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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-03-21 Daily Xml
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Technical Colleges

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:19): My question is to the Minister for Education, Training and Skills. How many places will the government reserve in its five technical colleges for school-based apprenticeships in our defence industries, and will the government continue to offer flexible industry pathways to defence careers in our public schools?

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:19): I thank the member for Morialta for the question. I am always pleased to be on my feet in this place talking about this government's election commitment to build five technical colleges in South Australia and, of course, to remind members of this place that they will be built in Port Augusta, Mount Gambier the Tonsley Innovation Precinct and The Heights School in the north-eastern suburbs, and that the first, which will be opened at the start of 2024, so not long away now, will be at Findon.

So far, we have announced the streams or the specialisations for just one of those technical colleges and that is Findon, of course, because it will be the first to come online in 2024. They will all be online and operational by the start of the 2026 school year. In terms of the Findon one and its application and relevance to the issue of this enormous opportunity that South Australia has with AUKUS, I am pleased to inform the house that one of the three streams we are offering there is advanced manufacturing.

That will include pathways in areas like engineering, and then underneath some of those broader pathways specifics around things like metal fabrication and welding. It will be coming right down to some of those individual, precise kinds of skills that the state is going to need if we are to deliver on this incredible opportunity.

The member for Morialta asks about a specific number of apprenticeships. I don't have a figure for him on that, but I can proudly tell the house about one of the most innovative things that we have done, not just in revisiting, I guess, the whole notion of technical colleges, which was something that was a mainstay of the education system nationally for decades and then disappeared—

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni: In the olden days.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER: The member for Unley is not a fan of them. In fact, he spoke recently in this place about why we shouldn't be investing in bricks and mortar, so it is disappointing we don't have the bipartisan support for our technical colleges there, especially given now this announcement around AUKUS—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. B.I. BOYER: —and how important these technical qualities are going to be. I am very disappointed, but not surprised, of course. We have struck an agreement with BAE, such an important player in the defence space and in the South Australian economy particularly, so that those students who go into the technical college at Findon—and they will enter from year 10, so years 10, 11 and 12—and who go into the advanced manufacturing stream and come out with some of these skills and qualifications that I have just mentioned will then have the opportunity to take an apprenticeship with BAE.

We hope that that is not—in fact it won't be—the last partnership of this type that we announce with our technical colleges. I don't even think it will be the last partnership that we announce at the Findon Technical College, but it is an incredibly important one. What it provides is not just certainty for the young people from the early high school years to be able to see what their pathway is, in terms of going to year 9 and then transitioning across in year 10 to the technical college, continuing to do their SACE but also picking up qualifications in one of the streams, but then knowing that at the end of it they will have an apprenticeship with one of these big employers in an area of such importance to our economy, like BAE.

It provides security and certainty to the young people and their families, but it also provides that much-needed security and certainty to those players like BAE who are going to have such a huge part in this commitment. What we know is that the skills part of this equation and how we deliver that is perhaps the most complex part, so we need to be making sure that we have a continuous pipeline of the skilled people to take those positions.

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