"One, two, three, four, five," Nick Button counts aloud while swabbing his daughter's nose.
His wife, Natalka, pipes in: "I swear you're doing it for longer just to annoy them."
His retort: "Yeah absolutely."
The family laugh, crowded around an island bench in their Western Sydney kitchen and watch as three rapid-antigen tests (RATs), marked with the initial of each child, all return negative results.
Mr Button said he was feeling good about his children's return to school.
"With regular testing and cohort separation and things like that I'm pretty confident … cases will be detected early on and any transmission that does occur will be minimal," he said.
"It's in everybody's best interest to keep kids in school, learning and interacting with their friends."
After a few big hugs, Ahlynka, 10, and Vivanka, 9, walk through the school gate and hang up their school bags, waiting for their friends to arrive.
Students at most schools in NSW last week returned to classrooms after the summer holidays, and major disruptions in the second half of last year due to the state's COVID-19 lockdowns.
"I liked being home, but I really missed my teachers and friends," Vivanka said.
"I missed just mucking around with them at lunch and recess."
At the front entrance to Trinity Catholic Primary School, principal Cathy Hey is talking to parents and students, who are walking in clutching bags of cleaning products and asking questions about masks.
"Parents are absolutely concerned, but they've also expressed that they trust we're doing everything we can to keep the children safe," she said.
"So, while their concerns are out there, they are bringing their children to school which shows that they trust us."
After some awkward first-day jitters, announcements and a rendition of the national anthem with no singing, the Year 6 cohort starts the day outside with a discussion of what they're thankful for.
The students say they're glad to be back with friends, back in school and are thankful to their parents.
Premier Dominic Perrottet said his government had done everything it can to ensure schools were safe — and, on Friday, said he'd like to "focus on the positives".
Some parents, such as Sterre Siegenbeek van Heukelom, disagree.
After a battle with her children's previous school, the Wollongong mother — who has underlying health conditions — has received permission for her two primary aged kids to temporarily learn from home, an option she would like extended to all families.
"We all want our children to go to school every day and have a normal life. None of us wants this," she said.
"[COVID's] a luck of the draw … [some] healthy people get very sick, [some] people with underlying health conditions breeze through it like nothing happened.
"I'm likely still to end up in hospital, if not worse, and I've had three vaccinations.
"It's a risk I'm not willing to take. My children need me."
Parents who have not been given the option by their school to access learning from home materials have had to make difficult choices.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said school attendance was at about 86 per cent last week and that she expected it to climb.
On Friday, she said the state's testing regime — which requires school students and staff to undertake two RATs a week — had been working.
She said 2,417 students and 617 staff had tested positive, but that no campuses had been closed due to COVID-19.
Some parents spoken to by the ABC are choosing not to send their children to school, without the permission of the Education Department.
They say they are willing to risk fines and other legal action because they feel COVID-19 case numbers are too high.
Single mother Danielle Verhoeven is nervous, having chosen, against her wishes, to send her six-year-old daughter, Caroline, to school.
She and her daughter have conditions that she worries may have longer-term implications if they get COVID-19 — but was told by the principal she would not be supported in her decision if she wanted her daughter to learn from home.
"The fact that there are people in the community [who] really do need to keep their kids home and do not have the option to, to not have the resources and support to school from home is just not right," she said.
Ms Verhoeven is sending her child to school in a face mask, but she believes the family will become infected, because Caroline has only one vaccination and was exposed twice last year.
"That will mean isolating, working, studying and homeschooling all at the same time, as well as dealing with illness in her and then probably in me," she said.
"Given my own health conditions, the likelihood of me becoming unwell with it is fairly high.
"It's not all about not sending kids to school — it's trying to find a balance for each individual case and I'm really concerned about the lack of ability [by government] to listen."
The Education Department will soon be conducting surveys with parents, to work out how the rapid tests are used and to guide what happens after the first four weeks of schooling.
A spokesperson for the department said in a statement the main priority remained the safety and wellbeing of staff and students.
"When schools are open, all students should be at school unless they are unwell, or they have a medical certificate [that] states that they are unable to return to school due to an ongoing medical condition," it said in the statement.
"There are a range of options available if students are otherwise not attending school and each case will be managed collaboratively, in partnership between schools and parents" the statement said.
