Heather du Plessis-Allan: Are teachers doing their bit?

There's clearly a fair bit of concern about the decision to slightly reopen schools from next week.

This is coming from parents and from teachers, who are worried the move is only going to spread Covid-19.

But, hopefully the advice from the most senior health officials in both New Zealand and Australia will allay some of those concerns. They are saying schools should open, albeit in a limited way in New Zealand.

There's lots of evidence coming out of countries that have experienced outbreaks - China, South Korea, Italy and Japan - which suggests children don't often catch Covid-19. If they do they very rarely get as sick as adults and they don't seem to pass it on.

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Even in schools where children have caught it, there doesn't seem to have been many cases of outbreaks.

You're probably thinking: "what about Marist College?"

Well, Marist College is a secondary school, so being a bit older, the students are more susceptible.

That's not much of a concern in level 3 because older students - years 11 through to 13 - aren't allowed back at school.

And at Marist, it also seems adults might have been catching it from each other. One parent we spoke to said he fell sick after MCing a school event that adults attended.

So the evidence at this stage says it's reasonably safe for kids to mix.

It's fair for teachers to be worried about catching Covid off each other.

But this is the reality for all workers going back in level 3. Hundreds of thousands of workers will be going back to work and mixing with other adults, doing so safely and from a 2m distance.

Teachers can apply the same safety precautions as the other hundreds of thousands of workers.

Schools have objected that they're not babysitting services, and they're right but they're also wrong, aren't they? Because the truth is parents have for decades relied on the fact that their kids are at school from 9 to 3 allowing them to go work.

I have sympathy for teachers who are worried, but they should really consider whether they want to be seen as doing their bit or not as we try to recover from this lockdown.

There are workers up and down this country dying to get back to the tools or the desk, because they need to earn their full wage again or save their businesses

I'm not sure it's a good look to have a group of teachers complaining because they don't want to do the same thing.