Question Time

Early Childhood Workforce

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:14): We welcome Her Excellency. All the journalists are in the budget lock-up, so that may affect things a little bit. My question is to the Premier, or the minister if they prefer. What specific measures and practical actions will be delivered by the government's $96 million funding announcement to grow the early childhood workforce? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: The only measure announced in the press release within which the $96 million announcement was contained was extra support for the Education Standards Board to increase the frequencies of assessments and ratings. Earlier in question time the minister referred also to the $56 million fund that is in the department. The department's website identifies only that initiatives will support attraction, qualification pathways, retention and quality, but gives no detail at all about what measures or initiatives will be funded out of this large amount of money.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:15): I thank the member for Morialta for his question, and a fair question it is too. We will be announcing more things very soon around the specifics of what will come out of that bucket of money that the deputy leader just referred to, the $96 million. There are going to be a lot of things, obviously, that we have to look at.

We are, of course, in an environment at the moment where other jurisdictions—Victoria is one that springs to mind, and others as well—have been offering some pretty significant incentives, financial incentives, to attract people across the border. I think, fortunately, we haven't been in a position where we have lost many of those from South Australia, but we will look at whether or not we need to do something like that as well to make sure that we can not just preserve our own workforce and grow the local workforce, which is what we have been focused on, but also potentially offer incentives for other early childhood teachers and workers who might want to actually come across to our state, to South Australia, and be part of what is a historic rollout—and in pretty quick time as well.

There has been some discussion in this place, and certainly nationally, about scholarships. We are trying to encourage people to potentially change career or take up a new career not long out of high school in an environment where cost of living is really front of mind for people. We still have systems in place, including in education and the early years, where the people who have sought to take up a course there have to undertake placements, often for quite considerable periods of time throughout the year. They are unpaid placements as well.

In addition to that, we are seeking people to potentially pay their way through their course, whether it is HECS or whatever it might be. In terms of early childhood workers, the Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care has been and remains on the fee-free TAFE list, which of course helps with that, but I think we will need to consider what we do also around potentially looking at scholarships to cover course costs.

I don't think it is reasonable for us to expect that someone might be a more mature-aged worker—possibly with a family, with a mortgage—and we are asking them to go and get the qualifications they need to move career and work in an early childhood setting on three-year-old preschool but potentially take a pay cut, potentially do unpaid placements and potentially find the money to pay for a course up-front or pay the HECS debt later on.

So out of that $96 million dollar fund—and, as I said, we will be making more specific announcements very soon around where that goes—there will be things like that that I think we have to consider to try to offer incentives for staff to stay, potentially offer incentives for those from outside of South Australia who might like to come to our state and be a part of it, but also offer what essentially is cost-of-living relief in some ways to bridge that gap in terms of what they need to spend to get the qualification they need to change career, and trying to assist those, too, who are trying to meet mortgage payments and all the usual family expenses while being asked to potentially go out and do unpaid placements.

It won't be long before I am able to give this place and the member for Morialta more specifics. The instructions that Kim Little, the chief executive, was given by cabinet were to make sure that a broad range of potential initiatives are considered, to do whatever we can to make sure we keep our existing workforce and build it, and that we meet those targets put in place by Julia Gillard in her report.