Education Department

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:57): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister update the house on how the government is supporting innovation in schools?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (14:57): It is a great pleasure to have this question from the member for Colton, who I know cares passionately about his local schools and is regularly in touch about them and also about innovation in our schools. Innovation in the education system is tremendously important. It is tremendously important that we are constantly seeking—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Leader!

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: —to innovate in the way that we provide services to schools, that we as a government support our schools and that, indeed, our schools support our students.

Indeed, further, it is important that we bring up our children, and that our schools support our students to be innovative thinkers, to be young people who are capable of taking on the challenges and the opportunities presented by the 21^st century, especially this very exciting 21^st century for the people of South Australia where industries such as defence, space, agtech, blockchain, machine learning, and indeed, as some have pointed out, cyber are going to be the drivers of massive job creation so long as we take the opportunity to ensure that our children and our students and our young people are prepared for those opportunities.

We are doing this in a number of ways. One program that is helping us not only support the way that we deliver work in schools better, supporting our schools better, and indeed helping to ensure that our schools can deliver enhanced curriculum for our students, is, of course, as I have mentioned to the house once or twice, the improvement in internet technologies through the laying of fibre optic cable right across South Australia. This includes to regions that had not had fibre optic cable before, directly to the schools which had, up until this government was elected, the slowest internet speeds in the country. We are now on track by the middle of this year to have the fastest.

Indeed, since announcing this partnership with Telstra worth $80 million in the member for Morphett's electorate at Glenelg Primary School late in 2018, we are now 72 per cent complete. There are 389 sites connected, as of yesterday, out of our 500 or so schools—more than 160,000 students and nearly 19,000 educators.

This is transformative in the way that schools can do their work, and it's an innovation that is very important. It was one that the Labor Party recognised was important before the last election and that's why, after 16 years in government, had they been re-elected, they promised they would fix it—after 16 years. Going from the slowest to the fastest—we've done it and we're doing it.

We have also identified that there are indeed flexible and new innovative ways to deliver our students the opportunities to connect with job pathways. The Minister for Innovation and Skills earlier identified our flexible industry pathways, apprenticeships and traineeships which can start at the school. Schools are working with local industries that have numbers of skills demands and helping our students get the training they need.

Substantial reform is required in vocational education and training. What we have had, through the work of the SACE Board, is an excellent secondary pathway to ensure that students are able to get the benefits of certificate and diploma training accredited to their SACE. What we're now doing is ensuring that when they do that it's actually leading to where there are jobs, and those are the transformations that we need. We're very pleased to be working with the SACE Board. Indeed, a $5 million enhancement of the SACE was announced at the end of last year. Martin Westwell and his team are doing a great job to support the way that we're delivering flexible industry pathways in schools.

I'm very pleased that we are also ploughing ahead with our Entrepreneurial Learning Strategy. Five entrepreneurial specialist schools at Banksia Park, at Seaton, at Heathfield, at Mount Gambier and at Murray Bridge are doing great work, particularly in identifying SACE-relevant pathways, working with business and industry and working with universities for pathways where students can develop those entrepreneurial skills. This is so that whether they want to start a business or whether they want to work in a large organisation or be a social entrepreneur, they will have those skills, that flexibility and creativity, to do the best for their company that they may start or they may work for and to do their best for South Australia.

The SPEAKER: Member for West Torrens.