$13 million package to help teachers, principals prepare as Year 7s move to high school

The State Government will spend another $13 million as Year 7s prepare to move to high school, this time to train teachers and principals.

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A $13 million training package will prepare hundreds of teachers and principals to educate Year 7s in public high schools by 2022.

Primary teachers will be funded to obtain the necessary qualifications so they can switch to high schools, while high school teachers will undergo professional development on supporting early adolescents.

SA is the last state to move Year 7s out of public primary schools and the training, to start next year, will be modelled on programs run in Queensland and Western Australia when they made the switch.

The cost comes on top of the $185 million investment needed for new and upgraded school buildings. There is also a $40 million extra annual cost as high schoolers are more expensive to teach because they take more specialist subjects in smaller classes.

Education Minister John Gardner said the training money was “one of the biggest single investments in professional learning ever delivered by the Education Department”.

“This funding will help us to unlock full value from the move of Year 7 into high school,” he said. “We have done a lot of planning and research into how Western Australia and Queensland successfully moved Year 7 into high school and we know that the foundation for success is laid by investing in our teachers and leaders.”

Mr Gardner said the Government was consulting widely on the development of the training package.

Training for classroom support workers and other ancillary school staff is also being considered. The Year 7 is the Liberals’ signature education policy.

It argues SA had to be brought in line with other states because the Australian Curriculum assumes Year 7 students have access to specialist subject facilities.

Labor says there is insufficient evidence of academic benefit to justify the cost.

The Advertiser revealed in April that the Government had launched a new professional development hub at Hindmarsh called Orbis, with a $16 million investment over three years which is separate to the Year 7 training package.

Orbis’ main focus is improving literacy and numeracy teaching. Its funding will also train principals in leadership. Orbis is part of the Education Department’s plan to match the world’s top school systems within a decade.

Every school has been rated on academic results, current and over time, and placed on a five-level improvement scale.