EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

Ms THOMPSON (Reynell) (16:52): I rise today to draw the attention of the house to an important publication, entitled Understanding Educational Opportunities and Outcomes: A South Australian Atlas, which was published recently. It was supported by the government of South Australia and the Smith Family, and produced by the Public Health Information Development Unit of the University of Adelaide. It complements a series of social atlases that have been produced by this unit, but I am particularly interested in this one because it shows the educational outcomes for people in different areas and identifies a range of factors which have been said to contribute to good and poor outcomes for young people.

Unfortunately, the atlas shows that the electorate of Reynell is not faring at all well in terms of educational outcomes. The key figure of full-time participation in secondary school education at age 16 shows that Reynell was in the lowest group; at the time of the census in 2006 less than 73 per cent of young people in that electorate were still in education at age 16. That compares with the more advantaged areas of Adelaide, particularly around the Hills through to Norwood, Bragg, and the eastern suburbs in general, where 85 per cent and above participated in education at that time.

As we know, the impact of that is quite clear for young people. Those with poor educational outcomes have difficulty not only in the job market but also in accessing information needed to operate effectively in our complex society. It happens to be associated, as this atlas shows us, with lower levels of access to the internet. They just do not have access to the wealth of information that is available to so many people. It is associated with poor health outcomes, and I have also seen some research that indicates that, particularly for boys, poor levels of education, in particular not achieving year 12, is highly correlated with a poor rate of long term emotional attachments and relationships. In fact, my recollection is that boys who do not have year 12 have less than a 50 per cent chance of being in a long term relationship at age 40.

I find that, as I have been going around and discussing this with parents in our governing councils in the schools in my community, the fact that their children are going to miss out on life's riches through relationships is one of the key things that makes them think that we have to do things differently.

I have been talking with the Smith Family about how we can harness the energy that is present in the governing councils in my electorate to try to change the way our schools operate. We know that there are many factors that impact on children's successful educational outcomes. They go right back to their birth weight, their mother's health and well-being in pregnancy, and their opportunity to participate in play groups and kindergartens.

In our schools we cannot change all those. There are many government programs, particularly the emphasis of the Minister for Early Childhood Development on giving kids good starts at the beginning, but we can make things operate differently in school. We need to give principals more flexibility in funding, and we need our funding formulas to be more flexible so that they recognise that where children start with considerable advantage perhaps they do not need the same resources as children who start with very few advantages and who have parents living very complex lives.

One of the matters that have come up frequently in my discussions with schools is the need for schools to help the parents, help the parents to help the children, enable the children to have the fun of doing homework with their parents, and enable the parents to have a better understanding of the complex world that is around them and the many life and job opportunities that are available, which they have not experienced themselves.