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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-05-14 Daily Xml
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Bills

Teachers Registration and Standards (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 4 March2020.)

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:00): I indicate that I am the lead speaker for the opposition and that, notwithstanding a series of questions and some amendments, we are broadly supportive of this piece of legislation. The Teachers Registration Board is an essential instrument for government to consider the management of a very important profession in our state. It will be of some concern to teachers to understand that, through what is otherwise generally a welcome modernisation of this piece of legislation, their own profession is being downgraded in importance and representation on this board. My colleague the member for Wright will have more to say on that matter.

As I say, we are generally supportive of this piece of legislation on the basis that it is essential that we continue to ensure that legislation and the operation of government boards are as modern and as agile as possible. I also put on the record my faith in and support of the chair of the board, a former education minister and former member of this house Jane Lomax-Smith; and also the Registrar of the Teachers Registration Board. That said, it is essential that we do this job well.

You get the opportunity to refresh and renew an approach with a government board but once every several years, if not decades, and the opposition does have concerns about some of the features of this bill. As I signalled, some amendments have been filed on those matters. Beyond that, there is also a series of questions that we will be asking. As I have alluded to, one area of questioning is the membership of the board.

Under the construction of the government's bill, the proportion of teachers on that board would be reduced. The profession of teachers is being monitored and supported, and standards are being established. Indeed, the registration of their professionalism is managed. In many teachers' eyes, they are being reduced in proportion; therefore, we will be wanting to address their importance in this government's eyes.

We will also be addressing the way in which the teachers are selected to the board. The government expressed the view in a previous piece of legislation that went through last year—the Education Act—that unions have no place in the selection of professionals on committees and boards that this government is involved with. Last year, they attempted to remove the provision for the Australian Education Union to select teachers to be involved in public school committees that related to their business. That was altered in the upper house and the minister graciously accepted the position, and the union's role has been untroubled this term thus far.

However, now the government has come back again and is attempting to remove the union's capacity—and in this case both the public school and private school unions' capacity—to nominate the teachers who will be on this board. As we will discuss when we come to the amendments on this, that is not only wrong if you care about workers' rights and the capacity for workers to operate collectively—as does the Labor Party—but also wrong in practical and logistical terms. I think it is short-sighted.

One of the reasons it is important to have the unions involved in selecting teachers is that that is the way in which teachers are able to have some equal voice at the table. Bearing in mind that the government already wants to reduce their proportion, to also reduce their link to the collective that is represented by the union means that they are unable to easily and directly communicate with their colleagues about the work that is occurring in the board and unable to hear through that process what their colleagues want. They are also unable to have the heft that is brought by a collective organisation that represents a high proportion of their colleagues.

If, particularly in the circumstances of being in a reduced proportion, they are feeling that they are losing an argument on behalf of their colleagues on what they believe to be right about the way in which teacher registrations ought to be managed, or indeed the accreditation of university courses for teacher training ought to be managed, without the heft of the institutions of the unions behind them, their voice risks being diminished. I think that is a material weakening of the possible way in which this board could operate well.

The other logistical issue associated with it from the government's perspective is it is often better to have people in the tent than out. If you do not have the unions effectively engaged in the Teachers Registration Board through the invitation to nominate the teacher component of the membership, then you do not have the unions engaged productively and constructively with what the board is doing.

What you risk is that the unions, feeling disconnected from the activity of the Teachers Registration Board, might decide that what is occurring is not to their liking, and that may cause unnecessary conflict in a profession that is one of the most important we have in this country. On an ideological—and I use that term unashamedly; I am a progressive person who believes in the collective action of workers—and on a practical basis, it would be best if the government had the opportunity to rethink this, and that is what the amendments will go to.

The membership of the board has also been reduced from the perspective of the universities. Under the current act, the three universities are invited to have a person selected to be on the board, and someone from the perspective of the different sectors of education, the private schools and the public schools. My amendments will seek to restore those positions, again on the basis that the more the people or the institutions affected by the decisions of the board are engaged constructively with the considerations of the board, the more likely it is that those considerations will be sensible, well informed and useful and not have pushback that might occur if those institutions were disconnected.

