SOUTH AUSTRALIAN CERTIFICATE OF EDUCATION

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (14:41): My question is to the Minister for Education. What support is being provided to teachers and schools in terms of year 11 students starting the new SACE in 2010?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH (Adelaide—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for Tourism, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (14:41): I thank the member for Mawson. I think he must have thought of this question in the knowledge that students from year 11 at Willunga Waldorf School would be in the gallery, and I welcome them.

As the member would know, keeping young people engaged in education and training is one of the key elements of our reform agenda for senior secondary years in South Australia. There is clear evidence that young people who drop out of school early are at risk of a whole range of activities in their life, whether it is poor employment, under-engagement in the employment sector, greater incidence of mental health disease, higher incidence of drug use, or, of course, involvement in the juvenile justice system. It is particularly shameful if young people fail to reach their potential, so our reform agenda, which includes compulsory education to the age of 17 years, is a significant way of encouraging young people to remain in school, work or training.

However, our new SACE agenda, which we have worked on with the Catholic and non-government sectors, has been directed also towards improving the achievements of young people and allowing them to reach their potential. An integral part of that program, of course, is the investment in teacher training, as well as leadership training in our schools and making sure that there is professional support and continuing training for leaders in our schools as they prepare for the new SACE. At the same time, of course, we are supporting schools to develop innovative programs to allow young people to develop skills and attributes that will help them gain employment and rewarding jobs but, particularly, not only making them employable but also making sure that they are job ready.

Since 2007 we have invested over $10 million in professional development and pilot programs across all schools that teach the SACE and, over that time, our investment and training has touched 13,000 senior secondary teachers as well as school leaders. This includes preparations, pilot programs and a new subject called A Personal Learning Plan. This will affect 20,000 year 10 students, beginning this year. As year 11 students next year move on, they will be amongst the first, not only in our state but also within the Northern Territory, China and across the world, who will be involved in our new SACE program completing year 12 in the year 2011.

To support those teachers and principals, we are investing an extra $3.38 million in professional development, and that is being shared by 248 schools within the government and non-government systems across the state. In addition, the schools can apply for additional funds, ($1.9 million worth of School to Work funding) to support strategies to give young people effective and innovative opportunities to develop skills in their lives. These are all part of our overall $5.7 million investment over three years in School to Work grants, and they are particularly targeted at literacy, numeracy and science skills as a way of developing job-related programs. All these areas are endorsed by industry, which particularly want young people to leave school job ready and embarking on further training.

Our School to Work program also includes initiatives to assist young people to become the first in their family to go to university. For many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds the barriers to further education are enormous—not just the uncertainty about acquiring a HECS debt but the fear of entering into a university—and they often set their own ambitions too low. It is important that our schools do not accept that young people are going to fail and that, from whatever background they come, they should set their ambitions high.

These grants for the first generation, as we call them, are very important because we know that, increasingly, we need higher skilled, vocational certification but also diploma and university skills, particularly as we are entering a phase with enormous job opportunities in South Australia, including those across the mining, defence and heavy manufacturing industries. All these opportunities are there for young people who have skills, and they are not just in vocational areas; they are in university training areas as well.

We are particularly pleased that this allows us to support our teachers and leaders because they are the people who make this whole agenda possible. I commend them for their efforts and diligence in working with the SACE board—which is led by Alan Dooley as chair, who was former head of the Catholic education system, and the principal of Wilderness School from the independent sector as deputy chair—in a way that guarantees we maintain the credibility and the high standard of SACE, and I thank them.