PRINCIPALS AS LITERACY LEADERS

Mrs GERAGHTY (Torrens) (14:39): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Can the minister inform the house on the progress of the professional development program called Principals as Literacy Leaders, which helps school principals support classroom teachers to lift the literary skills of school students?

The Hon. G. PORTOLESI (Hartley—Minister for Education and Child Development) (14:39): I thank the member for Torrens for this question. I was very pleased to spend some time with her last week visiting some schools in her electorate. One of them was Northfield Primary School, a United Nations Global Peace School, I believe.

The Principals as Literacy Leaders program provides school leavers with the latest research and practice to develop, together with their teaching staff, the most effective ways to assist students achieve their best in reading, writing and spelling. South Australia has taken the national lead with this Principals as Literacy Leaders program which, of course, is part of our Smarter Schools National Partnerships funding from the federal government. The program involves a strong cooperation between local school leaders, the Australian and South Australian primary principals associations and university expertise across Australia.

In fact, this program was recently highlighted by David Gonski in his review of school funding which pointed out that more than 88 per cent of teachers working with principals who took part in the initial project believe it improved their capacity to address students' difficulties with literacy learning and improved student attitudes to literacy learning.

Following that successful pilot program, 338 of our primary school principals, including leaders in rural and remote schools, have been involved in important professional development. As one primary school principal told me recently, this initiative has given her effective strategies to work with teachers in the classroom and to keep the focus on literacy outcomes and results.

Thanks to its success, the program is now being expanded to involve secondary school principals, with the South Australian Secondary Principals Association actively participating with our agency in the development of this program. I thank them for their support and their professional assistance. More than 120 secondary school principals from across the state have been further developing literacy and leadership skills and understanding with this funding. I thank the universities, the associations and all the schools involved in this initiative. In particular, I want to acknowledge our school leaders for the outstanding job they do.