The SA Government realised a few years ago that if we are going to ensure that future generations can live prosperous and fulfilling lives in South Australia, our State will need to pull together to get the best outcomes through collaboration between government, community and business. After scanning the best ideas across the world, the government found an interesting model in the state of Oregon in the USA, used this to generate a model that would work for SA- and the South Australian Strategic Plan was born.
This plan is innovative because it looks past one election cycle, and bravely puts pegs in the ground for all of us to work towards well into the future. In new ways, it makes the government accountable for what it is achieving, and helps to focus everyone’s energies on goals that will make a difference.
Every part of government, including education, is now both encouraged and required to make sure it is lined up against the targets in this plan. This means when DECS does its planning, the executives have to ensure they are meeting the plan’s requirements, as well as planning for ongoing and everyday work. In turn, each division of the department has to show how it will make a contribution to the plan’s objectives, as well as how it will achieve its usual work, and finally each child care and school site will have to do the same.
Sometimes the work we have to do day by day can seem unconnected to a plan of this scale, but every coordinated effort helps to achieve a bigger result.
You can find out more about the plan, and read a two page summary of what it is aiming to do, by visiting www.sacentral.com.au and looking for the links to the SA Strategic Plan. On that site you will also find out what important supports to the plan such as the Economic Development Board, Social Inclusion Board, Sustainability Roundtable and Premier’s Science and Research Council are doing to further the plan’s objectives.
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I think an understanding of the state strategic plan gives us clear context in which to work. We still need to reconcile the tension caused by Treasury decisions to cut spending on education where the latest suggestions of a 1% work cover levy etc will have a massive impact on our discretionary spending. How do we respond to the skills shortage, make improvements to early childhood education etc with significantly less funding in our sites. The argument that SA is spending more per capita than other states doesn't help site balance budgets where they might be looking at a 10+% cut in non-salary expenditure.
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