If an employee at your school or kura is sick with COVID-19 or required to self-isolate, your first considerations should be to look after your people, contain COVID-19, and protect public health. 

COVID-19 Protection Framework and leave situations for education staff [DOCX, 36 KB]

If your employee is sick with COVID-19 or needs to care for a dependant who is sick with COVID-19, their absence from work should be recorded as sick leave or domestic sick leave (in the same manner as time off for any other illness).

If your employee does not have enough sick leave to cover the period they are ill, you may provide additional paid discretionary or paid special leave in accordance with your usual leave policy.

There may be instances where an employee may still need to self-isolate after they have recovered from COVID-19 and before they are cleared to return to work. When this happens, if possible, they should work from home and be paid as normal.

If the teacher or principal is unable to work from home or is caring for dependents who are self-isolating, the absence should be recorded as discretionary paid leave.

If a teacher or principal has been diagnosed with COVID-19, they can request disregarded sick leave related to COVID-19 at the conclusion of the sick leave. This applies only when the teacher or principal is sick themselves and they have not taken sick leave to care for dependants.

These types of leave reflect the various collective agreements in a school/kura.

If your employee is required to self-isolate due to COVID-19:

• they must self-isolate immediately for the length of time specified by public health
• they should work from home where possible. If the staff member is working from home, no absence needs to be recorded.

We encourage you to be accommodating of any staff that become sick from COVID-19 or who need to support a dependant who is sick with COVID-19.

As you know, unless exempted, school staff are now required to wear a medical-grade mask when working in public-facing roles.

Masks are just one of the measures we can use for reducing the spread of the virus. Other measures include:

• being fully vaccinated and having a booster
• staying home and seeking medical advice if you are unwell
• keeping your distance from other people and opening windows for ventilation
• cleaning your hands often and sneezing and coughing into your elbow
• keeping track of where you’ve been with the NZ COVID Tracer app.

The Ministry of Health have advised that there is no specific time limit for how long a single-use mask is effective, and you do not necessarily need to change your mask regularly throughout the day. School staff are able to wear a medical mask until it is damp, soiled or damaged.

The important thing is for the wearer to make sure the mask has maintained its integrity. If you can see it is soiled or torn, it needs to be replaced. 

The terms ‘medical’, ‘surgical’, and ‘procedural’ are often used interchangeably to refer to these masks.

When looking for a medical mask in New Zealand, the manufacturer's box normally states that it is a medical mask and meets a standard. 

For example:

• Meets ASTM F2100-11 standard level 1: translated this means it meets the American Standard – American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) Standard F2100-11). A level 1 mask is recommended but you could wear level 1, level 2 or level 3.
• Medical mask meets BS EN 14683 type I: translated this means it meets British Standard (BS) or European Standard (EN) 14683. A type I or type II is recommended but you could wear a type IIR.

Some reusable masks with filters do meet the medical-grade standard. Again, the packaging will indicate if it is a medical mask. These can be used, so long as the manufacturer's instructions for use are followed.

In addition to the information in our bulletin on Monday, a number of you have suggested cutting off the ear loops with a pair of scissors prior to disposal.

How to order masks – School Bulletin 31 January

Without ear loops, there are fewer chances of the mask entangling wildlife in the event it ends up in the environment.

We encourage you to convey the following information about face masks to your students and their parents or caregivers.

The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework and Other Matters) Amendment Order 2022 has been published.

COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Order – NZ Legislation

From 11.59pm tonight, all students aged eight years and over or are students in Year 4 and above legally must wear a mask on school transport (both Ministry and regional council-operated) and public transport services in the Red and Orange traffic light settings unless they have an exemption.

This includes SESTA, daily, technology, direct-resourced, and Māori-medium school transport services. It also includes charter buses hired by schools to transport students and staff.

The Government is also now requiring that a face covering must be an actual mask. This means that face coverings such as scarves, bandannas or t-shirts pulled up over the face are no longer allowed. As above, it is recommended that masks be a medical-grade mask.

Please note, while the school transport drivers are not required to enforce the wearing of masks, they will report any non-compliance to your school’s bus controller (noting that some students may be exempt from mask requirements for health and safety reasons). Schools are expected to manage any non-compliance just as they currently manage behavioural issues of school transport users.

While we encourage all students to wear masks on school transport, students in Year 3 and below are not required to wear masks.

This includes SESTA, daily, technology, direct-resourced, and Māori-medium school transport services. It also includes charter buses hired by schools to transport students and staff.

Although SESTA students are included in the above mask requirements, we understand that this will not be possible for some SESTA students and that they will have an exemption.

Similarly, we expect SESTA drivers to wear masks wherever possible, but we also expect that there will be some situations where a SESTA student’s caregiver requests that the driver not wear a mask due to safety considerations.

We have asked our SESTA drivers to contact caregivers about the new mask requirement for both drivers and students.

Information on mask exemptions can be found on the Unite Against COVID-19 website.

Wearing a face mask – Unite Against COVID-19

With careful planning, education outside the classroom (EOTC) activities can go ahead at Red.

