Albertan students Grade 7 through 12 switch to online learning

It’s back to online learning for a large portion of Alberta’s students.

As of Monday, November 30, students in Grades 7 to 12 have switched back to online-only learning and will stay home from school until the term ends on December 20.

Younger students will continue in-person classes until December 18, according to an announcement made by Premier Jason Kenney on November 24.

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Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw spoke to the situation in Alberta Schools at a press conference on Monday, stating that there were active cases, alerts, or outbreaks at 376 Alberta schools, accounting for about 16%.

“With students in Grade 7 to 12 moving to online learning today, we can expect to see a reduction in the number of cases, outbreaks, and alerts attributed to schools in the coming days,” Hinshaw said.

There are a combined 1,405 detected active cases in school-aged children, resulting in 203 outbreaks including 88 on the watch list.

Hinshaw expects that there will be some lag time between the switch to online classes and results shown in daily COVID-19 numbers.

All public schools will also be pushing back their start of in-person classes to January 11, 2021, and the first week of school in the new year will be online-only.

With files from Megan Devlin