QUEENSLAND has already pushed back its school starting dates from January 24 to February 7 and, across the country, hopes for a clean start to the 2022 academic year are fading before the still-gathering pace of the latest wave of COVID-19.
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On Monday, there were about 600,000 active COVID-19 cases in Australia.
On Tuesday, the total number of active cases in Tasmania was recorded at 8356 with 2766 having already recovered.
That is still a very small percentage of the population, meaning the major impacts for most have been economic and social.
For most adults, the disruption is something to be borne - admittedly with varying degrees of success - as another of life's inevitable trials.
But for children, the impact - especially on their education - has in many states been unarguably profound. This is despite the extraordinary efforts of teachers in quickly flipping the schooling model on its head to provide online lessons at home, as they did in Tasmania during the early stages of the pandemic.
One study of 4800 NSW primary school students, who along with Victorian students have been the most impacted by lockdowns nationally, showed no significant difference in maths and reading results for 2020.
Even so, for many school pupils and their families, fears of "education loss" are all too real.
In the same way that "working from home" has its difficulties, so the adaption to online education will have been less than optimal for some of this country's four million school students.
Lessons missed can be very hard to pick up later and that is the exact situation all parents want to avoid in the 2022 school year.
The less disruption the better. That must be the priority for everyone involved.
Despite the Queensland deferral, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday his departmental secretary, Phil Gaetjens, was working with the states and territories to "harmonise" schooling plans.
While acknowledging the surging case numbers, Mr Morrison wants schools to "go back, stay back, day one, term one".
"As we see the Omicron wave rise, sometimes you do things which just pushes the wave further out. You still get the same outcome."
Since Monday, the Pfizer vaccine has been available to Australian children aged five to 11, under provisional approval.
Despite our long history of child vaccination, some families may baulk at this step, despite official recommendations.
Even for those eager to return to school, the first term of the year may well be an uncertain time of repeated RATs and resultant spells of isolation.
Tasmanian public school students are due to report back to class on February 9 and while a national approach sounds good, education is a state responsibility and decisions will inevitably be made on the ground, school by school.
One thing anxious parents can be sure of is all staff at our schools will be doing everything they can to keep children safe and give them the chance to achieve their best educational outcomes.
