This ain’t the classroom you learnt in. A tech firm, a global defence company and SA teachers have teamed up to build an extraordinary new workforce.

There are 14 kids sitting on the floor. All are playing close attention to the teacher at the front of the classroom. Most of them are 10 years old and even though, maybe, a couple are fiddling with their iPads, there is still rapt attention from all involved. No fidgeting, no whispering to each other, just concentration on what “Mr S” is showing them. The only noise in the room belongs to the teacher and chatter leaking through from an adjoining class. These are year 5 kids at Elizabeth Downs Primary School.
What the teacher is demonstrating is a new way of teaching kids. A method that wants to move away from the more passive teacher and textbook approach to something that embraces virtual technology and augmented reality.
Today Mr S is showing his students how to create 3D digital designs using a program called Tinkercad. A room next door is full of VR glasses, AR cubes, robots designed by students, drones, drone gates and a 3D printer.
It’s a long way from teachers writing on blackboards with crumbling white chalk.
These kids are part of a pilot program called Beacon that wants to hook kids on the kinds of subjects that we keep being told they don’t do enough of. Science, technology, engineering and maths. Or to give it its catch-all title – STEM. The subjects everyone laments that not enough kids study these days, especially as Australia rushes headlong into a future where it hopes to build nuclear submarines and other assorted
hi-tech defence toys.
One of the students sitting on the floor is 10-year-old Crowley Flynn Crowley already has his sights set on delivering those nukes for Australia.
“I really want to work with the subs and be a boilermaker,’’ Crowley says. “A lot of my family do trades and I want to work building the subs.”
Crowley, along with his classmates Emma Schedewy and Lucas Taylor are loving the new class. Emma has her sights set on becoming a scientist, possibly working in the field of climate change, while Lucas is another who sees himself working on Australia’s future submarine program, possibly in the research field.
“It’s so much better because we can actually do stuff, rather than thinking about how to do stuff,” Emma says. “It’s definitely more interesting when you can use your creativity.”
Crowley, Emma and Lucas may already be converts to this new world, but the numbers show that even children who are interested in subjects such as science and maths in primary school lose the passion as they become older and the subjects become more complex as they enter high school. There is also the natural focus many students and their families place on achieving a good ATAR score, which can lead to kids ditching harder science and maths subjects.
A recent study by the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute showed high school enrolments in advanced maths subjects dropped to a historic low in 2020.
The Institute found just 9.2 per cent of students studied high-level maths, down from 11.6 per cent in 2008. Enrolments in intermediate-level maths plunged from 23.3 per cent in 2008 to 17.6 per cent in 2020. Which, with forecasts that the state will need a workforce of around 10,000 highly educated, highly qualified people to build the subs, is something of a worry.
The Beacon program that is captivating the students at Elizabeth Downs is run by a technology company called Lumination and also involves defence and shipbuilding company BAE. It’s the second year for Beacon, which started at Northfield and Enfield primary schools last year for students in years 4 to 6.
This year more than 600 students from South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and New South Wales will take part in the program.
The idea is to spark the imagination of students through the use of virtual and augmented reality, coding, robotics, artificial intelligence and 3D modelling. There has already been a tour of the Osborne shipyard where the submarines will be built. There is also an “intensive’’ camp where all the kids come together for a weekend.
Outside of the classroom Mr S is Shane Singlehurst He is the STEM specialist at Elizabeth Downs Primary School and thought Beacon would bring new opportunities to the school. Elizabeth Downs is ranked by the state’s education department as a category one school, making it one of the most disadvantaged in South Australia.