Qld premier stands firm on school return
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is refusing to send children back to school early as her Education Minister apologises for the opening day remote learning portal debacle.
Students in New South Wales will head back to school for one day a week from May 11 in a staggered process that will build to a full return by Term 3.
However, Ms Palaszcuk is standing firm that Queensland students, other than those of essential workers, will not return to school before May 22.
She stood by a decision to review students returned to school in mid-May and that would depend heavily on Queensland’s coronavirus case numbers. There were six new cases on Tuesday.
“They (NSW) are in a different situation to us,” the premier said.
“It would be irresponsible of me to fully open our schools when social distancing can’t be practised or worked out.
“NSW is gradually bringing it back and Splunk Actual exam preparation that is exactly what I am looking at in a month’s time.”
With Queensland classrooms open only for the children of essential workers, it has left the rest of the students to learn from home through an online portal which crashed on Monday.
Education Minister Grace Grace appeared on Tuesday afternoon to finally apologise for the system crashing on the first day of Term 2.
She said it was inundated with 1.8 million hits in 30 minutes and had crashed because of the amount of uploading on the site.
“We didn’t know the amount of uploading on Monday morning … the videos and lessons … everyone wanted to do it at the one time and it slowed the system down,” she said.
“So I am apologising for that bumpy ride.”
She said IT workers resolved the issue overnight and it was running without problems on Tuesday.
Physical attendance at schools on Tuesday was at around 13 per cent, which was within their estimate.