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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-11-01 Daily Xml
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World Teachers' Day

Ms CLANCY (Elder) (12:30): I move:

That this house—

(a) acknowledges that World Teachers' Day—which is also known as International Teachers' Day—was recognised on Friday 27 October 2023;

(b) recognises and thanks teachers for the important role they play in shaping the next generation of South Australians; and

(c) acknowledges the vital and inspirational role teachers play in providing quality education in a range of settings and to a diverse range of community members.

Established in 1994, World Teachers' Day commemorates the anniversary of the signing of the recommendation concerning the status of teachers in 1966 by the International Labour Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

This international instrument outlines the rights and responsibilities of educators ranging from early childhood to vocational and tertiary education. The recommendation also provides guidance for governments, employers, trade unions and other stakeholders to establish effective legislation and policies for our teachers.

Internationally, the anniversary of the signing of this recommendation is actually celebrated on 5 October, but given that this date typically falls in school holidays Australia celebrates World Teachers' Day on the last Friday in October. So, just as I did last year, on Friday I loaded up my boot with cakes from local business The Cake Hut and I headed to each of the schools in my electorate, as well as three across the border—so do not tell the member for Badcoe or the member for Unley—to celebrate the teachers who provide so much to our community.

People often ask me what a typical day for me looks like in this job, and aside from sitting days, which are a little bit the same, I do say that no other day is the same. I get the opportunity to do so many different things and meet with so many different people. Every day is different, and I tell you what, a day where I get to drive around my electorate sharing a little love and catching up with teachers, as well as SSOs, when I turn up as I drop off cakes is right up there with one of the best kind of days.

While this house recognises and thanks all teachers in South Australia, I would particularly like to recognise and thank the teachers of Clovelly Park Primary School, Colonel Light Gardens Primary, Edwardstown Primary, St Anthony's, St Bernadette's, St Therese, Suneden, Westbourne Park, Cabra, Hamilton Secondary, Mitcham Girls, Sacred Heart College Middle School, Springbank Secondary, Unley High and Black Forest.

It has been an absolute pleasure to visit each of these schools on multiple occasions now since my election last year, and I can honestly say that we have some of the most dedicated and talented educators working so incredibly hard to teach, support, nurture and shape our next generation.

I have also greatly appreciated the opportunity to host students from most of the primary schools in my electorate for a tour of Parliament House and being genuinely in awe of just how knowledgeable these students are about the functioning and processes of parliament. They genuinely know more about this place than many adults. This is a reflection not only of our brainy students but also their dedicated teachers. I appreciate that not everyone is quite as interested or engaged with the political process as most of us here but the more engaged and a part of our electoral system that our community is only makes for stronger representation in this place. I will be forever grateful to teachers in our community for their efforts in making civics education fun and interactive for our students.

We know that students thrive in great learning environments and this government is committed to providing teachers with work environments which empower them to best support their students. In my electorate of Elder, we are progressing with election commitments at Edwardstown Primary, Westbourne Park Primary and Clovelly Park Primary, with building works at Westbourne Park scheduled to begin shortly.

Teachers and school staff are connected in the community like few other professions are and play a pivotal role in making our patch of South Australia an even better place. In acknowledging World Teachers' Day, we must not just recognise and thank our teachers, we must also recognise that more needs to be done and is being done to support our teachers.

Action must be taken to reduce the workload of educators and to ensure our schools are supported to address increasing student complexity. That is why in our first year the Malinauskas Labor government has taken steps to address this, including a $50 million investment to provide 100 full-time equivalent mental health and learning support staff, and a $28 million investment to fund an autism inclusion teacher in every public primary school.

We know the first 1,000 days of a child's life are crucial to their brain and social development. Prior to the last state election, nearly a quarter of South Australian five year olds had started behind their developmental milestones, nearly the highest proportion of all states. Clearly, we need to do better. That is why we promised the people of South Australia prior to coming to government that we would establish the Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care. Not only have we established this commission in our first 18 months of government, but the royal commission led by the Hon. Julia Gillard has released its final report.

