Adelaide
E & O E - PROOF ONLY
PM: Can I acknowledge my great friend Amanda Rishworth, who's just spoken to you, the Member for Kingston and a very active and passionate member representing your part of the world in federal parliament.
Can I thank Tony, the principal, for having us in his school today, and Jonathan from the Inspire Foundation for his words to you.
Can I also thank Karl and Emma, your school leaders, for showing us around and making sure that we got here.
I really like coming to schools. As Prime Minister, I've made it a bit of a mission to make sure wherever I go that I do get the opportunity to go to a school.
And the reason I do that is when I come to a school like this one, whether it's Wirreanda or whether it's a school in another part of the country, I feel like I can see our nation's future being made.
Because no matter what else is happening in our country today, in the boardrooms of big companies, in the mines, on farms, whatever else is happening in our nation today, the most important thing happening is happening in Australia's schools.
Because the quality of what happens here will define what kind of nation we are tomorrow, which is why, as a government, as a prime minister, I've focussed so much on the quality of your education.
And we are working hard to make sure that your principal, your teachers, your parents, the community that supports you gets the resources that they need to give you a really great education.
And I can tell from this school where you are taught to aim high that it is making a difference to your lives.
I grew up in South Australia and one of the reasons I particularly like visiting schools when I'm here is it reminds me of my own school days in South Australia.
Now the truth is they were quite some time ago that I was in school. I went to Unley High School and I finished in 1978.
Amanda, who went to the same school, finished in 1995. So there's a fair difference there when you stop and think about it.
It was a different world when I went to school but I remember my school days as some of the best days of my life.
I enjoyed school. I enjoyed the study at school. I enjoyed hanging out with friends and making friends at school.
I enjoyed doing things like playing hockey, even if it was pretty badly, so I remember my school days very fondly and some of the friendships that I made during those school days are with me still.
And amongst the most valuable friendships you will ever have in your life are the friendships that you make during your school days, the people who have known you across all of your life's journey.
But whilst I reflect on my school days as a happy time, when I think about my own time in school, it is clear on reflection, looking back with the eyes of an adult, that there were a number of children in that school, a number of kids who went through school with me who were finding that time in their lives a lot harder than I was.
They were finding it a time of stress and strain and they weren't always knowing who to reach out to during that time of stress and strain.
Sometimes it can be difficult to talk to your parents. Sometimes you might want to tell a teacher about your problems but then that might feel uncomfortable too.
So we want to make sure in this very changed world, where there are new sources of pressure on our kids, including everything that has happened with the information technology revolution in the days since I was in school, we want to make sure in these days that there is always someone that you can reach out to.
And we want to make the best of the new technology to bring new sources of help and new sources of connection.
We know that you choose to spend a lot of your life online and to make friendships there, to find out information there, to use it just as an embedded tool in your life; for all of you in this room it would be impossible to imagine what the world was like before the internet, before mobile phones, before Facebook, before all of it.
Some of us can remember that. You wouldn't know what that world was like.
So in the world in which you live, we want to make sure that there are good sources of information and support to you, which is why I'm really pleased that we've been able to work with Inspire through a grant of just over $4 million to enable the Reach Out service to be there and to be available not only to you but to kids right around Australia.
So thank you for having me in your school today.
When I walked in with Karl and Emma they said I was going to get asked some questions whilst I was at school today and that they were really, really hard question, so I'll see how I go with the answers.
But I'm very pleased to be here and to spend a little bit of time with you.
Thank you very much.
RISHWORTH: Okay, I think I'm now calling for questions from people on the floor. Who has any questions?
QUESTION: (Inaudible)
RISHWORTH: I think that question was about Saturday being a school day, and whether or not there was any intention of Saturday being a school day, and some serious concern about that.
PM: Well we might engage in a little bit of direct democracy, so who thinks Saturday should be a school day? We've got one or two, a few! Who thinks Saturday should stay the way it is, in that there should be no school?
Well, you know we don't always make big decisions based on public opinion. Sometimes we've got to make big hard decisions that aren't popular, but I can tell you on this occasion we are going to go with the opinion in the room.
There's no suggestion that we make Saturday a school day, so you can relax.
But we are going to do a series of things to make sure schools have got enough resources so that they can offer programs before school; many schools offer breakfast clubs, programs after school, and they can also run to school holiday programs, particularly for those students who are at some risk of getting behind the group.
And that is not because we want to keep you imprisoned in school for more than you want to be there, but it is really important that you come out of school with the skills and capacities that you are going to need for the rest of your life.
