Community Language Schools

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (14:55): My question is to the Minister for Multicultural Affairs. Can the minister advise the house how the government is strengthening connections between young South Australians and their cultural heritage?

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:55): I thank the member for Light for his question. Can I thank him for often repping me when needed for many, many years to go out to multicultural functions. This Saturday 18 May marks National Community Language Schools Day. Just to remind ourselves, community languages are open to students from all linguistic backgrounds outside of school hours. They are a safe space for our future leaders to engage with language and culture to maintain their cultural connections with their community and their family. Currently, we have 91 fully accredited teaching schools teaching 47 different languages to 8,389 students. I suspect some of the students, who are our guests today, may attend those community language schools often held on weekends.

National Community Language Schools Day commemorates the role that these schools play in social cohesion, bridging identities and keeping language, culture and tradition alive. The Malinauskas government shares this sentiment, which is why, upon coming to government, we committed to investing an additional $4 million over four years to better support community language schools in South Australia. Can I acknowledge the tremendous support from the Minister for Education, who has been supporting these schools and continues to do so. It has added an additional funding with a multicultural lens, that we build the ecosystem around community language schools and support them to grow, develop and have strong governance within the protocols that they follow.

We have become quite a good example to both our state and territory counterparts. In fact, we held a national community language schools forum here, I think it was last year, and they were really thrilled to see some of the changes that we have been making. I want to put on the record my appreciation to Brett Shuttleworth. He is the Community Language Schools South Australia lead, and has shown great leadership and collaboration in this space.

Last year, with this additional investment, we strengthened governance and compliance and increased need-based funding. We are also supporting additional staff and personal development training for these school leaders while also topping up the funding to our host schools. I should point out that many of the people that are leaders in these community language schools are volunteers. They do it because they are very dedicated to continuing to keep their language, their culture and traditions alive and share them with the children and grandchildren of our migrant communities.

We are also supporting additional staff and personal development training. While we have been supporting these new priorities, we have also been looking at the future. We know if you speak more than one language your brain works more quickly, and particularly if you learn that second or third language when you are younger it's a great building block for you. We are looking at the provision of vocational and SACE pathways for secondary students who study a language at our community language schools. We often see a drop-off when kids start high school. They are not as interested in going to the Saturday classes, so we are trying to show them the pathways to do it through SACE and vocational.

I am very proud of the establishment and maintenance of community language learning hubs. We have one at Regency Park TAFE, Salisbury TAFE, and I am about to officially open one this weekend at Torrens University. These hubs enable four or five schools to come together. The volunteers support each other and they are able to learn together and build the continuance and governance and support of the capacity-building of these different schools. We are also developing a digital language learning hub for online learning and teaching resources.