Coronavirus

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (15:04): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister update the house on how the Marshall Liberal government is supporting the continuity of learning across the South Australian education system in response to COVID-19?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (15:04): I thank the member for Newland for the question. There is a range of measures that we have already discussed today, and there are a range of further measures which I am sure that members of the house would be interested in, particularly as we support our teaching and education workforce, not just in our schools but also in our early childhood settings, and in our preschools in particular as part of that.

Throughout the challenges particularly confronting teachers, schools, preschools and early childhood settings in the last week and a half or so, one of the most front of mind has been in relation to the cleaning of sites and the provision of hygiene products. Part of the opportunity we have had over the last month is to enhance the offering in relation to hygiene, the teaching of hygiene and the teaching of social distancing within our sites, but particularly hygiene.

We have 900 public education sites in South Australia with 30,000 staff. The breadth of challenge is different in each of those sites. The 900 sites—500 schools and 400 early education and preschools sites—have, until now, been largely responsible for managing their own issue of products. That has been confronted with some behaviours in the community and issues in the supply chain that are unprecedented in South Australia. That is why, either at the beginning of last week or a little before then, we made the decision that we would be working centrally to meet that need.

Last Friday, the first of a series of very substantial orders for things like hand sanitiser, soap, toilet paper, tissues and other hygiene products arrived in our distribution centre, which I visited this morning and had the privilege of talking to the staff who have been working with schools to meet their needs. We have taken more than 20 people off line from other tasks within the education department to reach out proactively to schools—as of today, yesterday and in recent times successively more and more people—because what we encountered was that, despite the fact we were asking schools to contact us with their needs, we had about 13 sites that actually did run out of product, so that at some stage yesterday and maybe even a couple on Friday were without the products that they needed.

I understand all those schools now have what they need as a result of the orders that came in on Friday and yesterday, and that have been distributed on Friday, yesterday and today. We want to be proactive, so that in the current arrangement with schools being open, offering programs as normal, potentially to lower numbers of students with social distancing in place or arrangements such as Unley High School is moving to tomorrow, and a contingency for others, we need to ensure that those schools have the highest level of hygiene, that all these products are there and that cleaning contracts are ramped up.

That's why we have put millions of dollars extra into enhanced cleaning contracts at all our sites, and people will see that at the sites. In fact, it has already started. That's why we are taking over central distribution and the supply of those hygiene products. I know that those hygiene products have been substantially welcomed and will reduce anxiety for some of the leaders and business managers who have been dealing with this over the last few weeks.