SKIP Australia is putting every school in Victoria on notice. Here’s what you can do to help.
SKIP Australia has produced a “Schools on Notice” pack containing a letter addressed to the Principal and a resource booklet, both highlighting the risks and responsibilities of the Principal and School staff around the issues of:
- Masking children in schools;
- Promoting or facilitating Covid-19 vaccinations at schools; and
- Lockdowns, school closures and segregation.
Schools on Notice packs have been sent to all 2,291 primary and secondary schools in Victoria by priority registered post.
We want School Principals, School Councils and staff to know that the duty of care they owe to each of their students to protect them from physical and psychological harm does not end simply because they are following bureaucratic orders. We also want them to know that parents, guardians, grandparents and the community are unified on the need to protect our children from harm and that SKIP Australia will mobilise to fund legal action by parents against any School that breaches its duty of care in this regard.
Fundamentally, however, we want to provide Schools with the information that they may not be obtaining from official sources, invite them to think about their obligations to children in the context of this information, and start a dialogue with them about how we can best safeguard the health and wellbeing of every child. We want to work with Schools, not against them, as they have ultimately been put in a very difficult situation by the Government’s unprecedented overreach in relation to the Covid-19 situation. To this end, the letter and resource booklet are crammed full of information and supporting evidence about:
- the low risk to children presented by Covid-19 and variants;
- the questionable benefit of masking and the potential harms masking can cause children;
- the questionable effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines provisionally approved for children and their potential risks; and
- other risks of harm to children from pandemic measures, including discrimination, bullying, segregation, traumatisation, school closures, etc.
Once every School in Victoria has this information, it will be no defence against any future action for them to say that they were not aware of the risks. Schools also need to be aware that guidelines issued by the Department of Education and Training are not laws, so Schools should not follow them without critically applying their own rigorous assessment processes as to the legalities, merits and risks. The Department of Education and Training has previous form in requiring Schools to comply with directions that go beyond what is required by Government “Pandemic Orders” and which may contravene other legal obligations (as seen in the directive requiring unvaccinated parents to be locked out of school premises), and so vigilance is definitely required.
While we hope that our letter outlining Schools’ potential liability will be enough to raise awareness and kick off some careful reviews of school policies, you can help bring the message home at your child’s School. We recommend that parents and carers follow up with their individual School by calling in meetings with the Principal as soon as practical. Digital copies of our Schools on Notice pack are available by clicking (or right click and ‘Save link as…’ or long press on a touch device and “Save link”) on the following links:
Letter to Schools (with Supporting Evidence List)
Having difficult conversation – Parent info
Watch a replay of the February 9th webinar here: https://odysee.com/Schools_on_notice_Webinar_Feb9:e
Have a read through these documents, get together with other concerned parents and start up a conversation with your School Principal. If they cannot provide satisfactory answers to the questions raised in these documents, then they need to explain what they intend to do about it.
There is no time to waste with school term about to start and with pop-up Covid-19 vaccination clinics being set up to operate in schools from January 31st (round 1) and from February 14th (round 2), as per the Coronavirus Victoria webpage. Here you can find the list of the first 30 schools to host pop-up clinics across Victoria.
United, we can keep our children safe.
SKIP Australia Inc
Last update 9 February 2022
