Mike Dot

I would like some advice on leaving a teaching contract early. We arrived in Brunei in August 2021, as soon as the arrived the country went into very restrictive alockdown due to COVID. Our three sons have not been able to attend school now for 7 months and it is likely that they will not be allowed to go back to school if we do not accept the vaccine for 5-11 year olds. This has still not arrived in the country and so we are looking at potentially a year out of school. I am not happy about them having the vaccine when there is no really danger to them. They would be forced to have it purely to attend school.
The contract I have is for 2 years and there are financial penalties for leaving before the 2 years are out. We do not have any money to be able to pay these. Does anyone have experience or know of anyone who has broken contract and has just left? Is the school able to recover the financial penalties from you if you have returned to your home country?
We would never have thought that we would need to do this, but the damage to my children's mental health increases every day and I am unsure as to whether we can survive as a family.

Pulaski

I am not sure where you are getting your data, but in the US, states are reporting as many as 1 in 400 deaths due to covid are child, so granted, the risk is lower than if you're obese, diabetic, or aged, but it is _not_ true to say that there is _no_ risk to a child catching covid. Even taking middle of the reported range I linked, so 1 in 800 deaths, and assuming that 500,000 deaths were of the elderly and extremely fragile, so not representative, would still mean that around 600 children may have died from covid in the US. [0.125 x 500,000].

I assume that your children have been vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, tenanus, whooping cough, and probably a few other things, so I am not sure why anyone would draw the line at covid.

Mike Dot

Hi, I thank you for your reply but I didn't post my question to star a conversation regarding COVID or the pros and cons of vaccination. I just want some advice over leaving my contract early so that I can return home. We did not make the decision to come here and then spend our entire time in lockdown, with our children being imprisoned within the house. It is a situation that is not likely to change in the near future and so we would rather return to the relative freedoms of our own country where we can have the support of our family and friends.