REGIONAL CAMPUSES, ATAR SCORE

The Hon. L.R. BREUER (Giles) (15:32): Firstly, today I want to pay tribute to one of those unsung heroes connected to our parliament and that is one of the ministerial chauffeurs who is leaving the service and, in fact, had his last day at work yesterday. After 50 years in the Public Service, and almost 20 years as a ministerial driver, Mr Steve Rollison—who I am sure everybody will know (the big tall guy with the moustache)—retired yesterday. He was the driver for minister Gago for some time.

I want to pay tribute to him as I think often the drivers' work goes unnoticed and unappreciated, and I always found Steve Rollison to be the epitome of what a good driver is about. He was a loyal, supportive, professional and gave wonderful service to whoever he drove. I want to wish him well in his retirement and his coming surgery, and I want to say thank you to him on behalf of all of those he served. Good luck Steve. Have a great trip around Australia and I will see you on the road somewhere.

For some seven or eight years I have fought to have teaching degrees at our regional campuses of UniSA in Whyalla and also in any other country region where it was possible, including Mount Gambier. For years, the Whyalla campus was very supportive of this and fought alongside me, as did the community, but could not get the education school of UniSA to do this. We were never given reasons except cost. I believe they just could not accept the concept of moving the school out of the metropolitan area. This was despite the fact that FIFO lecturers (fly-in fly-out lecturers) were operating in other schools. Local expertise was available in our town, and at least 50 or 60 people who I knew of in Whyalla were actually studying externally through interstate universities.

Country parents, at that stage, could not afford to send their children to Adelaide to study. Our schools were crying out for teachers, but we kept getting 'no'. So I was delighted when it was announced last year that teaching was to be introduced from 2013. But now I find out there are only five or six students enrolled in the course—what has happened and why? Again, I believe it has been sabotaged by metropolitan mentality. The reason is this: there was put on them a high Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) score that applied to applicants to UniSA's Bachelor of Education (Primary) Degree, which is the course that commenced for the first time in February this year, not only in Whyalla but in Mount Gambier also.

In a nutshell, UniSA's School of Education, based in Adelaide, set an entry qualification, or an ATAR score, at 85, and this applied to all applicants irrespective of whether they were applying to study in Adelaide or Whyalla/Mount Gambier, although locally we had absolutely no input into this score. This is a very high score (I believe that it is the same for journalism and even for some medical courses) and it compares with only 65 for the Edith Cowan University at Bunbury, and they usually range from about 65 to 75 for most education programs on regional campuses across the country. This is despite the fact that it is known that country students do tend to get lower ATAR scores because of situations in their schools—they do not have the facilities and the teachers you get in metropolitan areas. They do get a regional loading, but it is still very difficult for them to get a score that high.

Charles Darwin University, which runs education programs online, has a lower ATAR score; hence, we lost applicants to them. As a consequence of setting such a high ATAR, the acceptances onto the program were much fewer than we had hoped for. Several good applicants from Whyalla schools were denied a place on the program. I understand now that there are still about 50-odd young people in our region who are studying externally through other universities out of the state.

I believe that the local campus is trying to negotiate with the School of Education to lower the ATAR score for regional students in 2014, but I think that they are hitting brick walls, and I think that this is very unfortunate. I am extremely disappointed. Why do we continue to have these hurdles put in place? We just want our children to be able to get a university education, we just want to get teachers trained in the area so that they will teach in our schools.

We have plenty of nurses, social workers and accountants because they are trained locally: train them locally and they will stay. Give opportunities to our young people from the country whose parents cannot afford to send them to Adelaide. It costs so much to send your child to Adelaide. The School of Education must amend this score, they must look at this. I also urge the minister to take note: let our young people out there in our country areas get an education.