I say that nonetheless accepting the argument that has been put both by the government and by the chair of the board very forcefully and clearly, that the current size of 16 is a little large to manage easily. I am sympathetic to that, and my amendments do not trouble the desire of the government to reduce the overall size of the board. We will get to the details when we come to the committee stage.

We will have some questions on the fees that will be charged, the capacity for the government to charge those fees and how we can make sure that they are fair and reasonable. We will have some questions about the code of conduct clause. This is a new clause in the bill that suggests that the board may choose to establish a code of conduct for teachers. While I have no objection to the principle of a code of conduct for teachers, I want to know that it is the most useful and positive code of conduct that can be brought in. In my mind, that requires very decent and thorough consultation.

I do not suggest that that is not in the mind of the current minister, but, as always, it is important not only to consider the individual currently holding the position but to consider the possible future holders of the position and capture what is important to us as a legislature in the legislation so that we can be confident that the correct approach—and in this case the consultative approach—will be adopted in the future. I hope that the government will consider those amendments carefully.

We will have questions about the capacity to second people onto subcommittees. That currently cannot occur. Subcommittees are committees of the board and of the board members. I am not at this stage concerned about having an amendment to prevent that. I understand the desire for secondment can be a very useful instrument, but we will be asking questions and that may mean that there will be some further consideration of amendments between the houses, depending on the nature of the answers.

I signal that I will be asking questions about the capacity of the registrar, which has been introduced in this piece of legislation, to suspend the registration of a teacher if it is considered that that teacher may be of risk to children. While I think we can all understand the purpose of such a provision is extremely well intentioned, there will be questions about the way in which that operates from the perspective of teachers, parents and students, who may have complaints to make or concerns to raise, and also from the perspective of the registrar, who may need some comfort that their judgement is the one that is the best that could possibly be applied.

My intention is to work constructively on this piece of legislation. I am aware that it has been on its way since the time I was minister, when Jane Lomax-Smith as the chair indicated she felt there was some room for improvement. I look forward to the committee stage and going through some of the details that I have raised, and also having my colleague the member for Wright, as assistant shadow minister, do a significant amount of the questioning and consideration of the intent of the bill and the timing of the bill (which I think is questionable) and the purpose.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (12:11): I also rise to speak to this bill and use this opportunity to talk about some of the brilliant teachers and principals in my electorate who do such fantastic work. They are often our unsung heroes. Yesterday in this house, the Minister for Education may have said that after a number of weeks of parents schooling children at home, we all have a much greater appreciation of the work our teachers do. For my part, and for my seven-year-old, Ruby, at home, the work that her teachers have done through this coronavirus pandemic has been outstanding, and the way that our school has helped to continue to make sure she can learn is phenomenal. Now she is happily back at school, and it is a fantastic outcome, having worked through what has been a difficult period.

As do all MPs, I have many opportunities to visit and talk with students and their teachers, and perhaps one of my favourite parts of this job is showing them through parliament. When I show them through parliament, I essentially try to instil in them a curiosity to look at our world and what needs to be changed in it. The function of parliament is essentially to improve the laws of our land to make our people happier, more prosperous and more free, and students should be thinking about those things in the world that they see around them.

I also try to instil in them a respect for the system of government we have, and that this democratic institution that we get to work in, with all its checks and balances, is the greatest bulwark against dictatorship and tyranny that the world has ever known. We need to respect that and we need to believe in it lest we lose it, especially as we see people's faith in parliamentary institutions is waning. We need to do more to try to re-instil that faith.

I recently conducted a school tour for Redeemer Lutheran School. Year 6 teachers, Tennyson Jaensch and Maddi Beckmann, have brought their classes through for a few years, and the students from Redeemer, with their own school parliament, are inquisitive and knowledgeable. When we sit and have a debate, especially in the other chamber, about the checks and balances on government not having the freewill to push legislation through parliament unchecked and what that can lead to, and what a destruction of these democratic institutions leads to—that is, dictatorships—I always find that discussion very reinvigorating.

I have also had the opportunity to have the Mount Pleasant Primary School years 5, 6 and 7 students through, including Jan Riley and a fantastic group of kids, and all credit to Ms Riley for her work; Tanunda Primary School, which I will talk a little bit more about later, and the students who came across; Angaston Primary School, my home town, and Mrs Schutz, who brought her kids along; as well as very recently St Jakobi's year 6 students and Ms Sioux Moresi, who is also a PE teacher at my daughter's school. It was fantastic to have her and her students from St Jakobi through. It was a refreshing and enlightening experience to chat to some young people about how they view the world and their own place in it.

