House of Assembly Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2) 53 2 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Private Music Instructors Private Music Instructors Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN House of Assembly Stuart Private Music Instructors Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (14:54): My question is for the Minister for Education and Child Development. How many public schools around South Australia will be allowed to have private music instructors teaching instruments to students during school time next year? The Hon. S.E. CLOSE House of Assembly Port Adelaide Minister for Education and Child Development Minister for Higher Education and Skills Private Music Instructors The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:54): I am not in a position to give a definitive answer on how many. As we discussed— The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell interjecting: The Speaker House of Assembly The SPEAKER: The Minister for Agriculture is warned. The Hon. S.E. CLOSE House of Assembly The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —in the last week of sitting, there has been a decision that has been made through the Industrial Relations Commission that requires us to work through the guidelines that require each school that may be contemplating offering the services of private music instructors that parents pay for during school hours to go through a process of determining whether there are any other alternatives, those being the employment directly of a teacher in the school, the use of the Instrumental Music Service or hourly paid instructors paid for by the school or by the education department who could, in fact, be the same people who are currently operating as private music instructors. If all those options are exhausted, then the final option is indeed private music instructors. We have currently put in an additional resource at head office to make sure that we are working with each of the schools that are currently using private music instructors during school hours and working through the way in which each individual school will respond. The absolute goal of how we are working through is to ensure that the students are not, by reason of this change, this instruction from the Industrial Relations Commission, disadvantaged in having access to instrumental music lessons. There are, of course, schools that come on and off offering instrumental music, and there is no guarantee that schools will not make different changes. It is one feature of the more autonomous schools' system that we have that schools do indeed make some decisions locally about what kind of offerings they wish to have. However, as the year unfolds none of this comes into place until next school year. We will be working through each of those and then I would be in a better position to be able to answer the member's question.