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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Education System

Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:04): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Why won't the minister fund grade 7 classrooms to meet higher teacher-student ratios like other states do as they teach their grade 7s in high school?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (15:04): The debate about where year 7 fits, that we have had several times here, is really divided into two sections, I think. One is a pedagogic question of whether year 7s are better taught in the—

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned for the second and final time.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —in the secondary sector or the primary and where that works for pedagogy. Where we have settled for the present is that there appears to be no evidence of an advantage of moving year 7 into high school wholesale and, therefore, we have the kind of system that enables parental choice where we have separate primary schools and secondary schools and we also have a large number of schools where, because they go from either birth or reception to year 12, a middle school that reaches down to year 7 or even year 6 is possible.

The second side of the argument, though, about year 7 is the way in which it is funded, and the funding model that the feds have developed is such that they choose to fund our year 7s at the primary school rate rather than the high school rate despite the fact that there is a single curriculum and despite the fact that several of our students are indeed sitting effectively in a high school by being in a reception to year 12 school. So, I have undertaken that I will raise that with minister Pyne as part of our ministerial council meeting in a couple of weeks' time and talk through the best way to do that. But I would point out that the funding differential is minute in comparison to the money that we are missing out because of the lack of commitment to Gonski's year 5 and 6 which is $335 million, and we have the federal budget this afternoon, and I am hopeful that that will have been resolved.

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