Typically, royal commissions are established to inquire into a problem or when something has gone wrong. This royal commission was different. Rather than looking at the mistakes of the past, the royal commission heard expert evidence and the experience and views of families to provide advice to our government on delivering a high-quality early years system that is fit for the future.

In August, we announced work would begin immediately on delivering the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care, which will see our state becoming a national leader in early childhood development and improving the lives of thousands of children. This Malinauskas Labor government will begin this work by adopting the very first recommendation in the report by setting an ambitious target to reduce the rate of South Australian children entering school developmentally vulnerable from 23.8 per cent to 15 per cent within 20 years, well below the national average of 22 per cent.

Work has also begun on expanding preschool and out-of-school hours care in South Australia, starting with an initial investment of $70 million with more to come.

Our government has also started implementing a further 12 recommendations in the report, including:

commencing the rollout of universal three-year-old preschool in 2026, to be completed by 2032;

prioritising the 1,000 most vulnerable children in the state;

becoming the first Australian state to provide up to 30 hours of preschool per week for the most vulnerable three and four year olds;

starting a trial of out-of-hours care in government-run preschools in 2024;

centralising management of OSHC in government schools under the Department for Education, improving quality and access, and modernising OSHC qualification requirements;

expanding child development checks to achieve maximum possible participation;

establishing an early childhood workforce fund; and

legislating a new office for early childhood development.

Also in support of this work, our government will make an initial commitment of $50 million towards the first tranche of required infrastructure works and $20 million towards starting to implement the recommendations, including:

$7 million for the Education Standards Board so that every childhood education and care provider is assessed and rated at least every three years;

$2.4 million towards the establishment of a new office for early childhood development; and

$1.7 million for the out-of-hours care trials at preschools in 2024.

Along with material and social conditions, teachers play one of the most important roles in the educational outcomes of our students. I am sure we can all share a story of a teacher who shared skills and knowledge beyond the curriculum that we draw upon today.

My year 10 English teacher who is actually now one of my constituents but I still cannot call him by his first name because he will always be Mr Eaton, helped me to think critically and clearly when dealing with emotionally charged content while still maintaining compassion and feeling. He was a teacher who managed to find this beautiful balance with us, establishing himself as the person in charge as the teacher but also fostering mutual respect between us all that made his lessons are joy. It is a lot easier to learn when we feel respected and supported.

I also want to take the chance to thank Miss Six's year 1 teacher, Miss Paige, who is so loved—I sometimes feel like Miss Six would rather stay with her all day and night than come home—as well as her reception teacher, Miss Kerry, who made that first year of school, which was I think more scary for us as parents than for her, so much easier.

I also want to thank every single teacher in our community and across the state and say thank you to all the teachers who do not make the students feel weird when they accidentally call them mum. In closing, I want to thank every teacher in the country, in the world, for your work in shaping the next generation of South Australians. I commend this motion to the house.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:40): I am very pleased to support this excellent motion, recognising and acknowledging World Teachers' Day and thanking the teachers, acknowledging the really important role teachers play in the lives of all of our young people and our community.

Last Friday, on World Teachers' Day, I was pleased to join for a period of time, along with the minister, obviously, the Educators SA organisation in their celebration and awards for World Teachers' Day. Educators SA is a collective group of all of the professional associations for teachers —dozens and dozens of them—and the range of awards celebrates excellence and is to be commended. It is a joy every year to see that work done. I appreciate all of those teachers in our South Australian schools for the work they do for South Australia, for our young people.

The range of work that successive governments do seeks the best for our students, for our children, and every program of course has to be delivered, and the people who do that work are our teachers. We ask a lot of them. There are important discussions to be had about workload and about the range of duties required of teachers. They share with the public policy goal of desiring the absolute very best for our students and young people and understand that. Those discussions about workload will continue, but in this house, for the moment, for the purpose of this motion, we say thank you.

Earlier on Friday, long before and many kilometres away from the Educators SA awards night, I was pleased to join the member for Frome at her office opening and also a street-corner meeting where we also spoke to some teachers and were very pleased to congratulate them on World Teachers' Day, retired as they were. The member for Frome herself of course is a former teacher and indeed one of the things she taught amongst others was French.

