As Australian students prepare to leave Covid lockdowns in the past, teachers are frustrated by the lack of planning

Ahead of their return to school, brothers Majid and Malik Moustafa with their mother, play soccer in their neighbourhood in Melbourne. Photograph: Alana Holmberg/Oculi for The Guardian

Majid and Malek Moustafa have one hope for the coming school year – that they will not have to go back into lockdown.

“I hope that we this year can just go along with school and do my soccer and stuff and all that just pretty normally,” Majid, 13, says. He does not want a repeat of his first two years at Keilor Downs college in Melbourne’s north-western suburbs, “having lockdowns and having to keep going in and out and having to worry about spreading Covid or getting Covid.”