The rules around vaccination and school activities have been a bone of contention for school administrators and principals since the move into the red light setting.
The red light of the Covid Protection Framework meant the end of sports events of more than 25 people without vaccine passes.
Exemptions for school activities meant that unvaccinated students could play sport or do other activities during school hours, but the common understanding of the rules was that once the end-of-day bell rang, the exemptions no longer applied and regular red light rules applied.
Now Minister of Education Chris Hipkins has called that an unanticipated narrow interpretation of the rules, and announced changes to the regulations to land some time in the next fortnight.
“We’ve seen reports for example of schools stopping sporting things bang on three o’clock when the school bells rang, when there’s actually no harm whatsoever in … exactly the same people doing exactly the same activity beyond three o’clock,” Hipkins told reporters at Wednesday’s 1pm Covid briefing.
“We want to provide clarity there,” the minister continued. “We will make some changes just to make that clear.”
Namely, the clarity that changes to the regulations is supposed to provide is assuring schools that young people participating in a school-organised activity do not need to be vaccinated, whether or not it takes place during school hours or on school grounds.
Dr Cherie Taylor-Patel, the national president of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, said further clarification around the rules will be welcomed by the sector.
“School principals have been working overtime to follow changing guidelines in all manner of logistics linked to Covid. They want to keep students safe and are very aware of the anxiety levels of parents and staff,” she said. “Risk assessment around school activities will err on the side of caution, especially for principals new to the role or those that have communities that are divided in their views of Covid.”
In a bulletin from the Ministry of Education to schools earlier this week, chief executive and secretary for education Iona Holsted said the changes, expected by March 15, will address the concerns schools may have had.
“I know that this does not free up access to a range of other provisions, such as sports clubs or ballet classes, but it does address the concerns raised by many of you,” she wrote.
Extra-curricular sports clubs and dance schools may continue to be out of luck, as the exemption to regulations only apply to activities offered by a registered school.
Robert Norman is on the committee for Wānaka’s junior football club – a club that serves as one of the only ways for young people in Wānaka to join a team.
Wānaka’s sole high school, Mount Aspiring College, doesn’t run after-school football, so any aspiring footballers go to the club.
However, Wānaka AFC has to follow the health guidelines of no more than 25 unvaccinated people involved in an event.
At the moment, this means unvaccinated children won’t be able to play in Saturday morning games, although the club is setting up special, fewer-than-25-people trainings for them.
And at the 12 to 15 age range, Norman said the kids were being unfairly excluded for something they may have little say over.
“They aren’t allowed to go and get vaccinated without their parents’ permission, so they are being impacted by something that’s out of their control,” he said.
New Zealand Football came out in support of making sure unvaccinated students can take part in school-affiliated sport, but said the red light regulations made the rules for clubs too complex and prohibitive.
New Zealand Football CEO Andrew Pragnell said the discrepancy between rules for school sports and junior club sports were impractical and could mean fewer young people have the opportunity to take part in football or futsal.
“It doesn’t make sense that school students are easily able to play school football or futsal, but then face barriers to attend large gatherings with their club, as could be the case under the proposed changes,” he said.
With registration dates for the winter season fast approaching, time is of the essence for decisions made around extra-curricular winter sports.
“Registrations for the winter season are almost upon us, and it’s imperative that we are aligned across school and club sport as to what these guidelines are, so we can enable as many people to participate as possible,” Pragnell said. “If there is to be an adjustment of the current settings, which we support, it needs to take place with absolute urgency.”
The situation is the same for any extra-curricular activity that isn’t run by schools. So if a school doesn’t offer an activity, students who are unvaccinated are currently out of luck.
The exemptions fail to cover many activities young people take part in that schools often don’t offer. These activities could be dance classes, music lessons and – especially in smaller towns – the whole range of sporting codes.
In Wānaka, there’s one football club, one rugby club and one cricket club. The local college runs netball from Year 7 and up, but they only offer school rugby from Year 9 and up, meaning intermediate students are forced to join the local club.
When questioned on the fate of outside of school sports clubs, Hipkins said vaccine passes expire in June and the future of vaccine mandates in New Zealand will be re-evaluated after advice from public health professionals.
“We haven’t made decisions around what the future of [vaccine passes] will be. We’ll continue to get advice on that,” he said. “We’ll only keep public health measures in place as long as the science justifies them. Vaccine mandates and vaccine passes are two things that we do keep under review, and they’ll only be there for as long as there’s a strong public health rationale for them.”
He added that it is possible that the rules will look quite different for the winter sport season. However, with registration for winter teams soon to begin, clubs like Wānaka FC are left wondering exactly when they can start planning for that.
