Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Healthcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak in this adjournment debate on education and on two specific topics. First of all, I would like to speak on the Australian Science and Mathematics School. This is a specialist school which is located in my electorate. It was opened in 2003. It caters for the last three years of secondary education, with students from year 10 to year 12. It is co-located on the campus of Flinders University. Recently I had the opportunity to tour the school with the shadow minister for education. I want to thank Susan Hyde, the principal; Graeme Oliver, the deputy principal; and also David Trembath, who is in charge of aviation and interdisciplinary studies, for showing us around the school.

The school focuses specifically on science and maths subjects and includes new courses, including scientific studies in aviation, scientific studies in human performance and media production. The ASMS building was listed in the OECD third international compendium of exemplary educational facilities and is specifically designed to maximise the benefit to students. The school includes a number of studios or specialised learning areas with dedicated studios for science, control technology, human movement, avionics and audiovisual studies. Touring the school, it was very obvious that it is a long way from the didactic classrooms that many of us might have experienced and was in every sense a very adult learning environment for these senior high school students.

It was significant that the Chief Scientist and former vice-chancellor of both Flinders and ANU, Ian Chubb, had visited the day before us. There are visitors from overseas coming to have a look at this school. It represents a very different model. It encourages science and maths education for people from schools that might not have quite as strong a tradition in those areas.

The avionics studio includes a synthetic flight simulator. I was given the opportunity to test this flight simulator with the shadow minister. Between the two of us, we managed to turn a very uncomplicated descent into Adelaide airport into a crash which no-one survived. Luckily, that is why we have flight simulators. This is another example of how the students at this school get unique experiences. I would like to congratulate the Australian Science and Mathematics school for their innovative teaching and the continued success of their students.

The second topic that I would like to touch on is the foreign language investment announcement that was made by the Leader of the Opposition during his budget-in-reply speech. This is a commitment to revive foreign language study in Australian schools. This is something that I have a particular interest in. I raised this matter in fact during a debate in 2003 in the House in a motion that was cosponsored by both me and the then member for Kingston, David Cox. At that time we both concluded that, despite substantial trade with and investment in Asia, our study of Asian languages was still minimal. It has declined further since then.

In the last decade, participation in year 12 Asian languages has remained stagnant at only six per cent of students. Since the 1960s, we have seen foreign language study drop from approximately 40 per cent of students to 12 per cent of students in recent years. On current trends, Indonesian language study will disappear entirely at the year 12 level within four years unless something was done. This is particularly important for my electorate, because in South Australia Indonesian is the language that Flinders University focuses on. There is great concern that this may disappear at the university. It is very important for Australia. Whether you are running an airline or a services firm or are involved in the Australian government through DFAT and the ADF, Asian languages are very important. We need to have people coming through our schools and universities who have competency in foreign languages. China is our biggest trading partner but across Australia only 300 people who were not of Chinese heritage studied year-12 Mandarin. This does need investment. It will need us to work with the states to see that 40 per cent of year-12 students are taking a language other than English within a decade. We will need teachers and we will need foreign language speakers to get competency up to that level.