Editorial: Lack of school mask mandate may be lost opportunity

Schools start a new term as winter bugs wait for students and staff. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

Today, the start of term three in New Zealand's schools, may well represent a major missed opportunity for the Government.

It could have been a good time, with the reset after the holidays, to introduce a mask mandate to reduce transmission of Covid-19 in schools.

The Government has resisted shouldering responsibility for masking in schools via a clear national rule. It has instead "recommended" that school boards enforce masking for children year 4 and up for the first four weeks of the term.

The issue is what is the more effective way to better protect the health of teachers and students, and to reduce current staffing shortages and rising stress levels. Teachers are having to drop out of work sick with Covid and schools are struggling to find replacements.

Data released to the Green Party show the number of teacher sick days have increased by over 50 per cent over the past year. By mid-June nearly a third of teachers and a quarter of the student population had caught Covid.

Arguably there would have been nothing to lose trying a mandate for the new term. Plenty of people would see it as a common sense tweak to Covid settings.

In Australia, the president of the country's medical association, Dr Omar Khorshid, has suggested that political leaders will soon have to shift on mask mandates as hospitalisations and infections among health workers increase. "I don't know how far they can let the numbers go while still saying we don't need mask mandates ... Governments are ultimately going to be held to account by the public for their failure to navigate this whole process."

It's winter, both Covid and flu are floating around. Teachers and students, like health workers and patients, are expected to be in the same rooms or buildings for hours, with potential for transmission.

Many other workers, in contrast, can better control their risk. They have the option of working from home or in a hybrid situation, or being primarily outdoors, or on their own or in a small group.

The Government is hoping its approach will achieve improvements through encouragement and pressure on school boards to deliver widespread masking. It has sent millions of masks for school use and is supplying air monitors.

Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti wrote to school boards on the Government's "strong recommendation to review and enforce a mask-wearing policy as much as practicable". She said in a statement that winter illnesses "historically peak at the start of Term three".

Perhaps most schools will see the recommendation as giving them enough authority to convince their communities to back mask-wearing.

Principals Federation president Dr Cherie Taylor-Patel said of the Government's stance: "The evidence is strong that mask-wearing in schools leads to lower levels of illness in staff and students, but we don't want schools to become the battlegrounds spending energy on enforcing masks that is better used on education."

Otago University epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker said: "It's really positive that they're recognising that schools are an important site for transmission. That is how the virus will be leaping from household to household."

But he added: "There's no point in having policies unless we're actually monitoring them."

It's clear that Covid spread in schools is causing major strain, and also that the existing Covid national strategy is still struggling to bring cases across the country down to a low enough level.

The advantage of a mandate rule is people know what's required and generally comply, especially if there's a possible penalty for not doing so. Mask-wearing in schools needs to be made normal, like wearing a uniform.

A recommendation, in contrast, provides plenty of wriggle room - for politicians unwilling to take direct action and for people unwilling to wear masks.