I have also had a great opportunity to visit a number of schools in the electorate. From the little schools, like Keyneton Primary School and Raelene Adler, who has to teach a 4/5/6/7 class. It is a challenge to teach kids across four different year levels. The kids there took the opportunity to pitch some projects to me that they would like to see funded, including the resealing and course correction of a number of the roads in and around Keyneton, heading towards some of the farming properties, as well as discussion about some of the broader roles of my job. It was an exciting morning to visit and one I certainly enjoyed.

I went down to Mr Quast and his 4/5 class at Lyndoch Primary School. James is a Hawthorn fan and there is too much Hawthorn memorabilia in the school classroom, but we will forgive him for that because on the back wall he had photographs of former Australian prime ministers. He talked about what each of their legacies were, and his curiosity that inspires the children's curiosity to investigate former leaders of our country I think is extremely noble. The discussion we had that day was quite enlightening, with the students showing me the work they were doing on computers. He brings a fantastic energy and he needs to be thanked for that.

At least a couple of times a year I visit the year 8 classes at Faith Lutheran High School. Ms Schwarz, who teaches the civics and citizenship class, gets her students to write to me with an area of concern as any constituent would, and we provide a response to those students. The concerns are always varied, often with a very strong social justice or environmental focus. We do our best to respond to each of them in turn and point them in a direction where they can seek further information. It is always a great lesson in understanding the world in which we live.

I know that this is going to be upsetting for Carla, but I must say that the last two times we have been there we played a multiple choice game with all the kids using a platform called Kahoot! It is a multiple choice answer platform, and you get more points for answering quickly and, obviously, answering correctly. All the students can use their mobile phones and we undertake this together. I reckon I have done this seven or eight times and I have always been beaten, except for the last two times, when I have been able to come out on top. I know that Carla is a bit frustrated and she probably needs to lift her game. Also, I always find the talent and knowledge of the students so impressive, and they are a real credit to Michelle Schwarz and the other teachers in that civics and citizenship program.

I also had the chance, with the Minister for Education, to visit Tanunda Primary School and principal Michelle Barnes to talk about what high-speed internet means for them. We also talked to some of their students about how they will use that high-speed internet on a practical basis. Again, what the kids today are learning in terms of design programs, coding and all those sorts of things is light years ahead of what I learned when I was at high school. I say that as one of the younger members of this place, but that was already over 20 years ago. What our children are learning today will stand them in such good stead for the jobs that are out there to come.

I also had the opportunity to go to Greenock Primary School for their 140th anniversary and, with former principal Viv Wright, take a guided school tour through there. Again, looking at the history of that school—and such a proud history for a small town—was fantastic. The only public high school in my district is Nuriootpa High School. I am now on my second principal, Gerri Walker. Former principal Neil White has gone on to be an area director within the Department for Education. Both of them have been outstanding principals and have taken a school that I think at times had a difficult reputation but is now bursting at the seams with 1,100 kids.

The course selection on offer for these students is phenomenal and, again, well above anything I was able to undertake at high school. It gives students the opportunity to pursue their dreams and their areas of interest at such an early age, and it is a real credit to that institution, to Gerri and to all the teachers.

I have met many of the teachers—and I do not want to name them, otherwise I will miss a few—but I point out the safari suit wearing counsellor, Rick Lane, who fronts a local rock band called Colonel Mustard. Rick is a fantastic individual who inspires the students who come into his orbit and under his care. Unfortunately, we see too high a prevalence of mental health issues amongst our teenage cohort, but I think the work done by Rick and the other chaplains and support staff is phenomenal. If you ever get a chance to go into Rick's office, you will see the paraphernalia on his walls and find it is a safe space for students. I thank him for the amazing job the does.

I am also very excited to talk about the money that is on the table to upgrade Nuriootpa High School. Last year, I had the opportunity to open the STEM facility and see some of the work of the students there. Across the road, Nuriootpa Primary School is also undertaking a significant amount of works. Principal Jill Hess is doing a lot to transform a school that has an interesting history, which I have talked about in this place a number of times and do not necessarily need to repeat today.

