Coronavirus

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:37): My question is to the Minister for Education. How many other schools have significant student absences and staff absences as Unley High School has and yet are not closing at present?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (14:38): I thank the member for the question. I don't think it would surprise members to know that across South Australia student absences are significantly up. The variation from school to school is reasonably significant. Since Sunday night, when the Prime Minister advised the outcomes of the national cabinet meeting and the advice of the AHPPC, that has increased further, as indeed it has certainly signalled to parents that they are entitled to do so for the first time.

The responsibility that comes with that is quite different to that for a student who is in self-isolation on the instruction of the public health officials—somebody who has, as a result of the contact tracing to a positive test by SA public health officials, been instructed to self-isolate. The Department for Education, if they are in a department school, or any school that they are in has a responsibility to those students, such as the 110 students at Unley High instructed to be in self-isolation.

We have a responsibility to provide regular programming and regular lessons as much as possible to those students, just as we would if they were sick or if they were absent for any other purpose at any other time. If a student is absent from school for sickness, we have a responsibility to provide them with a learning program. We have taken the call, as certainly we believe is our responsibility, in the circumstances where a student has been instructed by SA public health officials to be in self-isolation.

There is then this second category of students who are absent without the instruction to self-isolate. Those students have had their parents take responsibility for their learning. The difference is that those parents have taken responsibility for their learning by not sending them to school. That is the expectation, and it is one where we have encouraged them to contemplate that, in the absence of broader school closures, the expectation might be for some time.

It is very difficult for a school to offer learning to a student who is in the classroom, a student who has been instructed to self-isolate and students who have further been withdrawn from the school by their parents. We expect it of the school in relation to those who have self-isolated, and Unley High has a particularly large cohort of those students. The absences vary from the majority of students in some schools being withdrawn from the school to other schools where—I haven't had an update today, to my knowledge, but certainly yesterday—the overwhelming majority of their students are still at school. It varies around the state.

But in any circumstance the category where a parent has taken it upon themselves in these unusual and extraordinary circumstances to educate at home is one where we will indeed provide departmental support. That is the website and the online materials that I have identified, which are but days away from being launched. Indeed, I believe that we are looking at significantly road testing some of those resources with a number of our principals and other educators this afternoon while we sit in this parliament. Because, of course, that resource will also be available, should there be widespread closures, for schools to adapt if their own school methodologies aren't at the state of perhaps Unley High's, for example.

That resource will be available for parents, as is a range of home education resources, but it is not the school's responsibility to support those students alongside the students in the classroom, as it is for those who are in self-isolation at the instruction of public health officials. I hope that clarifies the situation and I am happy to provide any other information the member wants.