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

The Hon. R.B. MARTIN (19:57): I move:

That this council—

1. Notes that on Friday 27 October 2023, South Australia celebrates World Teachers' Day;

2. Acknowledges the central importance of teachers in our society; and

3. Congratulates all teachers for their hard work, dedication and tireless efforts.

So much has been said by so many people across the years and across the world about the crucial importance to a society of good teachers. All of it bears repeating again and again, especially on occasions like World Teachers' Day, which Australia celebrates each year on the last Friday of October, this year's date being Friday 27 October.

Teaching is, unequivocally, a professional vocation. Educators are professionals and it is a profession that carries both enormous importance and significant responsibility. Teachers' roles in our lives and their lifelong influence on us as people extends greatly beyond imparting academic knowledge. Good teachers are among the first people in our lives who help to open our developing minds and to let in the blazing light of the vast universe of knowledge and experience that they inspire us to explore.

Teachers play a leading role in shaping the way that a young person learns, the way they receive and consider new information, and the way they regard themselves and the world around them. They help to shape what young people decide they want to achieve in their lives and, quite importantly, what they believe they can achieve. Educators have an enduring influence in shaping our beliefs, our values, our decision-making and the way we conduct ourselves throughout our lives.

Good teachers enrich and nurture their students as whole people, inspiring us to grow into the aware and responsible citizens that our communities and our nations need. This is why good teachers are not only assets to their students and their schools, but to entire societies. We know that education—including not just academic learning but all that we as humans take away from our experience of schooling and have been taught—is an extremely powerful driver of economic mobility and a transformative force in social and economic outcomes across our lives. Education helps to lift people out of poverty, helps to create better outcomes across mental and physical health and wellbeing, and helps to create and expand opportunity across the whole of a person's lifetime.

To refer back to a speech that I gave a few weeks ago (for anyone who might be paying attention to what I say this place), good teachers are crucial to a jurisdiction's capitalisation of talent rate. That is the way a jurisdiction enables, nurtures and capitalises on the innate talent that resides within its communities. This is especially true of public schools, and particularly those in which the students being educated come from backgrounds of relative disadvantage. These are schools with students for whom opportunity, as a general rule, is not as easy to access as it is for their relatively more privileged peers. Dedicated educators play a significant role in improving their chances at better life outcomes.

I imagine each of us, and indeed the great majority of people across the world who have gone through school, have had a teacher—or, if you are lucky, several teachers—in our lives who have had outsized impacts on us. I know I did at my own public primary and secondary schools. Last year, on the occasion celebrating World Teachers' Day, I spoke about Mrs Hand, Mr Day and Mr Weaver. Among all the good teachers I have had, these three will always stand out. I said last year that, apart from my parents, there is probably no-one who has had a greater impact on my life and on the person that I have become than those particular teachers. Each of us carries with us our memories of those special teachers in our own young lives and we keep close the lessons they taught us, academic and otherwise.

I am keenly aware and, indeed, the Malinauskas Labor government is keenly aware, that nowadays there are more demands on teachers' time and energy than ever before. Public school teachers in South Australia enjoy the dedicated representation of the Australian Education Union (AEU). Our government approaches the negotiating table alongside the AEU with the firm intention of working constructively to secure agreements that are fair and balance the various competing demands at play. These sorts of negotiations can be challenging, as they have been this time around, but we have the benefit of a longstanding good-faith relationship with the teachers' union that I feel confident will continue to serve both parties well in these and any future negotiations.

There is no question that all of South Australia's educators both deserve and need our recognition and our support. In addition to a heavy practical and emotional load, teachers in disadvantaged schools in particular often find themselves spending a good bit of their own money to provide materials and, sometimes, even food and clothing for some of their students. They do this typically without complaint and without seeking adulation because they understand the profound importance of the role they play in the lives of their students. The support, the consistency and the example that they provide matters to every single student they teach.

Of course, it is not only teachers in disadvantaged schools who transform lives; there are so many fantastic schools in South Australia that are staffed by dedicated, caring and exceptional educators and staff, each of whom is a bright star in some young person's sky. I want to pay tribute to my mother-in-law, Marlene, who is one such person. A career teacher and teacher-librarian in South Australian public schools for almost 40 years, she has inspired me and many of her students. I also extend my recognition and admiration to my sister-in-law, who taught for many years in a disadvantaged school in Port Augusta and has now transitioned to work in an administrative capacity but still within the education system.

I hope all members in this place have had the privilege of being taught by a few exceptional teachers in their lives. They can be found at schools in every corner of our state, across all categories of school and at all levels of schooling. Not only on World Teachers' Day, but every day, I recognise the enormous impact that educators have on our lives as individuals and to our collective social and economic lives. I offer my gratitude and appreciation to each and every one of those teachers.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.

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