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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-03-24 Daily Xml
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SCHOOL OF THE AIR

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (15:21): Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about a topic that is an Australian icon and one that you also, as the member for Giles, will be familiar with, that is, the School of the Air. The School of the Air, for many years, has provided distance education to those students and children who live in the remote and pastoral areas of this state and also some of the more distant agricultural areas. It has achieved iconic status and has been ably supported in recent years by the tireless work of the Isolated Children's Parents Association of Australia (often referred to as the ICPA). Generally, they are parents of children, both present and past, who work tirelessly, as I said, to support their children and the efforts made to get good quality education to remote areas.

I must stress today the importance of educational opportunities for students who are not able to attend mainstream schools due to distance practicalities. Equal opportunity is a term that is often bandied about but, in this instance, it is critically important that isolated students receive equal opportunity for education. In fact, in Australia in the 21st century it is considered a basic right to have good quality education.

In recent years the School of the Air has moved from a wireless communication system to the internet. It has become a virtual classroom and therefore the importance of modern technology to these students is paramount. The Centra program is used to provide this service. It is a virtual classroom that gives a wonderful interactive forum for distance learning. It is for remote and isolated students accessing School of the Air lessons. This virtual classroom offers audio, video, data sharing and online interaction which enables students to actively participate and interact with their teacher and classmates, despite the distance barrier.

However, there are significant problems with unreliable telecommunication technologies and also extraordinarily high prices for internet services for these isolated properties. School of the Air families are having difficulties with unreliable internet connection dropping out at the most inopportune times. Often children have to sit on the sidelines and sometimes elect just to listen to the teacher and the class without contributing because to speak may cause the system to drop out and, by the time the reconnection has taken place, the lesson is nearly over. That is hardly adequate.

There are not just isolated cases of this. In fact, many of the 40 families accessing School of the Air lessons have experienced some form of connectivity issues. There appears to be a grey area when ascertaining the reason for the multiple internet dropouts. Sometimes it is internet connection and, in more recent times, the Centra program has come into question. Centra is the program used by the School of the Air and also UniSA to deliver open access. Even within the city of Adelaide and UniSA some difficulties with access to technology have occurred. There is a program used in the Northern Territory known as REACT, which appears to be meeting all the requirements of open access education and also has the technological consistency that is required.

This is a cause of much frustration for parents and students and I ask today what the Minister for Education has done to address the concerns of the Isolated Children's Parents' Association, because time and time again they have asked the minister to resolve this issue, and even up to this year, the very latest information I have is that there is no improvement in the current situation.

It is clear to me that the minister and his department must try to fix this problem so that all South Australian students receive the education that they deserve. In fact, in this house on this very day (today) the Minister for Education stated that it was his commitment to provide a quality education to every child in this state. I ask the minister to consider those children who are accessing, under isolated circumstances, School of the Air technology, because it is not working at the moment and it is the cause of much frustration and disappointment.

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