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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-09-08 Daily Xml
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Autism Lead Teachers

The Hon. L.A. CURRAN (15:04): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the parliamentary secretary regarding autism.

Leave granted.

The Hon. L.A. CURRAN: The Labor government made an election commitment to empower schools to manage the process of allocating support and resources. My question to the parliamentary secretary is: how is the government empowering schools to manage the process of allocating support for students with autism in their school?

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (15:04): An interesting question. I guess we are empowering schools to support the autistic community by giving them knowledge. We cannot create any change in our schools until we build that knowledge. We have invested $28 million to release a teacher from a classroom to be trained, for one day a week in some schools and also for four hours a week in other schools. That will enable us to provide training to teachers so that they have the flexibility to go back into their school environment and create that real cultural change.

We can keep talking about autism as a word or we can actually start creating real knowledge of what autism is. We don't have the time any more to wait for teachers to be leaving university with the credentials potentially to be able to teach and support all children in the classroom. What we need to do now is create a workforce with the people we have, to create this network in our schools. We are doing something that hasn't happened anywhere else in Australia before. We are creating the largest network of autism inclusion focused teachers right here in South Australia.

Every public primary school will have access to someone who has that knowledge. They will have knowledge of what autism is so that when we have kids in the classroom, all kids can be included. Every kid will feel like they are a part of their classroom, and that is really important, and I think everyone in this chamber should be proud of that.

The Hon. L.A. CURRAN: I have a supplementary question.

The PRESIDENT: A supplementary question, and I will listen to it. The Clerk has made a very interesting point to me with regard to the parliamentary secretary and her responsibility with regard to it. She is actually not the minister responsible for delivering the program, so it will be up to the parliamentary secretary to answer if she sees fit. I will listen to your supplementary question but it is something that I have been made aware of.

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