Education System

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:48): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. What is being done to boost the standing of public education in South Australia?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (14:48): I am delighted to have the opportunity to answer this question about public education. As members who have had any opportunity to hear me talk in public about education will be aware, while I am very happy to be the Minister for Education for all three sectors, for all the students in all the schools, I have a particular passion about making sure that the public education system is as strong as it can be. It is my view that in the absence of a strong state system we are imperilled as a state for the future of our society as well as our economy and I will do everything I can to make sure that both the quality of the state education system and its reputation are as high as possible.

Over the last several months, I have had the opportunity to tour many of our state schools and I have been most impressed by the quality of the work that occurs there—the teachers, the leadership, the SSOs and, of course, the students themselves. I am absolutely convinced that the SACE is one of the best high school qualifications in the country and I was very proud to go to China to be part of signing up schools there who know what a good qualification it is and who want to teach it through their education system as well.

I have also determined that I want to make sure that I am best equipped to have advice from as broad a range of people and professions as possible on making sure that our public education system not only is strong but is seen to be strong. I have therefore set up an advisory committee to assist me, chaired by Professor Alan Reid. Amongst others on that committee, I have invited Professor Leanna Read, who is South Australia's Chief Scientist, to give advice on how we can make sure that people understand how good our state education system is and also to make sure that we are maintaining our role as offering one of the best education systems in the country.

To do that, I have asked them for several pieces of advice, one of which is that, while we all accept and, in fact, embrace NAPLAN as one way of measuring a particular set of skills—which are foundation skills and utterly important; literacy and numeracy are extremely important as is the capacity to write persuasively—by no means can we allow that to be the only measure of the quality of our education system. It is absolutely crucial that not only are we teaching students critical thinking, problem solving and group work—entrepreneurialism, as was called for in the paper today—but that we are able to measure how that is going.

My sense is that we are not well equipped across the country with mechanisms for measuring those other skills that are absolutely crucial to the future of South Australia, so I have asked them to have a look at that and see what ways we can measure performance on those fronts. I'm very much looking forward to working with the advisory committee and I look forward to the quality of the advice they will be able to give me.

The SPEAKER: Supplementary, member for Unley.