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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-04-07 Daily Xml
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SCHOOL SERVICES OFFICERS

Mrs GERAGHTY (Torrens) (14:55): My question is to the Minister for Education. What is the government doing to address job security concerns of the school support officers and early childhood workers, whose work is so important in our schools?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Education, Minister for Early Childhood Development, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (14:56): I thank the honourable member for her question. As you might be well aware, a month ago I released a draft policy which was about addressing the question of teacher recruitment in our public schools, a key feature of which was the creation of more permanent jobs. In the meantime, we have also been working quietly away on the question of school service officers (SSOs) and about providing them greater job security in our schools. SSOs are the unsung heroes of our schools; whether they are supporting classes through handling parent enquiries, providing office and finance assistance, ICT support, or working with some of less able students to assist them to learn, or the early education workers, they are all vital for the work of our preschools and our schools. Every member here knows how dependant schools and preschools are on these fantastic workers.

Many of our more than 6,000 SSOs and early childhood workers have tenuous employment security, and are employed only on a term-by-term or year-by-year basis. So, over the last few months, we have been going through a conversion process that has seen about 800 temporary SSOs and early childhood workers given permanent jobs. These are people who have been working at school, on contracts for 15 hours a week or more, for two years or more. Many, indeed, have been working longer hours and for longer periods, yet without the security of knowing whether they will have a job from year to year or term to term.

I am pleased to say that we have been able to repay some of the support that they have been giving our schools and preschools and, of course, the obvious benefit is that they can now have the security to plan their financial futures, including the sorts of things that financial institutions expect when people are seeking loans.

Of course, there are many other long-term SSOs who, despite their long service, have not met the particular criteria that was established for the conversion process, and we accept that there might be some anomalies. They may have worked for more than 15 hours a week for all but a few weeks, for instance, or they may have worked casually for a period. Therefore, we have initiated a review process so that other long-term SSOs, with the support of their school, can be made permanent in the school, even if they don't quite meet the eligibility criteria that were originally established for the conversion process.

This comes on top of some significant investments in the recent budget to provide more SSOs in our schools. We have injected an extra $12 million into our school budgets to provide particular support for those SSOs that assist schools with their ICT needs. This, of course, is becoming a much bigger issue, with all the whiteboards and the new computers in schools, so that was a pressure. It was one of the early things that principals said to me, and we were very keen to respond to that so that we could, not only meet that need, but also respond quickly to something that was really causing an enormous amount of distraction, if you like, for principals, away from the job of them being the educational leaders.

We are also ensuring that each special class—once again, a budget measure—whether taught in a special school, special unit or special class within a school, has at least one SSO, so that has lead to the employment of additional SSOs. We are recognising now the whole-of-school workforce. We are giving principals greater flexibility on how they allocate funding, now giving them a greater say in the selection of teachers. We are putting more teachers in schools, providing the opportunity for temporary teachers to get permanent jobs, and now giving long-term SSOs and early childhood workers greater employment security. We are investing in education in a dramatic way to ensure that we can meet the needs of every single child seeking an education in the South Australian education system.

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