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West Australian students who will be learning from home in term 2 but don’t have the necessary devices or online connections will be supported by the department, Education Minister Sue Ellery said.
Ms Ellery said there were 153,000 devices and 5000 wifi dongles and SIM cards available across the public school sector through the department’s partnership with Telstra.
“Schools will work with families to establish where there is an identified need for students to have access to devices or internet access is not available at home,” she said.
“We will enter into arrangements with those families to lend them those devices, and the internet access devices as well.
Premier Mark McGowan has announced West Australian parents will have the choice to either send their children back to school or keep them home from April 29 when term 2 starts.
Schools will remain closed for the Anzac Day public holiday on April 27 while teachers will return to classrooms on April 28, a pupil free day for students, to prepare their classes.
Although Mr McGowan has given parents and carers a choice of how their children will be educated, he strongly encouraged year 11 and 12 students to go back to their physical classrooms.
“I know this year has been different and challenging for our students,” he said.
“But I want to make it clear that every year 12 and ATAR students will be able to get a WA Certificate of Education and an ATAR rank in 2020 so they can go on to further study training or employment next year.”
In a scientific study, droplets caused and projected by speech have been recorded, as well as the effect of a mask on the spray.
Commercial tenancy bills introduced to parliament this week have raised eyebrows in Perth’s property sector, including a ‘hammer’ in the government’s back pocket that could give tenants the power to break their lease at no cost if severely impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.
When passed, the long-awaited laws will enshrine protections for commercial tenants whose turnover has been slashed or rubbed out completely by the pandemic.
The protections include a six-month ban on evictions, rent freezes, bans on landlords charging interest on unpaid rent and bans on landlords drawing on bank guarantees or tenant security deposits.
The bill also proposes the adoption of a code of conduct for landlords and tenants under certain commercial leases similar to the one released by the federal government earlier this month that would see landlords given rent relief in the form of waivers or deferrals.
Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci has said Australian supermarket shoppers have entered into a “new normal” as coronavirus restrictions bring about major changes to the way we shop.
In an email to customers on Friday afternoon, Mr Banducci thanked customers for maintaining social distancing in stores and provided an update on product availability.
The major supermarket has removed purchasing limits on canned vegetables, canned legumes, serviettes and most baby products, though noted limits on high demand products like toilet paper and hand sanitiser remained.
This was despite the company shipping in another 1.5 million units of sanitiser, along with 500,000 packets of pasta.
Donald Trump’s political fortunes are tightly linked to his Twitter account. With 77 million followers, the US President has been able to use provocative posts, in a sometimes unrelenting volume, to shape what the public talks about in the realm of politics.
But the coronavirus pandemic is a political issue like few others.
Trump’s hunt for a way to explain the tens of thousands of American deaths without blaming himself has switched into high gear recently, as he pulled funding from the World Health Organisation and flirted with the theory the virus came from a "Chinese lab".
But thanks to Twitter, the public can gain a view of his thinking – and how it has changed – post by post.
WA Health Minister Roger Cook says he has met with experts to discuss public health surveillance in a bid to weed out asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19.
“This work will be advanced in the coming week and is obviously an important part of what Professor Brendan Murphy said about an extra national surveillance plan to make sure we are really starting to get a good line of sight of all cases where and whenever they occur,” he said.
Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy had previously flagged the Federal government would work with the World Health Organisation to conduct “precautionary and active surveillance” of disease incidence and spread.
“Asymptomatic cases remain a challenge for the entire health system,” Mr Cook said.
“It’s a very exciting development and one I’m very much looking forward to providing more information to you in the coming days and weeks.”
WA schools will open to all students from term 2, with parents and carers able to choose whether they send their children back to a traditional face-to-face classroom from April 29.
Premier Mark McGowan said schools will remain closed for the Anzac Day public holiday on April 27 while teachers will return to the classrooms on April 28 to prepare their classes.
Mr McGowan said while the issue of schools had been a hard one to grapple with, the best place for students was the classroom for a traditional learning experience.
As a father-of-three and with his wife Sarah a school teacher, Mr McGowan said he understood parents’ concerns about sending their children back to school but assured them that appropriate measures would be put in place to ensure the safety of students and staff.