TEACHER RECRUITMENT

Ms FOX (Bright) (14:44): My question is without planetary reference—

An honourable member interjecting:

Ms FOX: Are you still talking about the planets? Can the Minister for Education please update the house on measures to lift the status of teaching and encourage people into teaching in our public schools?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Education, Minister for Early Childhood Development, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (14:45): Good teachers make a lifetime of difference for our children. Research demonstrates that outstanding teachers more than any other school factor create this real difference to children. So, in January this year, as part of a range of measures to ensure high-quality teaching in our public schools, the government announced that it would launch a major recruitment drive to attract new and prospective teachers to this profession. We want to attract the best and brightest teachers to our profession.

The campaign has now begun and will continue in different ways throughout the year as we explain to the community that teaching is inspiring. The campaign is designed to help lift the status of the teaching profession. We want teachers to feel more valued and respected. We want to lift their enthusiasm for this challenging role and, of course, that will be an important benefit, but also we want to restore a sense of community pride in our teachers, and we believe that will be fundamental to making this a more attractive career for many to choose.

The campaign comes at a time when we are facing looming workplace pressures. Fifty-three per cent of our teachers are over 51 years of age, and the Australian Institute of Social Research Survey that we commissioned for career intentions of teachers over the age of 45 demonstrated that a third were considering retirement in the next five years. So, we will see a substantial turnover in the teaching workforce. We need to take what is an incredible opportunity, as well as a challenge, to refresh our teaching workforce at this time.

The recruitment campaign sits alongside a range of other measures that we have introduced since the last election to reform the teaching workforce. In the last budget alone, with $265 million over four years, we have provided for an extra 700 teaching and allied staff in our schools, supporting the new funding model for schools, giving them far greater flexibility on how those resources are allocated.

We have also released for consultation a draft new recruitment policy at its hardest to make sure that we get as many teachers off contracts and into permanent positions as we can. We want to make sure that principals have the choice of teachers who meet the needs of their school, and also we want to remove the requirement that teachers move every 10 years, regardless of performance. It also, importantly, maintains the priority for country teachers returning to the city.

We have also provided for an immediate injection of new teachers into our system by opening just recently the Teacher Renewal Program, under which some of our experienced teachers who are losing their enthusiasm and looking to leave teaching will be able to be replaced by graduate and early career teachers.

A $9 million Teach SA initiative, which will see up to 155 science and maths teachers recruited or retained over the next three years or so, will get underway in the second semester of this year. And we have, in conjunction with The Advertiser, created the South Australian Public Teaching Awards to honour our exceptional teachers and hold them up in the eyes of our community. We will have an inaugural statewide teaching conference next year to be shaped by teachers themselves, and we are also proposing a new teaching classification—an outstanding teacher classification—which will allow those teachers who can demonstrate capabilities to obtain higher rates of remuneration.

As one of the teachers who features on the campaign website says, 'Teaching is a great profession and I'm proud to be a teacher.' That is a message we want everyone in the community to hear.