The NSW Govt announced that Year 12 would be going back to school 16th August which was 2 weeks prior to the lockdown ending (not that we think it will end then). Although the intentions were good, ie get Year 12 back to class, let them experience their last year, let them do their exams – it wasn’t well thought out. Unlike the Alpha variant, with the Delta variant young people are at high risk of infection. So why would we want to get them on public transport then put them together in one place at school? Some schools have 150 different postcodes attending. The next plan was that we would get all the Year 12 students vaccinated and send them back to schools 3 days later. Of course this didn’t make much sense either as they would have only had one dose and it takes weeks for it to even take effect. Then it was announced that no they wouldn’t be going back to school yet, they would be doing their Trial HSC exams online. Well at least they weren’t being forced to school but such chaos and uncertainty for the students. Some had already done their Trials, some were already rescheduled, some schools decided to cancel, some to do the exams online, some to do an alternate assessment task. Next plan is that the Qudos Bank Arena would be turned into a max vaccination hub and the Year 12 students in the most affected LGAs would get vaccinated in a week so that later they could get back to school – unspecified as to when. As there were not enough Pfizer doses, the government cancelled people’s bookings in regional areas to divert the doses to Year 12 in Sydney. Not a popular decision. Some of the people whose appointments were cancelled were actually teachers! No fast track for them. Status is still unclear. It is unlikely Year 12 will get back to school much this term, but the government is planning on going ahead with the HSC exams in November – although they have pushed the start date back a week and there is even talk of holding them outside. The Year 12 students in the forums have not been impressed with all of this (see below), lots of calls to cancel the exams, petitions etc – then the regional kids saying hang on you guys are saying you are being disadvantaged, regional students have been disadvantaged for years! I hope they get to experience some of the last weeks of school and graduations and formals etc, otherwise it is an abrupt end to all their years of schooling.