I could talk about so many other teachers and schools across the electorate, whether it be the work of Anne Marschall and her staff at Good Shepherd Lutheran School, or my Lutheran high school, Faith Lutheran School, and principal Steve Wilksch, whom I first met when he was at Redeemer Lutheran School. Steve moved across to Faith, which was combined with Tanunda Lutheran to become a school across a couple of campuses. Steve is a fantastic educator and someone for whom I have a deep respect.

I am continually impressed by the students who run through that facility—their love of music and their religious education, and how that flows through to instil values in the students, and also the way that school works to help students to have respect for themselves and for those around them. It is always refreshing to visit and talk to them. We have been working with Julian Helbig at St Jakobi Lutheran School to improve the access and egress for vehicles. I had the opportunity to go down there and talk to him about a $40,000 digital accessibility grant that this government sent across.

Lastly, Trent Heneker, a groundsman at Nuriootpa High School, last year won the School and Preschool Support Award at the 2019 Public Education Awards. Trent is a great guy, and I know the whole school was extremely proud of his efforts. He is actually a former Nuriootpa High student, and a viticulturalist by trade, and the first groundsman in the state to win this award. His role has extended to work with the students in the Disability Unit on landscape projects, and he has created a young environmentalist group that helps him to care for and water the school gardens. Trent said:

I get an immense amount of gratification from being responsible for the grounds and construction of new projects—

and we certainly have a few of those for him—

but first and foremost it’s the engagement and positive interaction with staff and students.

I think Trent exemplifies a lot of what our public and private school teachers exemplify: a real passion for helping turn students into young adults. I want to thank Trent and all the teachers and principals in the Schubert electorate for their work. May they continue to do that.

As a government, we will certainly continue to support them in their work because we know that education can help our kids take that step forward. As we seek to grow and prosper our economy, we know that education is vitally important to helping us achieve that in the longer term.

Mr BOYER (Wright) (12:24): I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this bill and would like to begin by commending the member for Port Adelaide, the deputy leader, for her earlier remarks, acknowledging the very broad experience and knowledge she has on this topic as a previous minister for education in South Australia. I also thank her for the opportunity she has given me to be involved somewhat in crafting what the opposition's response to this bill will be. On the face of it, I think this bill appears to deal mostly with innocuous, non-sensitive and non-controversial kinds of matters but, when you dig a little bit deeper and look at the detail, the ramifications of what is proposed in this bill are actually quite significant and far-reaching for the teaching profession.

Before I move into that detail, I would like to preface my remarks by saying that I think the timing of this bill is very disappointing. I think it is very disappointing that mid-pandemic, when teachers have stayed in the classroom for months on end while other professions and other workers have been asked to work from home, this Liberal government has used the first sitting opportunity with all members of parliament back here in this place to push through legislation that will act to water down the representation of teachers on the board that registers those teachers—because that is what this bill is doing.

One may be forgiven for assuming that this government may have sought to repay in some way the loyalty and selflessness shown by those teachers over the past months by not taking the first opportunity available to it to come into this place and weaken the representation of teachers on the Teachers Registration Board whilst, I might add, simultaneously in this bill proposing some pretty significant and hefty powers for the registrar to suspend the registration of a teacher if he or she believes they are an unacceptable risk to children.

I should echo the words of the deputy leader and say, first, that I direct my comments towards the Minister for Education and his government and not the board itself, which I think has carried out a very important duty with great aplomb for many years. I know that that fantastic and very professional work has continued under the stewardship of the current chair of the board and former minister for education, Dr Jane Lomax-Smith, and the current registrar herself, Ms Leonie Paulson.

First of all, I would like to address the government's proposal to reduce the number of members of the board from 16 to between 10 and 14. The current act stipulates that the board will have seven registered teachers, five nominated by the Australian Education Union and two by the Independent Education Union. This bill will see that number reduced to just three practising teachers—one from a preschool, one from a primary school and one from a secondary school—potentially making up just one-fifth of the board's total membership.