The jobs of the future are going to be jobs that require higher skill levels than our nation has had before, so the more knowledge, the more capacity, the more skills you pick up at school, the better for the rest of your life. But you can still get Saturday to yourselves.
RISHWORTH: That's a popular acclamation. So who's got another question? I might just get you to stand up.
QUESTION: (Inaudible)
JONATHAN NICHOLAS, INSPIRE FOUNDATION: For those that didn't hear, the question was ‘if you've got great friends and you reach out to your friends, why would you need supportive programs like Reach Out online?'
I must admit I'm a little bit biased. I think it's great that the Government provides this ongoing support, and the reason I'm biased is that last year reachout.com got accessed 1.4 million times by over 600,000 young people.
And so one of the things that we know is that the more support and the more options you get, the better you are. And that sometimes your friends are exactly the right people to talk to, sometimes mum and dad are exactly the right people to talk to.
But like most things in life when we don't have an answer to a question, we start at Google. And what we wanted to do is that when anyone starts at Google, and they have a question that they're not sure the answer to, whether it's ‘what is depression, how do I cope with exam stress,' that they come to reachout.com first.
So for us, probably similar to the last question, it's really about voting with your feet and for a lot of young people they sit online, we just want to make sure if they've got that question they know where to go.
RISHWORTH: Okay, I think we've got someone at the back there with a microphone.
QUESTION: Why do you think wellbeing should be a big focus in schools?
PM: I think wellbeing has to be a big focus in schools because we're, through our education system, through our schools, we're trying to impart to you knowledge and skills, but in terms of the capacities you will need throughout your life, you will need resilience.
We live in a world that's got all sorts of pressures and stresses and strains, and so during the course of your life there will be many times when you've got to deal with pressure.
Maybe you get a job you really like and then something happens at that business and you're made redundant. Maybe some other pressure happens within your family, someone in your family ends up with a disability, to take one example, and that puts a lot of pressure on the family.
Maybe during the course of your life you have an accident or something like that that puts a lot of pressure on you as you are recovering from that accident.
There are all sorts of things that can happen across a person's life and your ability to cope, to be resilient, to focus on wellbeing, to have the personal capacities that enable you to deal with life are as important as everything else we try and do in school.
So that's why we do want to focus on wellbeing, and why we're so proud to be supporting the Reach Out program and getting you the information you need from a source you know you can trust, and also a source that's confidential for those times that you feel it might be too hard to actually go and ask someone.
RISHWORTH: Okay, I think we have a young lady down the back.
QUESTION: How do you get more young people to access different programs that deal with wellbeing and resilience like the Wellbeing@School program?
PM: I think part of it is doing what we're doing here today, and that's having the conversation and making sure that people know it's okay to talk about these issues and it's okay for them to indicate that they've got questions, that they've got concerns, they want to talk to someone, their teacher, their parents or they want to get information through Reach Out.
So I think that focus is important. We're also working hard in a non-school environment to make sure that young people who are worried about mental health issues can access the support that they need.
Amanda, as your local member, has worked hard to bring to your community a service called Headspace, which is a youth model of mental health support - an easy place to walk through the door, deliberately designed like that, to have a sense of informality and to be including of people.
But to also help people get the support they need if they feel, as a young person, that there's anything, whether it's exams, whether it's the changes that they're experiencing in their life as they grow up, whether it's making decisions about their future, whether it's relationship issues, whether it's problems with friends, which might be putting some pressure on.
QUESTION: In what ways are politicians trying to improve school environments?
PM: That's a good question. We're trying to do it in a whole lot of way. First and foremost, we have focussed on every school in the country.
So there's been a lot of times in our nation's life when there's been conflict between school systems. State schools saying one thing, Catholic schools saying one thing, independent schools saying one thing.
We've tried to break that down and say it doesn't matter which school you go to, whether it's an independent school, a Catholic school, a state school; what matters is the quality of education in that school.
So it's about every child in every school in 9,500 schools around the country.
So first we've made sure there's more information about what's happening in schools than ever before through the My School website.
So we know what's going on in all of those 9,500 schools. We didn't used to know - when I first became education minister, there was no way of getting a list of say, the 1,000 most disadvantaged schools in the country. No one could give that list to you.
Now because we've got My School and more information than ever before, we've got that available to us.
And with that information we can then put in new funding, and we've done that through our national partnership programs that focus on literacy and numeracy, that bring new resources into disadvantaged schools, and that focus on teacher quality, because at the end of the day the most important thing to your education is the quality of the teacher who's standing up in your classroom.
