Northern Suburbs Schools

Mr GEE (Napier) (14:45): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Can the minister update the house on the achievements of students attending schools in the northern suburbs?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:46): As members of the house probably realise by now, I am always delighted to answer questions not only about schools in the northern suburbs but about completion rates in our schools because the two most important thing students can do for their own education and their own future is to attend school and to complete school.

One of the great triumphs of the new SACE, which came out in 2011, is that it has provided the flexibility to enable more students than ever before to complete school: 14,668 last year, up 618 students on the previous year, and, even more clearly a reason to celebrate the new SACE, double the number of Aboriginal students completing high school with a certificate. At the same time, SACE has maintained a very high-quality offering so that the students who are destined for university do a very rigorous program, perform very well, and their ATAR results as they are scaled and ranked are of a very good quality for entering universities around Australia and internationally.

Specifically about the completion rates in the northern suburbs and the achievements of those schools, I would like to point out some specific examples; one is Mark Oliphant College, which, as members would be aware, is a very popular school and, in fact, we are having to now restrict the entry because it has become so popular that we are full. Back in 2011, 69 per cent of year 12s at Mark Oliphant College completed their SACE, and each year since then the college has attained increases on the figure as well as an increase in the number of students attempting to complete their SACE. In 2012, the rate was 79 per cent, up to 92 per cent in 2013, and in 2014 the school was at 94 per cent SACE completion rate.

What I am really pleased about is that in 2015 the college's SACE completion rate was 100 per cent. I don't want to over read this. This isn't about every student who starts year 8 completing five years later. What it is about is the students who are prepared to undertake the SACE, who have completed the subjects and units necessary to do that by the December of that year in fact completing. I have an ambition that every school should be able to get to 100 per cent on that measure while we simultaneously work to have more and more students being prepared to undertake the SACE, being prepared to put themselves in that situation.

While that completion rate has been rising, importantly the number attempting SACE has almost doubled from 2013 to 2015 at Mark Oliphant College. Last year, more Mark Oliphant College students attempted their SACE than on previous years, and all of them completed this time. That is an outstanding effort and I would like to congratulate not only all the staff, not only all the parents but all those kids for stepping up to the high expectations that have now been placed on them.

Contributing to these achievements are of course the modern state-of-the-art facilities and the high-quality teaching. Mark Oliphant staff have featured in our Public Education Excellence Awards, including last year's winners, Ray Moss, who won the lifetime achievement award, and Emil Zankov, who won the secondary teaching award.

But Mark Oliphant is just one of the many great schools in the northern suburbs, and we are investing in many of them to ensure that there are many opportunities and choices for young people in that area. For example, Playford International College (which members may recall as being previously called Fremont-Elizabeth High School) has put and is putting enormous effort into changing the culture and expectations for the students at that school.

The school has already achieved an improvement in the SACE completion rates, with an increase in the number of students completing, from 78 per cent in 2013 to 86 per cent in 2015. I can only expect that that will soar up to 100 per cent before too long. Last year, we announced an investment of $7 million into the school towards a new centre for advanced technologies.

Time expired.