South Australian Certificate of Education International Program

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:11): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Can the minister inform the house about her efforts to promote our SACE International program.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (15:11): I am delighted to report that I have just returned from a trip with the SACE Board to China, the second time I have been to China with the SACE Board, and also this time to Vietnam. The SACE certificate is, as people will have noticed as I have said it many times in this place, an outstanding qualification in South Australia for the completion of the last two years of high school.

It is outstanding in its most recent incarnation since 2011 because it has been able to combine both very high quality with a flexibility that recognises that students learn a variety of subjects and in a variety of ways. One of the features of its outstanding success that I am very proud of, on behalf of the people who created this new program, is the doubling of the number of Aboriginal students completing high school with a certificate in the period since 2011.

Not only is the SACE qualification of very high value to this state, it is also valued elsewhere, and it is valued because it provides the kind of flexible and broad education that pays attention to content in subjects and also pays attention to the lifelong skills required for students nowadays in this modern world of problem solving, creative thinking and collaboration with others.

Because it provides that breadth of quality of education, other countries are interested in having their students learn the SACE and qualify from high school with a SACE. SACE has been in Malaysia for many years and more recently has started to be taught in China. We are currently either teaching or about to teach in eight schools in China, and Vietnam has taken an interest. As I said, we had some early discussions early this week with Vietnam.

The trip that I have recently been on had some specific memoranda that were signed—for example, the Hunan Concord College of Sino-Canada (which they are I think in the process of changing the name of to be Sino-Plus because they don't want to be restricted to a relationship with Canada), which is in the city of Changsha in the Hunan Province. I signed a memorandum of understanding to offer the SACE International to their students, and I congratulate the board on its achievements.

The Guangzhou Country Garden School has now advanced past the initial agreement phase and starting to prepare to offer the first classes in September this year. I was able to be at an event with around 300 prospective students and their parents. By no means will that many students be undertaking the SACE. We do not anticipate very high numbers to start with, but I was pleased and proud to be part of the presentation to those parents and those students for them to consider taking up the SACE. I went to the Guangzhou School to be part of that but I also had the pleasure of witnessing the Port Adelaide Football Club signing an agreement with the school. Port Adelaide, as we know, has taken some leadership in engaging with China, and it is paying off particularly with some of the younger kids, who are absolutely fascinated by AFL.

One of the features that was pleasing to me in the discussions we had both in China and Vietnam was that the schools very clearly don't just see this as something about getting a good qualification from another country and therefore straightforward entree into universities. They were also interested in cultural exchange, and that's why the fact that we have a Chinese bilingual school starting up next year is so crucial. We have to be open to the world, and our schools are one of the ways we can do that. The idea of student exchanges across our countries can only augur well for our future.