We've also brought a national curriculum. Lots of kids move interstate each year, kids in Defence Force families might move five or six times during their schooling career, and they used to go from school to school and not even recognise what was being taught.
Now we are working to have a high-quality national curriculum taught in every school.
We've also brought more money into school buildings and school computers, equipment that you need, facilities you need for your education.
And we try to make sure that this isn't just a time when more resources have flowed and then it's all gone and it's back to business as usual, by working to bring a new funding system for the long term which means funding will go depending on the characteristics of students, so it will go where it is needed to make a difference to every child's education.
So there's a lot happening and a lot more change to come, but it's all about the quality of what is happening in schools today.
QUESTION: How can the Federal Government support teachers and other school professionals around the resilience and wellbeing of young people?
PM: I think you've raised the question of resilience for teachers too, as well as young people, and that's an important new element to this discussion.
We want to make sure that in schools around the country that for everyone who participates in school life there is a focus on wellbeing and a focus on personal resilience.
Part of that is what we teach in the curriculum, part of it is teaching practice and supporting teachers as they go about what is an incredibly hard job, and part of it is partnering up with services like Reach Out which we're announcing here today.
QUESTION: To what extent are the voices of young people being considered when making policies and decisions?
PM: We want to listen to the voices of young people.
There's always a lively debate when I come to schools about what the voting age should be, and whether it should be lower than 18 so young people get to participate directly in our democracy. And I think that debate will probably continue for some time to come.
But even in the days before you can vote, we want to make sure that we're hearing your views which is why I come to a lot of schools and Amanda as your local member is also very frequently in your schools, so we can hear directly from you about what's important.
And that has made a difference to government plans and approaches.
For example, it was the raising of cyber bullying as such a big issue by young people that caused us to focus on bullying as an issue; cyber bullying, the way in which bullying can follow you from the school ground home, and to put new resources into combating cyber bullying. So hearing your views does make a difference.
QUESTION: I'm a member of Student Voice. How can we as Student Voice get involved in improving student wellbeing on a big scale, working with the Government?
PM: I think as a member of Student Voice, and I know that you do have a very active engagement here at the school which is terrific, I think the important thing is for you with your peers to be leading the conversations that help people be very honest about what reinforces their sense of wellbeing, but also what challenges their sense of wellbeing.
Often students will be more frank, more upfront with their fellow students than they will with adults, which is why your involvement really matters.
QUESTION: What do you enjoy most about coming back to Adelaide?
PM: First and foremost I get to visit my family, so that's pretty good, and I‘ll take the opportunity whilst I'm here to see my mother and my sister, so I'm looking forward to that.
Second, I get to spend time with some of our great MPs, including Amanda, and third I get to visit a number of places that I've known about ever since I was small, and to see what they look like now and what's happening there now and what the differences are.
This place, South Australia, is always going to have a very big place in my heart from growing up here and from it still being where my family home is.
And we think about South Australia as we design the big policies for the nation's future, including the focus that we've had on jobs during my visit here to make sure that when you're out of school and you've gone through university or got an apprenticeship, whatever future course you've got for your life, that there are high-skill, high-paid jobs here in South Australia so you can stay here and make a life here if that's what you choose to do.
QUESTION: I'd just like to say thank you, this is the last question. For my research project I'm concentrating on the effects of social media on mental health, and I just wanted to know what the Government was doing to address the concerns around this area.
PM: We do have a lot of concerns. I raised the topic of cyber bullying beforehand.
We're concerned, there are community concerns and probably here in this school there have been concerns too, that the immediacy and anonymity of some of the social media engagements - Twitter and Facebook and other ways of engaging with people - means that there can be cruelty in that environment.
I think people will say things through Twitter, when they can stay anonymous, that they would never say to someone's face.
And there have been instances where not only for young people but for older people, for people in the public eye, for some of our celebrities, that that kind of vicious criticism has got on top of them and has really challenged their mental health and made them think suicidal thoughts.
So this is of real concern, and we're very focussed on a set of programs including working with the Alannah and Madeleine Foundation to help work with schools and people generally to address issues with cyber bullying.
And also to work with some of our big media companies including companies like Google so that if there are really big problems online, that people can't be shielded by anonymity, but they can be held accountable for what they're doing in that environment.
But it's a continuing challenge and often we get some of the best ideas form people who are really immersed in social media, so we'll be interested to see what comes out of your research project.
Thank you very much.
[ENDS]