House of Assembly Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1) 55 1 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER House of Assembly Morialta Deputy Leader of the Opposition Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:30): My question is to the Minister for Education. How will the government respond in practice to recommendation 22 of the royal commission? With your leave sir, and that of the house, I will explain. Leave granted. The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER House of Assembly Morialta Deputy Leader of the Opposition The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Recommendation 22 is to establish an early childhood workforce fund to increase supply of early childhood staff. The commission notes that a three-year-old preschool will require 606 extra teachers in government and non-government settings and nearly 1,000 extra other qualified staff on top of current shortfalls and vacancies. While the government has announced it has accepted this recommendation, it is unclear how the fund will generate the 2,000 extra staff required by 2026. The Hon. B.I. BOYER House of Assembly Wright Minister for Education, Training and Skills The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:31): I thank the member for Morialta again for his question on the royal commission. His question does go to the heart of one of the areas of the rollout of three-year-old preschool that will be the most challenging for government; we know that. There is a huge workforce component to delivering three-year-old preschool, and that includes, as the member for Morialta correctly identified, an extra 660 early childhood teachers, an extra 880 early childhood workers and an extra 120 additional staff, which will in some cases be preschool directors. In specific response to the member's question in regard to the workforce fund and how we are planning on actually rolling that out, the first commitment that we have made towards getting that started is $500,000 of initial funding to create a sector-wide workforce strategy, which I know is going to be— The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting: The Hon. B.I. BOYER House of Assembly Wright Minister for Education, Training and Skills The Hon. B.I. BOYER: The member for Morialta says that won't be enough. I am not here saying that is all we are going to provide, but we obviously need to start these things very quickly and that's what we are doing. I think as I said in my answer to the member for Morialta's very first question this afternoon, we know that huge reforms like this have challenges and can be hard. So often the things in government and public policy that deliver the biggest change and most meaningful change to people's lives are hard and not easy; if they were easy, they would have been done already. What government can look at the data that we are surrounded by now—around a national average of 22 per cent developmental vulnerability and South Australia at 23.8 and, over the last number of years, heading in the wrong direction—and then on the other hand see all the data that exists now, which has grown and grown and grown year in year out, that shows the difference that an extra year before school could make? What government turns away and says, 'It's too hard'? What government puts it in the too-hard basket and doesn't take action? The member for Morialta is right: there are challenges here. He has identified some of those, but in terms of the workforce strategy in particular I understand that one of the recommendations is to have a coordinator-general which is something we will be doing as well, someone to coordinate all that work around making sure we can deliver on the workforce that we need. The $500,000 of initial funding to create that sector workforce strategy is just the first step. I would also point out—because the question from the member for Morialta really goes to those workforce challenges—that we haven't waited until Sunday, when we publicly released the royal commission report, to start the work on recruiting the workforce that we need. Some of the election commitments that the Premier and Deputy Premier made and designed out of opposition go to the very heart of what we are going to need to create and attract that extra 660 and 880 staff. It includes things like returning early childhood education and care to the metropolitan TAFE campuses, which had been stopped by those opposite when they were in government. I know that the uptake in those courses has been very, very popular. The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting: The Speaker House of Assembly The SPEAKER: Order! The minister has the call. The Hon. B.I. BOYER House of Assembly Wright Minister for Education, Training and Skills The Hon. B.I. BOYER: In addition to that, we secured fee-free TAFE very early. Within about eight or nine months of coming to government, we struck a one-year agreement with the federal skills minister, Brendan O'Connor, for twelve and a half thousand fee-free places; ten and half thousand of those were for TAFE. Early childhood education and care, of course, were included in that as well and they have also been popular. We have basically already expended all those twelve and a half thousand fee-free places, such was the uptake of them, and on top of that there are the five technical colleges that we are building around the state. The first opened in Findon—and I know the member for Cheltenham is very excited about it—with three streams, with one of those streams early childhood education and care.