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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-06-05 Daily Xml
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TEACHERS

Mr GOLDSWORTHY (Kavel) (14:29): Will the Minister for Education and Children's Services advise how she will provide teachers for the Nairne Primary School given her recognition that the school is experiencing significant student growth? I received a letter from the minister recently stating that a feasibility study for future capital works will be undertaken at Nairne Primary School in order to accommodate student growth. Yesterday it was revealed in a study completed by the University of Adelaide that the state needs 2,500 additional teachers over the next four years to stem a major skills shortage.

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH (Adelaide—Minister for Education and Children's Services, Minister for Tourism, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (14:30): I thank the member for his question. I think that he is condensing two ideas into one question. Nairne Primary School, I am sure, will be easy to staff because, in reality, it is an attractive, well-run public school, which is particularly attractive to teachers, both with experience and recently qualified in their career.

Having said that, I think that the issues around recruitment of teachers are not as terrifying as the article purported them to be. For instance, to put this matter into perspective, we have 36,000 registered teachers in South Australia, and little more than 20,000 of them are actually teaching. Some of those, of course, are women who have intentions of returning to the workforce at some time into the future.

Also to put it into context, this year alone we appointed 3,000 qualified teachers to vacancies within schools and started the academic year with 3,000 newly appointed teachers, and I think we only had 10 vacancies, from memory, which, in itself, is an extraordinary achievement. The way to recruit teachers is to recognise that one has to understand the demographics of the workforce, to recognise the qualification rate of those coming out of university and to find ways of matching that with available jobs.

To explain that: managing a workforce of over 20,000, as DECS has, takes a significant amount of input on a variety of levels. It is about recruiting young teachers before they finish their courses; it is about placing them in appropriate locations and recognising forward need. We do not actually have a shortage of teachers. In all reality, with 36,000 teachers, we do not have a shortage of teachers. What we have is a mismatch between available locations that they wish to work in and a mismatch in training, because we recognise that we do have a shortage in some specialist areas, and those specialist areas are—

An honourable member: Languages.

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: —languages, mathematics, physics and chemistry. In fact, it is pretty concerning around the world that there is a shortage of maths and physics teachers and, in fact, I am shocked by the statistics that come out of Great Britain that show the very low percentage of teachers of physics who have physics degrees, and I think that there is a worldwide crisis. But I have no fear about the South Australian workforce because I understand that the number of available teachers is in balance with the jobs on offer. The most critical point, though, is to plan for the training of teachers, to recognise that employment requires a balance of recruitment and retention, retraining, upskilling and, in fact, to recognise the value of teachers.

I know that the previous federal government made an art form out of denigrating, demeaning and attacking teachers, and that is something that we would never condone, because we recognise their enormous value to our community and our children. Teachers should never be attacked, as they have been by the previous government, as a way of blaming them for every ill in society. But the studies we have embarked upon with the University of Adelaide have, in fact, reflected my concern that there is not an overall shortage of teachers. It is a specialist-by-specialist problem that we need to address into the future.

The reason we are actually being very analytical about looking at the workforce is that we want to have a reflection of the available jobs within the university training programs, because it would be misleading to have a massive recruitment of students to acquire a HECS bill and a degree if there were not available jobs in the future. The shortages do not seem to be true of junior primary and primary teachers, but we do know that the shortages into the future will be in specialist training courses. That is why we are working with the university sector to gear forward enrolments to match the forward job opportunities. I think that is a very responsible thing to do.

In the short term, I explain to the member for Kavel that, in fact, there is no shortage of primary and junior primary teachers, and Nairne Primary School has no fears because not only do we have a government that believes in public education and is prepared to invest in it, but we know that there are very good teachers to work in that community.

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