Wednesday, 15 September 2021

 Mr ONDARCHIE (Northern Metropolitan) (13:55): (1504) My adjournment matter this afternoon is for the Minister for Education. It is regarding student attendance at schools, particularly those students that have special needs. I give thanks to some local constituents who have reached out to me about this very issue, one reporting that they have a daughter who attends a special needs school who has an intellectual disability and does not have the ability to learn from home. As a result, she has missed out on a lot of school, as have many other kids. Due to the government guidelines about remote learning this student has been required to stay at home and cannot go to school.

Now, children who have disabilities, as this parent tells me, do not necessarily learn well remotely, do not learn well from home, and they have a basic right to education and to be safeguarded through their learning. And that is not what is happening. At one point the school said, ‘We could perhaps take your student for one day a week’. Well, it is not a childminding centre. These parents are working from home. They are trying to work, and they have a special needs student who needs to be at school.

The school should be open. Children with special needs cannot learn from home, and that is stated on the coronavirus website. When contacting the education department this particular parent, Michael, asked about whether their student should go to school, and the advice was the school should be open for their daughter and other special needs kids. And it is simply not the case. The action I seek from the minister is: open up these schools for special needs children particularly so they can get a decent education, because simply they do not have the capacity to learn from home. I thank Michael and the many other parents who have contacted me on this issue.