In addition to that, the current composition of the board includes a nominee of the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia and a nominee from Catholic Education South Australia. Both these positions would be abolished under the government's proposal, as would the representative jointly nominated by the universities and the two members nominated by the Chief Executive of the Department for Education. In fact, the board composition that is proposed in this bill is the three practising teachers I mentioned earlier; a legal practitioner and a parent, both of whom are maintained from the current act; and five to nine members appointed by the minister, who:

…in the opinion of the Minister, collectively have the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to enable the Teachers Registration Board to carry out its functions effectively.

Let's call a spade a spade here. The intent of the government here is to leave the bulk of the appointments of this board up to the minister so that he or she is able effectively to stack the board with members who are going to do the government's bidding. That is the idea of having five to nine members solely chosen by the minister.

The point of having this legislation in the first place—indeed, I think the point of actually requiring the Minister for Education to come to this place and justify his or her changes—is so that the representation of key stakeholders cannot be unilaterally removed. Teachers deserve strong and experienced representation on the board that decides whether or not they are fit to teach our children and so, too, do the representative bodies from the Catholic and independent schooling sectors that are responsible for educating many South Australian students outside the public schooling system.

The removal of the AEU and the Independent Education Union is of course much easier to explain. This is just a continuation of an ideological battle that the Liberal Party in South Australia has been waging against the AEU, and unions generally, for decades and decades. Of course, they were not going to let the opportunity go to waste to come into this place and water down the rights of unions to represent workers.

I briefly mentioned earlier that this bill also proposes some pretty significant new powers for the registrar when it comes to deciding whether or not a teacher is fit to stay in a classroom. What I did not mention was that it also proposes to give the board the power to adopt codes of conduct and professional standards for teachers. On the face of it, I accept that may sound like a very sensible idea.

I am sure that there is a place for that, but I am confident that I speak for most teachers when I say that, if indeed it is to become the role of the Teachers Registration Board to devise and potentially enforce those codes of conduct, surely it is more important now than ever that on that board teachers are adequately represented. Surely now is the time that the Minister for Education should be coming into this place and either increasing that representation or making sure that it cannot be watered down.

The bill also proposes to extend the power of the registrar to suspend a teacher where the registrar, and I am quoting, 'reasonably suspects that the teacher poses an unacceptable risk to children'. Again, I accept that there are occasions, and there are some notorious ones we all know of, when this kind of power is necessary and a good thing to have, but I think it beggars belief that this government would seek to legislate such a far-reaching power that will have the capability of ending a teacher's tenure without actually providing any detail to the house about what the test might be or what recourse the accused teacher might have to appeal or challenge the finding. It is outrageous.

I know that the deputy leader, the member for Port Adelaide, has been working very diligently on some amendments that will seek to remedy some of the flaws I have mentioned in this bill. I will finish my remarks by reiterating that I think the timing here is really disappointing. Teachers, of whom we have collectively asked so much in recent months, would be forgiven for feeling insulted that the first act of this government, as we start to see an easing of restrictions and classroom numbers returning to some semblance of normality, is to take away the very strong representation they have had from unions and colleagues for many years and replace it instead with a procession of captain's picks who will be wielding nothing but rubber stamps.

Ms LUETHEN (King) (12:32): I rise to support the changes recommended by the Minister for Education to the Teachers Registration and Standards (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2020. This bill will amend the Teachers Registration and Standards Act 2004 to modify the size and composition of the Teachers Registration Board and expand its functions. It will support the implementation of relevant recommendations from national reviews related to teacher registration. It will improve oversight of the persons granted special authority to teach, and it will address various other technical and important operational issues that relate to children's safety in educational settings.

The education, safety and development of children and young people in our society is essential to our society being informed, productive and well functioning. The success of our society will in many ways depend on the quality of our teachers. This has been really highlighted in current times while navigating the coronavirus; as parents, many of us attempted to take on the teaching of our children at home and we were reminded of how difficult a task this can be.

In South Australia, we have the benefit of some of the most outstanding teachers, some outstanding leaders and some outstanding educational support staff, whose value to our community has always been important—again, potentially, never more appreciated than they have been over the last couple of months. Our South Australian teaching teams were able to professionally prepare for the possibility of necessary remote or online learning platforms at the end of term 1 and prepared for the opportunity to do that if necessary in term 2.