Every year, when we discuss this motion, I do like to reflect something on one's own personal experience. In this case, I want to talk about language teachers. The role that language teachers play is not an easy job within a school. Sometimes you are competing with classroom teachers in primary school or other specialist teachers in high school for space in the school, in the curriculum.

Sometimes language teachers are not able to access their own special room. They have to go from class to class to class, which is suboptimal because what could be enlivened in a school when a language teacher has their own environment is like transporting the student into another country, into another world and seeing the world through different eyes. Every language teacher who is able to inspire their students effectively to think about the world through another lens, through the use of language but also exposure to culture, and also raising their eyes to the prospect of future travel is an absolute joy and a journey.

I think of my own experience. I thank Frau Sanders, my primary school German teacher, and Ms Callinan, my high school Japanese teacher, and Mr Anderson, my high school Latin teacher. If you want to think about experiencing a journey to a different world, not just through a different geography but a different time, then I encourage the study of Latin, ancient Greek and other languages amongst anyone.

I should thank Justin Putland as well, who was a mate in high school who helped me pass Japanese in year 10 and 11 when my own lack of hard work and study had me on the margins a couple of times. Justin is now a Japanese teacher, having taught English in Japan and now teaches Japanese in South Australia. All of those teachers and Justin, who helped me get through high school, took me through my childhood into adulthood with a desire to experience the world and explore the world and also to understand the world through different lenses.

This is an opportunity and a privilege that I think is available to our young people but unfortunately not as many as we would like take up that opportunity. It is almost a luxury having English as a language that is spoken so widely across the world, and I think many people in our community do not see the value in learning other languages.

It is more than just the skill and the capacity to engage with somebody in another language if they do not speak English. It is so much more than that: it is the way to open one's mind to different experiences and to see the world through other eyes. It helps with empathy, it helps with one's own English communication skills. I always tell young people when I am visiting schools, especially if there is a language context that is appropriate: if an employer is looking at a CV and sees language as being something that is a skill or a strength, it immediately highlights to them that that is somebody worth employing.

I also recognise all the other teachers I had in languages through my chequered university career. I did one semester here, one semester there, a couple of years of other languages, I did two years of Spanish, I did less time in German and Italian and another year of Latin and also one semester of French. For all those lecturers and teachers who tried to help me in those subjects, I thank them—they were very important. More recently in Italian, the Centro Didattico's Alessandra Hunjet, and my wife's Zio Elio and Zia Rosie, and my father-in-law Lorenzo, who have all been incredibly important teachers of Italian, which is a skill that has all the benefits I have described of learning a language, plus it is a requirement if you are the member for Morialta to have some skill there. I thanked them on World Teachers' Day for the work they did.

The other event I participated in on World Teachers' Day was at Adelaide University. The Marjoribanks lecture, in memory of former Dean of the School of Education and former vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide, whose role in developing education, pedagogy and philosophy in South Australia was significant. Professor Susan James Relly, formerly of Oxford University, now of the University of Adelaide, Head of the School of Education, brought to Adelaide Mr Ziauddin Yousafzai and Mrs Yousafzai. Ziauddin Yousafzai delivered the Marjoribanks lecture, and it was an extraordinary privilege to be able to meet with Mr Yousafzai and Mrs Yousafzai prior to the lecture and to hear him talk. He spoke again at the Educators SA function later that night.

People may be wondering what his role is, and they may remember the surname Yousafzai; his daughter is Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Prize winner and the most extraordinary living advocate for education, particularly the education of girls and people in vulnerable communities in the world. Mr Yousafzai in his lecture talked about the experience of him growing up in an utterly patriarchal society, where he and his brother were educated and his sisters and his mother were not, where his sisters and his mother were known as wife of the male, daughter of the male or mother of the male. If he was going to the doctor with his mother, it would be his name and 'mother of Ziauddin Yousafzai', to put it into context.

In that context, with the Taliban making physical threats against his family, he and his family supported his daughter to keep advocating for education. She was shot and people are aware of the story beyond that, but he continued to be an advocate for education, despite the physical risk and the risk to the family that that entailed. There are tens of millions of girls and young women around the world who are unable to access education, and that is a tragedy and shame every day.

