education Mark Scott disagreed
with on a recent episode of the ABC’s
Q&A program. ■