LITERACY AND NUMERACY

Mr RAU (Enfield) (15:06): My question is to the Minister for Education and Children's Services. What is the government doing to support teachers who are working to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of South Australian students?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH (Adelaide—Minister for Education and Children's Services, Minister for Tourism, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (15:06): I thank the member for Enfield for his question. I know he has been a great advocate for getting back to basics in teaching and improving the teaching of literacy and numeracy in primary schools within his electorate. Teachers, of course, are the cornerstone of our schools and preschools, and the Rann government is committed to supporting our teachers as they work tirelessly to help students achieve their full potential every single day.

Since being elected this government has put a strong focus on improving the literacy and numeracy skills of all students. To assist teachers in government schools to teach literacy and numeracy a new electronic Datamart will be available, providing them with online access to literacy and numeracy test results for their students. Datamart will include detailed information on the year 3, year 5 and year 7 numeracy and literacy tests and, from this year, will also include year 9 test results.

This new Datamart will assist teachers to track the performance of their students and intervene early in any areas of concern or areas that require more attention. Last year the database and software were trialled in six schools. By the end of 2007 Datamart was rolled out to all government schools and training is continuing to be offered this year with 500 teachers and principals having already been trained to use this system.

Teachers are now able to access detailed information regarding the performance of individual students in the tests, including their answers to particular questions. Schools will be able to compare their performance in the tests with other schools across the state. Of course, security and privacy features of Datamart allow that schools can only access their own students' test results. More importantly, when a student moves to a different school, the new teachers will be able to access their results electronically. This will ensure that any difficulties that a student may have do not go undetected when they move to a new school.

Datamart is part of the Rann government's efforts to lift South Australia's student skills in all areas of literacy and numeracy. In addition to Datamart, this government has funded more teachers to reduce class sizes as well as providing $35 million for our Early Years Literacy Program. The Rann government is committed to ensuring that all students reach or exceed national benchmarks in literacy and numeracy, and Datamart is just another tool to assist our teachers to achieve that goal.