Then, as the public health advice became even more strongly and confidently reassured by our public health officers that schools were safe, the decision of the government to keep them open was wise, and indeed parents could be encouraged to send their children back to school in term 2. Our teaching and leadership staff then successfully transitioned children back to school, and we thank them. That is the way that teachers, and indeed all the school staff, have shown themselves at the fore of their professionalism and the importance of the work that they do.

The purpose of the Teachers Registration and Standards Act is to ensure that every teacher working in South Australia is appropriately qualified, that they are competent to teach, and that they are a fit and proper person to have the care of the children. This is so very important. The act establishes the board and provides it with the functions and powers it needs to administer and oversee the registration of more than 35,000 teachers in both government and non-government schools and preschools and early childhood services around South Australia.

Since the commencement of the act, there have been significant changes to the regulation of the teaching profession across Australia, including through the introduction of the National Framework for Teacher Registration and the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. In more recent years, the Education Council has commissioned substantial reviews into teacher education and registration, including a review of the preparation of student teachers by the higher education institutions in Australia undertaken in 2014, and the National Review of Teacher Registration undertaken in 2017.

The findings of these reviews supported the need for changes to the education and regulation of teachers across Australia to improve teacher quality, to strengthen child safety and to streamline the registration processes. In addition, the findings of both the Child Protection Systems Royal Commission here in South Australia and the national Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse have prompted significant reform of child protection here in South Australia, including substantial changes to the screening and oversight of registered teachers.

While these reforms have introduced increased child safety measures in respect of teachers, our Liberal government believes that more can be done to improve child safety and to respond to the outcomes of these royal commissions. Education and care settings are meant to be safe environments for everyone who attends them, and that is what people in my electorate want to hear—that we are making these care settings as safe as possible.

However, in education settings we have the following risk factors for child abuse, which have been highlighted by child safety organisations, such as Child Wise. There is the opportunity for those who wish to harm children, because there are high levels of child/adult interaction. Education settings could and do attract those with a paedophilic interest, and this risk has been identified in the past few years in a school in King and has resulted in prosecution for offences.

In South Australia, under the Labor government there have been well-publicised, substantiated incidents of ineffective responses to child sex abuse in our education settings, and an example is the case that resulted in the Debelle inquiry. An outcome of this appalling incident was the creation of the Department for Education's document, Managing Allegations of Sexual Misconduct in SA Education and Care Settings. In the foreword to this document, chief executive Rick Persse said:

As leaders of the education sectors, we strongly support the ongoing development of legislative schemes to enable the most thorough assessments of an individual's suitability to work or volunteer with children and young people.

However, the best screening schemes are unlikely to remove all possibility of an adult exploiting his or her role in order to offend against children or young people.

Over the past three years, I have had a number of parents raise concerns about alleged ineffective or inappropriate conduct by teachers, and I have provided my constituents with the appropriate Department for Education guidelines to follow. When we drop our children off at school we expect them to be safe, and it is devastating to have to consider that their safety may be compromised by a teacher, a volunteer or another student; but this is a real risk that keeps coming about in South Australia today.

I support the changes outlined in this bill because, on behalf of parents and children in my electorate, I am committed to making sure our children are as safe as possible in our education settings. Legislation and policies need to be and are being updated to remove abusive educators and to ensure they are not rehired in our education settings. Notably, this bill will amend the act to provide that the welfare and best interests of children are the paramount consideration in relation to the operation, administration and enforcement of this act.

The bill will provide a number of new functions to the board. It codifies and strengthens some existing activities the board undertakes. This includes functions for the board to develop and maintain a code of conduct for registered teachers and to recognise quality teaching and leadership in the teaching profession. The bill updates the provision for membership of the board to provide improved flexibility in the size and composition of the board.

Members of the board are currently appointed on the basis of nominations by particular stakeholders. The government is introducing changes to ensure that members of the board are appointed on the basis of knowledge, skills and experience the board needs to carry out its functions effectively. Importantly, the bill will ensure that the board's membership includes practising teachers in the areas of preschool education, primary education, secondary education, the expertise of a legal practitioner and, very importantly I think, the experience and perspective of a parent representing our community's interest.

