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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-03-24 Daily Xml
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Unley High School

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:30): My question is to the Premier. Given the government's advice that it is safer to keep schools open, why not keep Unley High School open alongside the online learning platform?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (14:31): I thank the member for the question. In addition to the range of reasons, which I believe I have provided in a fair manner over the last four minutes, I would also say that it's useful for Unley High to provide this demonstration of some of the challenges. I know that in the independent sector a number of schools did some trial days last week of what an at-home learning methodology would look like.

We've got a system with 900 schools and preschools. There are 178,000 students in the public school system. About 1,200 of them are at Unley and, of that, about 10 per cent are currently in isolation as a result of being contact traced by SA Health. The challenges at Unley High, and the fact that they are ready to go, I think is actually very useful. For our system to be able to observe how they go, and the challenges that they come across, in addition to those already done, will inform the response available to the rest of our system.

We have had significant work done across the education system in recent weeks, and I'm really hoping that in the next day or two we will be putting parents in a position to receive further resources, not just prepared by the education department but also by education departments working collaboratively around Australia and worked through the South Australian education department that will support students working at home. In addition to that, there are some schools like Unley High that are more ready to go than others and are able to provide continuity of learning in that home environment.

At Unley High, it was the sensible decision given their unique circumstances, given the particularly high number of students who were forced into isolation for whom we have to provide that model of learning alongside those in the classroom, which is extraordinarily difficult for a teacher to do—two types of instruction at the same time with a reduced teaching cohort, and 10 per cent of the teachers are also in self-isolation. It was the sensible thing for Unley High. It is also a useful thing for the whole system in public education in South Australia and it's a useful thing for our other schools, and that is why we absolutely support this direction.

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