School Amalgamations

Mr GEE (Napier) (15:03): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Can the minister provide details on how the new voluntary amalgamations program will work for schools and preschools?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (15:03): I am very pleased to give some further information about that. The idea of offering voluntary amalgamations was mentioned in the Governor's speech and I will not belabour the details that people may already be aware of in this chamber, but what it does permit is voluntary engagement by school communities—they might be two high schools close to each other, or a high school and a primary school, or even a preschool mixing in there as well—that choose to co-locate. The mechanisms that we have established to facilitate that are to allow the school that is vacating the premises to sell that piece of land and to receive immediately the market value of the property from Treasury so that they are not held up by waiting for a sale process. That money can then be used to establish the co-located school, and we are offering up to three years of the savings that are reaped from merging two entities to go back into that school community to really establish it.

What may not have been elaborated on so much in public before is the way in which this can be tremendously helpful for the communities that the schools are servicing. I recall (although I was not paying quite such close attention back then) a lot of debate about the wisdom of super schools and whether that was something that was going to be welcomed by communities.

I am really happy to tell people that the reaction from communities who have access to super schools has been incredibly positive. The schools are, if not full, almost full, and the results that they are able to generate have been quite remarkable. For example, I note that year 12 completion at Dame Roma Mitchell College has increased by 35 per cent, and that Mark Oliphant B-12 College has seen an increase in the number of students completing SACE, an improvement in their ATAR scores and an increase in post-school pathways.

These are all the kinds of results that we wanted to see from the super schools. By providing parents and students with a variety of curriculum offerings, not just within the academic curriculum, but the capacity to offer those pathways into VET courses and into work, we believe that we have been able to offer much higher quality education to those areas.

What we are now providing is the capacity for schools to enter into voluntary amalgamations in order to replicate the success. That will vary in different places, depending on what suits the different communities. Some amalgamations might be of a relatively minor scale but make a big difference to their communities. I have written to all of the principals and governing councils to inform them about this, and I intend to be going around to as many schools as I can, and part of the question to them will be whether they see that that is something that may add to their educational offerings.