The fact that we want our children to have courage, grace, wisdom and strength like Malala, I have to say as a father and as someone who is interested in education, it was a real privilege to meet Mr Yousafzai; we need role models like him. The advocacy he provides to girls and young women around the world in an ongoing way, along with his whole family, is really important. I thank them for participating and particularly thank Professor Relly for her role in bringing him to Adelaide, sharing his opportunities to meet with school leaders, schools and, I understand, explore a bit of South Australia as well.

With the history of the world, education has not been valued for what it should have been. The heights of range of civilisations—the Greeks, the Romans—nobody educated more than 10 to 15 per cent of the population. We now understand the extraordinary benefits to the individual and the community when a teacher is able to support a child's learning. It is understood that, in the next 30 years, as many people are going to educated as have been educated in the entire history of the world, due to growth and our expectation and our understanding that education should be universal.

Our teachers are going to be the fundamental critical role models for all young people going forward, and we cannot overstate the important role they play. So, on international World Teachers' Day, we say thank you.

The ACTING SPEAKER (The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell): Arigato. Well done on your Japanese accomplishments too.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (12:49): It is my pleasure to rise and make a brief contribution to this very important motion acknowledging World Teachers' Day, which of course was last week. I was very fortunate to spend that day in the South-East after a couple of very enjoyable days as part of the country cabinet, visiting schools in the member for MacKillop's area and beyond as well. I always say that, in this job, there are days when it is very easy to get bogged down in some of the negative things that are happening in the day-to-day cut and thrust of the portfolio, and the best antidote to that is always actually getting out and visiting schools and speaking to students, speaking to staff and speaking to parents. It always fills me with a renewed sense of confidence about the great things that are happening in our education system.

I was pleased have the Secondary Principals' Association in for dinner at Parliament House last night. It was a really enjoyable time, and it reinforced to them the level of confidence I have in the quality of the education that we provide in South Australia. I know they feel it, too, when the public discourse or dialogue is often focused on some of the negative things that happen in schools, which sadly has always been the case. It will always be the case that there are some unpleasant things that happen at schools, but I think it is important that certainly people in my role (and I am not an educator) spend as much time as they can out in the field at schools—whether they are public, Catholic or independent or whether they are metro, regional or remote—having a look at the wonderful things that happen.

As I said, I am not an educator. I am always very up-front about that when I am speaking to our education staff. But I do have a father who did 40 years-plus in the public education system in country Victoria, and I certainly draw on his advice. My experience is as someone who was taught by my own father at the local secondary school on three occasions, and of course I saw up close what the job was like for him and how the job changed in his 40 years, between roughly 1972 and 2012.

An anecdote that I draw upon when I am speaking to people on occasions such as World Teachers' Day, to reinforce my conviction around the life-changing ability of a teacher, is from the recollections I have as a teenager, travelling home from school with dad, back to the farm, and stopping in the main street of Portland to get some groceries or something from Safeway, as it was then. Continually dad was stopped by past students who wanted to update him on what they were doing with their life.

Of course, as a teenager I found it essentially boring and painful, and I wanted us to get back to the ute and get home. But I have had occasion to think back to those meetings now, and also to remember dad's comments that, more often than not, those past pupils who came to grab him in the supermarket or on Percy Street in Portland were those who had been troublesome students as well, not the ones who had been easy students or star students. They wanted to come back to reinforce to dad that the support he had shown them, and the extra yard he had gone for them, had contributed to them turning their life around.

I now know the value of those conversations in terms of keeping my dad in the classroom for 40 years. He said he stayed in the classroom because he always saw the profession as a vocation, as a calling. He never wanted to go into administration. I draw on those stories as a way of explaining to the teachers now in our system that I understand the power of what they do and that they do feel called to the profession. It is important now, I think more than it has ever been, that we tell those stories.