The bill also includes various amendments to improve provisions of the act that enable the board to deal with unprofessional conduct, incompetence, incapacity and issues of fitness and propriety in the teaching profession. This includes, for example, providing the registrar with the power to suspend a teacher's registration where the registrar forms a reasonable belief that the teacher poses an unacceptable risk to children.

The bill will make a number of amendments to the act to improve information sharing, where necessary, for the protection of children. This has certainly been raised with me by school leaders in King. For example, if a student is at risk of harming other students, and transfers to another school in South Australia, the teachers and leaders want the ability to be able to talk to the school attended by that child about the risk that could be present.

In particular, the bill provides for the board to disclose information to an appropriate person or body if the board is of the opinion that to do so is reasonably necessary to prevent harm being caused to a child. The bill will further provide for the sharing of information between the board, other teacher regulatory authorities, employers and state authorities relevant to the health, safety, welfare and wellbeing of a child or class of children, or to manage the risk to a child or class of children. These changes among others in the bill support the recommendations of the National Review of Teacher Registration and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The development of this bill was subject to a significant amount of consultation, including an extensive consultation with teachers and other stakeholders on potential reforms to the act, and targeted consultation on a draft version of the bill. The feedback from stakeholders has directly helped shape the final form of the bill, and I thank everyone who has contributed feedback to this important reform. Our Marshall government is making these types of legislative changes, and there is a lot more we have to do to make sure children have the opportunity to grow up safely in South Australia and reach their full potential.

I will just take this moment to commend one of the school leaders in King—Wendy Moore, principal at the Golden Grove Primary School—because she really does lead the way in South Australia and in King in terms of making sure children's safety is at the forefront of everything that happens at that school. I will conclude by thanking the minister for his work and commend this bill to the house.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (12:45): I rise today to talk about the Teachers Registration and Standards (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2020. It gives me the opportunity to thank our teachers in South Australia. Let's be very clear: we have asked a lot of them over the last two months. We have asked for them to keep teaching face to face while putting their health and safety to one side. When many other industries were sending their employees to work from home, our teachers were committed to the task at hand. While we raised issues about the lack of soap and hand sanitiser and attempted to clarify their concerns about social distancing, they worked on.

I had a chance to call all the principals in my electorate during this time. They were very welcoming of my phone call because they were under enormous pressure to clarify and understand what was required of them, to answer questions of their teachers and to answer questions of the parents about what the best thing was to do. But the fundamental thing I heard from these teachers—number one—was the commitment to the students. Each and every one of them was concerned about the wellbeing of their children and how they could best continue to teach in a different way.

As the numbers in the classroom dwindled, we asked them to teach via face to face and online. I certainly know, as the parent of a nearly 10 year old, that we were communicated with regularly about these opportunities. It was up to us as parents and, if we chose to keep our child at home, we would be supported by the teachers and by the classroom.

These teachers spent school holidays preparing for distance learning. One of the conversations I had with principals was about how they came together as a group with their teachers. They would often put people aside for two or three weeks to start the conversation around IT and those students who did not have access to it at home, understanding what their needs were and how they needed to upskill some of their teachers in order to deliver online. They were very diligent about continuing the support.

Obviously things progressed better than we all had hoped. We had fewer reported cases, and in term 2 we returned to face-to-face teaching. First of all, I want to put on record my absolute thanks to the teachers in my electorate of Ramsay who spent most of the holidays preparing for distance learning, for online learning. I want to thank them for being back there supporting our students. They were at the forefront of this pandemic as an essential worker, and I want to thank them for that time.

When I talk about teachers, I will always share an empathy with them because you can say that it is my family's most common occupation. My mum was a teacher for all her professional life. I will take the opportunity to shout out to Debra, Lisa, Sally and Pam, my cousins, who all joined this noble profession. Apart from a Sliding Doors moment, I would have been a teacher myself, so I have great respect for our teachers, their importance and the ever-changing demands on them.

We might talk about STEM, we talk about numeracy and literacy and we talk about behaviour—our expectations on our teachers has increased enormously over time when I think about them. But I am here today to talk about this bill, a bill that has come to us in this house at a very unusual time. It appears that this bill wants to reduce the representation of teachers on this registration board.

