Aboriginal Education Strategy

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (14:32): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister update the house on supports for Aboriginal students in our education system?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (14:32): I am very pleased to be able to receive this question from the member for Narungga. I understand his very strong interest in supporting our Aboriginal students across South Australia, including in his electorate, to fulfil their potential. With next week being NAIDOC Week, and this month being NAIDOC Month, it's a very timely question.

There is a lot of good work that is being done in the education department to support our Aboriginal students and, indeed, to support the endeavours of reconciliation more generally. This isn't all new work. Some of it has been going for some time. I acknowledge the works of previous governments who have always taken steps forward and forward, as has been the trajectory of South Australia as a community. But particularly, I think, in the education department there are a lot of good-spirited people working very hard to ensure that future generations of Aboriginal students are able to be better supported to achieve greater results and greater achievements than they have potentially been in the past.

We have an Aboriginal Education Strategy which was helped to be developed by a committee, led by Peter Buckskin and the department's chief executive, Rick Persse. I think the first meeting of that was at the beginning of last year and subsequent meetings since the election have seen that work develop. It was launched late last year and it was a privilege to be able to launch that strategy. It is an ambitious strategy. It has at its heart the idea that our ambitions and our hopes for all Aboriginal children should be at no less a level than for any other child across the education system, and the strategy contains a number of actions that are being undertaken.

The committee continues its work in a slightly revised form where, of course, the committee is no longer developing the strategy but, rather, developing measures for which the education department may be helped to be kept accountable to that. Of course, the education department and all our schools are working very hard to achieve the goals set out in the strategy and in the action plans undertaken.

That work in the education department is led by the Director of Aboriginal Education. Last year, the Director of Aboriginal Education, April Lawrie, was appointed as our Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, the first commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People in South Australia. April was a terrific appointment and she is doing great work. Today, I am very pleased to announce that Bronwyn Milera has been appointed as the new Director of Aboriginal Education.

As the Deputy Leader of the Opposition would recall, she is the principal at Kaurna Plains School and is an extremely well-regarded Aboriginal educator and an extremely well-regarded principal in our education system. She is a proud Kokatha woman and has a great level of experience in education as well that is well regarded. I am looking forward to working with her as the newest addition to our senior executive group in the education department. She won the role after a nationwide call, an advertisement, from a very strong field, and I thank all those educators who put themselves forward for consideration.

There are a range of other works that are underway. Indeed, the South Australian Secondary Training Academy (SASTA) continues its work apace. It has changed its name this year from Sports Training Academy to Secondary Training Academy to reflect the evolving way in which its work is engaging and supporting Aboriginal students to complete their SACE and gain employment pathways not just through sport but through a wide range of other endeavours.

Indeed, this week it was a privilege, with the Premier, to be at the Ocean View College, one of our four Clontarf Foundation academies that has benefited from new investment from this government of $2.8 million over the next three years to roll out those academies in Port Lincoln, Port Augusta, Whyalla and the Ocean View College in Taperoo.

It is a wonderful step forward, and those kids are going to school in proportions they weren't before—185 already engaged students who were not attending school much last year, and the kids I spoke to were very proud that they have hardly missed a day this year. It is great work, it is important work and we are proud to continue it.