The rate of children absent from school has also grown to 4.1 per cent, according to Education Department figures, well up from around two per cent at the start of the month.

There are now 883 teachers and SSO staff absent due to COVID, up from 758 last week.

Around 200 unvaccinated school staff will be welcomed back into the workforce today after the vaccination mandate for teachers – and passenger transport workers – was scrapped on Wednesday.

It comes as SA recorded 5496 new cases yesterday– second only to the 5679 it recorded on January 14 at the height of the Omicron surge – while hospitalisations increased by just 10 to 180, with eight people in intensive care and one on a ventilator.

The state also recorded two new deaths of people with COVID, a man in his 70s and a woman in her 80s.

Education Department CEO Rick Persse admitted it was a “challenging” time for the state’s schools but emphasised a state-wide approach to school closures was still not appropriate.

He said there are currently 16 schools across the state where there’s a temporary three-day class closure to halt the spread of COVID-19.

“We also have a couple of our large secondary schools on a remote learning program at the moment,” Persse told reporters yesterday.

Persse named Adelaide High, Wirreanda secondary school in Morphett Vale and Roxby Downs Area School as among those to close down.

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Sacred Heart College, meanwhile, has told parents it will be setting aside two student-free “preparation days” – one at the end of term one and another at the start of term two – to help teachers prepare learning materials amid a wave of COVID-19 cases.

“For the past two weeks we have had around 20 per cent of our students (400-550) absent each day along with a large number of staff (20-30) who are either COVID Positive, Close Contacts or Carers,” Sacred Heart principal Steve Byrne told parents on Wednesday.

“The preparation days are intended to be used by staff to to prepare materials for Term 2 with a focus on preparing materials that can be readily accessed by students who are forced to quarantine, as well as being ready to deliver remote learning if that becomes necessary.”

Persse also told reporters yesterday that the Education Department is “eating into … pretty seriously” a pool of 4000 temporary relief teachers established at the start of the year to respond to local staffing issues.

“Teachers, SSOs are members of the community and as cases rise that no doubt manifests itself in our schools and preschools,” he said.

“We are obviously feeling pressure in our specialist teaching areas and the further away from the metropolitan area make it’s a little bit more trickier.

“But we’re going OK.”