South Australian Certificate of Education

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:53): My question is to the Minister for Education. Would the minister provide details to the house on SACE results achieved by year 12 students last year not only across the state but most particularly from my electorate of Florey?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:54): I am so delighted to talk about SACE partly because the qualification itself is such an outstanding one. The revision of the SACE in 2011, in my view, has been utterly vindicated by the combination of more kids finishing school with a qualification and better and better quality of results resulting in students being able to go to university and excel and achieve.

The fact that it is both about quality and equity makes it an astonishingly good high school qualification and I am extremely proud of it. I was delighted to travel to China last year to sign up more schools that are interested in teaching our qualification in their high schools, because they recognise the importance of the breadth and the well-roundedness of the qualification for the students.

Last year in South Australia we broke records again: 14,500 students completed their SACE, 500 more than the previous year. There were double the number of Aboriginal students as in 2011—that in itself is a vindication of the new SACE and it is a vindication of the education system and the efforts that the students put in.

The member has asked particularly about Modbury High School, and I suspect she is particularly interested to know about one extraordinary young woman. Her name is Alyssia Baker, and despite losing her mother to mental illness last year, this young woman was able to achieve a merit in chemistry, a university entrance rank of 99.25 and also received the Governor's commendation this year. She is an exemplar of the extraordinary young people we have in this state and in our public education system, and that Modbury High School was able to support her through that time and that she was able to shine intellectually at an awful period in her life tells me that she is going to have a remarkable future in this state. I thank the member very sincerely for asking the question and therefore enabling me to put on the record my esteem for that young woman.