Educators are bracing for a difficult term ahead as the Education Directorate looks to reduce workloads by paring back reports and getting more final-year student teachers into schools as COVID cases are set to rise.
ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry said schools would see high numbers of staff absences in Term 3 in line with the Chief Health Officer's predictions that daily COVID cases would climb up to 3000 per day by August.
"I think we're probably all just going to have to buckle up a bit and keep supporting each other. It's not going to be an easy time," Ms Berry said.
"We just don't have any more relief staff to put in."
Australian Education Union ACT branch president Angela Burroughs said a number of measures would be in place to ensure continuity of learning, which would include remote learning.
"We are advised that Term 3 might be tough and we are making preparations for that possibility," Ms Burroughs said.
Term 2 reports for public school students did not have written comments to reduce teachers' workloads.
Ms Burroughs said the measure was well-received by teachers but a decision on what Term 4 reports will include hasn't been made.
"There was a change to reporting that not only reflected that something had to give in terms of workload, but that many, many students had experienced many, many, many different different teachers.
"So the ability to for one teacher to write meaningful comments was just going to be incredibly difficult."
She said some schools had followed the example of Campbell High School in changing the timetable to make fewer, longer periods in each day so that teachers didn't teach to their full capacity of face-to-face hours. This meant that teachers were available to take other classes.
"If you adjust your timetable by just a little bit ... all of those little bits adds over a week to maybe an hour, maybe a couple of hours. And when you multiply that by all the teachers you have, you're creating a pool of extra hours that you can draw on to cover staff absences," Ms Burroughs said.
Public and Catholic systemic schools will have two extra pupil free days for teacher planning purposes, which will be held on Friday, August 5 and Friday, September 9.
Chromebooks and internet dongles would be available for public school students who needed them if their school had to turn to remote learning.
"At the end of the day, if we don't have enough teachers to deliver face-to-face education, we have to go to remote [learning]," Ms Berry said.
"I know that this is going to be a difficult time ... but we're doing everything we can to try and take the pressure off our teaching [and] school staff and support families wherever we can."
Ms Berry urged employers to be flexible with working parents who may be caring for their children at home during Term 3.
"We're going to need you to help us out with a bit more flexibility in this space because people are going to be impacted by COVID in a range of different ways."
The minister said the Education Directorate was working with the Teacher Quality Institute, the University of Canberra and the Australian Education Union on increasing the numbers of teaching students in their fourth year of their degree who can work in ACT schools.
"There's a bit of work in that needs to happen in that space, but that is definitely something that we are working on together."
Meanwhile, Ms Berry said education ministers from around the country would be meeting on August 12 to discuss the underlying shortage of qualified teachers, feeding into the Jobs and Skill Summit planned for September.
"Part of that will be about just where do we find these skilled workers? Where do we find teachers, early childhood educators? And where are the other gaps in our workforce that we need to include in this conversation?"
Ms Burroughs said the summit was a positive development.
"We're really excited to have a federal Education Minister who's willing to listen to the profession, and the representatives of the profession," she said.
"We've also got a federal Education Minister who's accepting that the profession is doing it tough at the moment and that's not a fault of the teachers. It's a fault of the circumstances."
Term 3 begins on July 18 in the ACT.
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