IEU / AEU Petition: Prioritise Vaccines for Education Workers
Click here to sign the petition!
The federal government's vaccination rollout is a shambles and is running months behind schedule, and there is an urgent need to re-prioritise workers in high-risk, high-contact essential workplaces.
This must include education workers. The latest outbreaks of the Delta variant disproportionately affected teachers and highlighted how quickly this virus can now spread in education settings, potentially affecting huge numbers of staff, students and families as they are forced into isolation and put at risk of infection.
Education workers in schools, early learning settings and TAFEs must be prioritised in the vaccine roll-out.
Urgent vaccination of education staff is essential for their protection as well as the protection of students and their communities. It will also reduce the need in future to move to remote learning, which is so disruptive for students and parents.
Most importantly, it is a key public safety measure to slow the spread of future outbreaks.
Childcare, kinder and pre-school workers are, in many cases, continuing to work in very high-contact workplaces even when schools and TAFEs move to remote learning.
The slow pace of the vaccine rollout, the lack of supply of vaccines and the failure to heed the call to prioritise education workers is putting staff, students and the broader community at risk.