Only one in five SA public schools has a fibre to the campus internet connection

JUST one in five South Australian public schools has a fibre to the campus internet connection, compared to almost 100 per cent of schools in other states.

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ONLY one in five South Australian public schools has a high-speed fibre to the campus internet connection, compared to almost every school interstate.

An SA Education Department internal podcast also reveals it can take students more than 15 minutes to log on to their school’s network.

The Advertiser has obtained a transcript of the podcast featuring the department’s new chief information officer, Scott Bayliss.

In the April 5 podcast, he says 99 per cent of NSW and Victorian schools, and 95 per cent in Queensland and WA, have “access to fibre in the school”.

The 20 per cent in SA is “not good enough”, he says, adding: “It will be my main focus and we will improve it.

“My vision is to make sure every site, every teacher, every student has access to reliable connectivity … at the speed they require it, when they require it.”

His team will help schools configure their networks better and focus on “complete resolution of issues”, he says.

“By that, I mean it’s no good giving a school fast internet connection if they can’t utilise it," he says, pointing to a school he visited just after its connection was made 70 times faster.

“But they weren’t consuming it. We found that students were taking up to 16 minutes to log on to their school network.”

Mr Bayliss says that in Term 1, 121 schools and preschools had upgrades of their department-funded connections to be up to 100 times faster, but acknowledged some also relied on secondary connections “for their curriculum needs, and we need to get to them”.

Mr Bayliss also hints in the podcast about an impending trial of a “game-changer” solution that will “provide fast, reliable, affordable connectivity across the state at speeds that are expected in 2018”.

In a statement, Mr Bayliss told The Advertiser the department had made significant progress in recent months.

“We are confident of getting schools the internet connections they need at a cost which is acceptable to the taxpayer,” he said.

“The aim is to give all schools, regardless of location, a quality internet service at an appropriate speed when it is required. In the vast majority of cases that should be through fibre optic connection but, given the geography of our state, we would be expecting a different method for a small percentage of cases, as it is in other states.”

The former Labor government made a state election pledge to raise school internet speeds by an average of nine times (from 11 to 97Mbs), and up to 100 times for some, costing tens of millions of dollars.

Education Minister John Gardner said the Marshall Government would deliver “stable, high-performing” and affordable internet to every school, which its predecessor had failed to do.