Updated March 26, 2020 14:24:24

Queensland schools will be "student-free" from Monday next week, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced.

Children whose parents work in essential services will still be allowed to attend.

"It's not just our health workers, it's not just our emergency services workers, it's not just our police workers, it actually involves anyone who's in our workforce including people who stack shelves at Woolies and work in a whole [range of] different industries that their students will still be allowed to go to school," Ms Palaszczuk said.

Overnight, Queensland Health confirmed 50 more cases of coronavirus, bringing the state's total to 493.

The Premier said the decision to make schools student-free from Monday would give teachers a chance to prepare learning materials and get training in online teaching.

Education Minister Grace Grace said outside school hours care and long day care would also continue.

"But parents are reminded of the need to stay home as much as possible and adhere to the self-isolation rules, so they will be there essentially for workers required in their workplace," she said.

Until now, the Queensland Government had steadfastly insisted children should continue to go to school.

Ms Palaszczuk said she listened to the community, as well as teaching staff, and believed she had "struck the right balance".

"Let me give this very clear message to parents who will have their children at home: They should be learning from home next week," she said.

"They should not be out and about in shopping centres and if you have a grandparent who is unwell, who has one of those chronic conditions, you must not take your children to visit those grandparents."

The State Government said parents could access learning materials for their children via the new "learning at home resource hub" on the Department of Education website.

Ms Grace said two weeks of lessons were available now but she could not say exactly what would happen after the Easter school holidays.

"We are planning for all kinds of scenarios. The department is working very hard to ensure that we can move very quickly," she said.

Queensland Teachers Union (QTU) president Kevin Bates said today's announcement provided certainty for teachers and parents.

But he said he expected even tougher measures to follow.

"Stage 3 lockdown, as part of the national crisis, will likely see all businesses have restrictions placed on them and from our perspective schools will be included in that," Mr Bates said.

"So we'll have to move to a process where learning at home is going to be about the only option that's available to students once we go back from the Easter holidays in the second term."

School polling booth changes

Meanwhile, three Brisbane Catholic schools will no longer host polling booths for Saturday's council elections amid coronavirus concerns.

Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE) has confirmed St Sebastian's School at Yeronga, St Ita's School at Dutton Park and Our Lady of Mount Carmel at Coorparoo have all withdrawn.

Breaking down the latest news and research to understand how the world is living through an epidemic, this is the ABC's Coronacast.

A BCE spokesman said the Electoral Commission Queensland (ECQ) had been advised of the decisions.

"The schools have maintained a rigorous approach to hygiene at all times and, with ECQ unable to provide an appropriate clean before school re-opens for staff and some students on Monday, the schools decided against participating on Saturday," a statement said.

"Brisbane Catholic Education supports the decisions of its individual schools on this matter given that they are managing well the risks during this time.

"The schools' priority remains the health and wellbeing of their communities."

An ECQ spokeswoman said "the agreement between the ECQ and schools about the use of some school premises as polling booth requires that the area be thoroughly cleaned prior to set up of the polling booth, and then again following election day".

Topics: epidemics-and-pandemics, covid-19, federal---state-issues, health-policy, travel-health-and-safety, education, schools, independent-schools, primary-schools, private-schools, public-schools, religious-schools, secondary-schools, federal---state-issues, government-and-politics, diseases-and-disorders, infectious-diseases-other, public-sector, unions, activism-and-lobbying, respiratory-diseases, brisbane-4000, qld

First posted March 26, 2020 11:41:25