Dear parents and carers

Throughout the pandemic, Western Australian public, Catholic and Independent schools have worked
together to provide COVID-safe measures across our schools to help keep our students, staff and
community safe.

As Western Australian COVID-19 infections are rising and new sub-variants are leading to reinfections
for people who have already had COVID-19, we are asking for your support to ensure we keep our
schools open and minimise disruption to student learning.

It is vital we continue to keep ourselves and our school community safe.

As endorsed by National Cabinet as part of a nationally consistent approach, wearing masks indoors is
strongly encouraged and we fully support this across our three school systems. We ask that your child
wears a mask to school to keep our schools as safe as possible. Staff have also been strongly
encouraged to wear a mask while at school.

We ask for your support to please explain to your child the importance of wearing a mask to reduce the
risk of transmission in schools and the community.

You can support your school community to be COVID-19 safe by:

  • wearing a mask indoors when visiting the school
  • ensuring your family stays up-to-date with COVID-19 and flu vaccines
  • testing your child for COVID-19 if they have symptoms or are a household close contact
  • keeping your child home if they are unwell
  • maintaining good hand hygiene.

To further support face-to-face learning and minimise disruption to students’ schooling, the WA
Government will again be providing 20 free Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) for each student. Your school
will be able to provide you with further information in the coming weeks on how you can collect these
once they receive their allocation.

Testing for COVID-19 remains an important step in keeping our more vulnerable community members
safe. If your child is a close contact and does not have symptoms, they must return daily negative RATs
to leave isolation and attend school, and must also wear a mask when outside their home (usual
exemptions apply), as per the testing and isolation protocols. Close contacts who have symptoms
should not attend school.

For more information on testing and isolation requirements, go to the HealthyWA website.

Thank you for your continued efforts in working together to keeping all Western Australian schools

COVID-19 safe.
Kind regards