Let us remind ourselves of what this government is seeking to do, that is, to have out of 10 to 14 members on this board: three practising teachers, one from preschool, primary school and secondary school; a legal practitioner; one parent; and five to nine people appointed by the minister. We in the opposition have concerns about this, as articulated by the shadow minister for education and the member for Wright.

We have put forward an amendment that not less than half the people should be registered teachers, not less than five practising teachers, four nominated by the Australian Education Union and the balance by the Independent Education Union, one nominated by the CE of the Department for Education, and one jointly nominated by the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia and the Catholic Education Office; one parent; one legal practitioner; one jointly nominated by the universities; and up to four nominated by the minister. I am satisfied that our proposal is what teachers want because they want their voices heard, because this is them being the best that we expect.

We have talked about professional code of conduct, and we hold people, particularly teachers, to the highest standards. We know when we drop our children off that we leave them in the safety of these teachers, and that is paramount, no doubt about that. But when I looked at this proposal today, I thought I would have a bit of a look at what other jurisdictions were doing. I had a very quick look to the north and saw that the NT recently reformed its act, and it came into force in January this year. There are 12 people on their board; six of them are teachers. When I looked to the west, WA has seven board members; four out of seven are teachers.

It seems to me that this government is out of step, but you have to ask yourself why. Why do you not want teachers on this board? Do you not trust teachers? I trust teachers because I know that their number one commitment is supporting our young South Australian children, to educate them for the roles of the future and to make their wellbeing a key part of that education. It is very disappointing that the Minister for Education is putting this proposal forward. I ask him to consider and reflect on other jurisdictions and to consider reviewing the amendment that the opposition has put forward.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (12:53): I rise with some relish to support the bill, amending, as it does, a range of important areas including the membership of the Teachers Registration Board, and I will address some remarks specifically to clause 7 in a moment. Like other members, I am fortunate to have a number of extraordinary schools, both primary and high schools, in my part of the Adelaide Hills, and I am particularly proud to have the opportunity to work with so many wonderful educators at those schools.

Somewhat uniquely, the Adelaide Hills is home to a very wide range of types of school, which perhaps reflects the area of the Hills. On the one hand, Scott Creek Primary School, with just short of 50 students and situated as it is in the Scott Creek bushland in idyllic circumstances, is a very small school that has the loyal following of its staff and the community that support it. It is a central part of the Scott Creek community and a very small school.

On the other hand, Eastern Fleurieu School at Strathalbyn is a large R-12 school in the regions, which is setting the standard for high school education, as well as primary school education, for our state. That model of R-12 is a tremendous shining example of what can be done when that model is deployed effectively. Not only that, it is a multicampus model. It is a large school supporting the sustained strength of small satellite campuses at Ashbourne and out to Langhorne Creek and Milang, which might otherwise be struggling in terms of facilities, access to programs and so on. So there is a specially wide range and diversity of schools throughout my electorate of Heysen.

As other speakers have done, I commend the Minister for Education's dedication to ensuring he is, so far as is practicable and at an early stage, aware of and understands the particular needs of those individual schools. He has demonstrated his commitment by his dedication to visiting schools, particularly those in my area. In that regard, I highlight the visit that we had together in quite early days at Mylor Primary School with principal Ngari Boehm, who is a tremendous example of leadership of a particular local school adapting a program to suit the students in that particular learning environment. In that case, there is a special focus on science and a time set aside during the calendar to focus on science in a way that is special at Mylor Primary School. The minister heard firsthand about the way in which that program worked, and at a very early stage.

Similarly, at Stirling East Primary School, one of the larger primary schools in my area of Heysen, the minister has visited on a number of occasions and seen the diversity of great work that is going on there, which is led by principal Measday. I single out for mention that range of schools to highlight the diversity within the Hills, and I will make some particular remarks about the two high schools within Heysen. I have already mentioned Eastern Fleurieu School at Strathalbyn, and Heathfield High School is the other one, of course.

Heathfield High School has gone from strength to strength over these very early days of the Marshall Liberal government. In just these first two years, we have seen developments at Heathfield High School that are backed by considerable capital spending on improved facilities but see state and national leading programs being rolled out in the areas of both STEM and on the entrepreneurial side. I can tell you that I was thrilled to be present at the launch of the entrepreneurial program recently, which is a tremendous step that I could talk about at great length. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.

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