New Draft SA Education and Children’s Services Bill 2016 Released for Consultation

Wednesday 18 January 2017 @ 11.14 a.m. | Legal Research | Trade & Commerce

Yesterday (17 January 2017), the draft of a new Education and Children’s Services Bill 2016 [2017] (SA) (the draft Bill) was posted to the YourSAy website looking for feedback on the new draft Bill which is intended to replace both the Education Act 1972 (SA) and the Children's Services Act 1985 (SA). The proposed draft Bill is described as ". . . the biggest single legislative change to the [SA] education system in more than 40 years".

Background

The new draft Bill follows on the SA government’s introduction of an independent regulator for schools and early childhood services such as preschool and long day care facilities [see the Education and Early Childhood Services Registration and Standards Board created by the Education and Early Childhood Services (Registration and Standards) Act 2011].

The new draft Bill focuses on improving the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) so as to promote the general capabilities, innovation and entrepreneurship of students. This improvement to SACE is said to by the SA Government be supported by a $548 million investment in education in the 2016-17 State Budget.

The new draft Bill is said by the SA Government to be part of its progressive reform of the SA education system.

Key Changes

The draft Bill aims, it is said in the media and fact sheet information, to bring about a number of changes to provide students with the support services they need, further increase autonomy in schools and share information more effectively with parents and other schools. In broad terms, the main changes reflected in the draft Bill are:

Stronger penalties for student non-attendance (truancy) including new family conferences and requiring parents to provide valid reasons for a child’s absence within 5 days;
Making it easier for schools to work with allied health professionals and other support staff to ensure that students get the local services they need;
Providing for better staff attraction and retention packages to assist schools to attract and retain high-quality teachers in difficult-to-staff areas of the state;
Making it easier for all schools to keep good staff so that they can focus on great teaching and learning;
Improving teacher standards by modernising arrangements to deal with unsatisfactory teacher performance in a fair way;
Updating the way schools share information about student progress and development with parents and each other; and
Explicitly prohibiting corporal punishment and ensuring that the best interests of children are the paramount consideration in schools and preschools.

Reason Offered for Above Changes

In the fact sheet information being provided to parents, teachers and non-government schools in order to enable feedback, the following are offered as reasons for the changes proposed by the draft Bill:

Additional Support Services: The fact sheet information states -

"Every child deserves the best start in life with quality education and access to the additional support services they need (eg child wellbeing practitioners, speech pathologists and other allied health professionals)."

Further, it indicates that the draft Bill recognises that Schools should be able to engage the local services they need to serve the best health and well-being interests of their children and young people.

Strong professional standards: The draft Bill enforces strong professional standards and will ". . . improve the public perception of and respect for teachers and educators."

Truancy: The fact sheet information points out that, for every day that a child misses school, it puts them further behind and it becomes harder to catch up. The draft Bill significantly increases the penalties from $500 to $5000 for non-attendance and gives schools greater ability to engage parents in the process, thus leading to improvements in the rates of absenteeism in schools.

Changing Schools: The draft Bill is intended, when students move between schools, whether they are government or non-government schools, to make the process "more smooth" and even "seamless" so that a child’s learning is not hindered and new schools are informed about their developmental progress.

Details About Providing Feedback

Feedback details are provided on the YourSAy website. Submission close on Friday, 10 March 2017 at 5:00 PM - and feedback, according to the website, will be taken into consideration in the drafting of the final Bill, which will be available to the public when introduced into the SA Parliament in the Autumn 2017 session.

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