I was pleased that, just yesterday, the Prime Minister and the federal education minister launched a new recruitment campaign. There is an ad that is being tailored for each state and territory. I unashamedly think that the South Australian ad is the best. It features Stacy Frogley, who was a teacher at Marryatville and is now a teacher at Glenunga, and her student Izzy, who has a degenerative disease that meant she gradually lost the use of her legs and now uses a wheelchair. She was very frustrated that she was not able to go to participate in sport and other things with the other students.

Stacy, as her primary school teacher, suggested she get into swimming. Izzy is now a medal-winning paralympian and the ad draws upon a meeting of the two for the first time in many years. I think the ad is fantastic. It really goes to the heart of what teachers can do.

Given that we are in a national, if not international, situation at the moment where it is harder to retain the existing workforce and attract new teachers, it is important that we take the opportunity to acknowledge the work the existing workforce does and do whatever we can to explain and convey how valued they are so that we can keep them. By telling the stories of people like Stacy Frogley, we can inspire those young people who are motivated to choose a profession that has the power to be life-changing, high on job satisfaction, to still put their hand up and choose teaching, otherwise we are going to be in an increasingly difficult situation in terms of making sure that we have teachers in front of students.

I might leave my comments there and enable other people to say something as well. It is a special day and teachers are special people. It is a job that is harder now than it ever has been and it is not lost on me on any day how important they are to our society.

The ACTING SPEAKER (The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell): The member for MacKillop, the representative of the great Glencoe Central Primary School.

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (12:55): Hear, hear! I rise today to speak to the motion moved by the member for Elder in support of the importance of recognising the enormous contribution teachers make to our communities and the social fabric of regional South Australia.

High-quality teaching staff are imperative to a child's education. They inspire, motivate and influence. The impression a teacher leaves on an individual in the classroom can continue into the next generation.

The teaching environment has evolved over time and we have seen a situation where more and more responsibilities and expectations are placed on their day-to-day activities. Often, a teacher's time is consumed with dealing with complex behaviours, taking them away from the immediate task of teaching. The industry has seen widespread fatigue and the diminishment of teacher morale has seen teachers exiting from the profession.

I will continue to listen and work with the 34 schools and 43 childcare integrated learning centres, as well as many teachers and childcare educators within my electorate. We need to embrace and incorporate into our policies and funding the solution-based ideas that often come from our teachers. We need to shift this tide of quality teachers exiting the profession and lift teacher morale.

Recently, I was pleased that through my advocation a change occurred in policy that now allows reciprocal arrangements between all states for all leave accrued by teachers to be transferable. I thank teacher Kelly Myors for bringing this to my attention and I thank the current government for listening and for implementing this. I hope this change will play a small part in paving the way for increasing the number of teachers who choose to move to and live in South Australia, especially regional South Australia. There is no doubt we need more teaching staff and we need better pay and conditions for those staff.

Teachers are instrumental in bringing learning to life. By providing relatable examples and finding creative ways to teach the curriculum, they show students the endless possibilities that exist for them. I am pleased that the Department for Education has a range of additional incentives underway to attract and retain high-quality candidates, including the Country Incentive Zone Allowance for teachers who relocate. I look forward to this being taken up by teachers from other states so we can have a strong teaching workforce in South Australia.

I take this opportunity to thank our teachers and acknowledge the vital and inspirational role they play in guiding our young people into the future. I commend the motion to the house.

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (12:58): I, too, rise to support the motion that has been put forward by the member for Elder. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the very hardworking teachers right across my electorate of Schubert

Last Friday, on World Teachers' Day, I had the privilege and the opportunity to visit many schools across the electorate. I dropped in a little box of chocolates just as a small token of thanks, which I got from the Barossa Valley Chocolate Company in Tanunda. I would like to acknowledge all the work our teachers do and the passion they show to shape and inspire the next generation of people in South Australia.

Over the last few years, our teachers have worked under some pretty extraordinary conditions and this has been reflected on by the minister. Teaching is a calling for many people and you can see that when you visit schools, and when you see the pride they have in teaching one of their students a new skill. I sincerely wish everyone a very happy World Teachers' Day. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for all the work they do in shaping our next generation.

Motion carried.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.

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