From 11.59pm on Thursday 3 February, EOTC providers are able to offer curriculum-related activities/services to a registered school without requiring all children to be vaccinated (even if this is a requirement for other users of their facilities).

The provider will need to meet a number of conditions, including:

• working with a registered school to deliver curriculum-related activities/services
• the activity is held in a defined space (either sole use of the venue or a separate defined space for the entire period the service is provided)
• all staff delivering the service are fully vaccinated.

Further guidance on EOTC under the traffic light framework – Te Mahau

A reminder that out-of-school care and recreation (OSCAR) programmes can open in Red, Orange and Green settings of the traffic light framework.

Providers are prohibited from requiring a My Vaccine Pass for people accessing these programmes.

OSCAR guidance overview – Ministry of Social Development

As you will be aware, the required waiting time for a Pfizer booster vaccine has been reduced by a month.

Booster vaccines lower your chances of getting very sick from COVID-19 and ending up in hospital. In turn, this also means our hospitals are less likely to be overwhelmed.

All New Zealanders aged 18 or older can now receive the booster three months after competing their primary course of vaccinations. That means the booster is available 93 days after a second vaccine dose (or third for those who are immune compromised).

By reducing the interval, an additional one million New Zealanders will be eligible to receive their booster before the end of summer. 

The change in interval from four months to three months will not impact the mandated dates in the Order and will provide you an extra month to meet the mandated six-month timeframe.

We are seeking advice from Ministry of Health about the need for boosters for employees who some additional immunity because they have contracted COVID-19 already. We will update you on this next week.

Starship Hospital has advised that there is a greater risk of hospitalisation in children with poorly controlled asthma.

“Poorly controlled” is anyone with an admission in the last two years or anyone with two or more courses of steroids in the last two years. Therefore, it’s important that children take their preventative medications and see their GP if their asthma is not well controlled.

Children experience many coughs and colds and respiratory viruses in the course of childhood, and these can result in asthma exacerbations for children with poorly controlled asthma.

Vaccination can provide strong protection for children with asthma to prevent hospitalisation.

It is not recommended that children with asthma are shielded by missing school. Instead, the advice is to get asthma under control. If whānau are still concerned about severe or poorly controlled asthma, they could consider bringing the second vaccine dose forwards on parental request. This would be preferable to the child missing school.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public health advice has noted that our experience in New Zealand and overseas with COVID-19 shows that it does not affect children and teens in the same way it does adults.

While the role our tamariki play in transmitting COVID-19 is still unclear and is changing as new variants evolve and older populations become increasingly vaccinated, as of 28 January the Ministry of Health has advised “no new evidence has emerged yet on the transmission risk to or from children in light of Omicron … it is likely that children continue to pose a lower risk of transmission”.

As such, the Ministry of Health’s current advice is that transmission within school settings continues to be limited and is influenced by broader transmission in the community and household settings. That is, although children are susceptible to infection, transmission is more likely to occur between adults and from adults to children; the risk of child-to-child or child-to-adult transmission is considerably less.

COVID-19 key information – Ministry of Health

Commonly, children have mild or no symptoms of COVID-19 with a short duration of illness that includes headache, fever, cough, nasal congestion and fatigue. Those more at risk are those living with pre-existing health conditions such as asthma, diabetes and obesity and socioeconomic barriers to accessing health care.

We can protect our tamariki through key interventions such as wearing masks, good ventilation, spatial distancing, ‘stay at home if sick’ policies and good hand hygiene. Encouraging good behaviours that will adhere to the COVID-19 Protection Framework outside of school hours, will also help to reduce risk for tamariki, their friends and whānau.

COVID-19 Protection Framework – Unite Against COVID-19

For more detailed information about the Omicron variant go to the Ministry of Health website.

Variants update – Ministry of Health

A reminder that you and your parents and whānau can find a wide variety of COVID-19 information in 27 languages and four alternate formats on the Unite Against COVID-19 website.

Key information includes:

• COVID-19: Our Isolation Plan
• getting your booster dose
• protecting your tamariki from COVID-19
• wearing a face covering
• testing
• support for if you get COVID-19
• support for individuals and families.

COVID-19 Our Isolation Plan – Unite Against COVID-19

Translations – Unite Against COVID-19

Alternate formats – Unite Against COVID-19

Translated information will continue to be updated regularly.

Given the significant disruption faced last year and the outbreak of Omicron this year, we understand that turning your attention to charters and analysis of variance has not been a priority for everyone.

If this is the case for you, we encourage you to focus on your action plan 2022, rather than a full charter review. We are also relaxing due dates – if you are not able to provide your charter by 1 March 2022, just do so when you are able.

Information about how to submit your documents can be found on our website.

School charter overview – Ministry of Education

A reminder that you can view and subscribe to our calendar of dates containing information that we know now and/or will be notifying you about in 2022.

2022 key dates for schools – Ministry of Education

It’s not exhaustive but we will keep you informed through these bulletins or with updates to the calendar throughout 2022.