Inclusion teachers begin student support roles S. Australia

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South Australian primary schools will now have specialist autism inclusion teachers, with more than 400 starting in the roles in the first week back from holidays.

Premier Peter Malinauskas said the aim of the newly created roles was to increase the skills of the state's 18,000 teachers.

"In every classroom there is at least one child who is autistic — at least one," Mr Malinauskas said.

"Some classrooms have two or three children that are autistic.

"The challenge here is to bring those 18,000 teachers up to speed with the most modern practices around assisting a child who is autistic."

Richmond Primary School teacher Rob Oien is one of the 417 new autism inclusion teachers.

He said the role is not designed to work directly with students with autism.

"My role will be more to do with dealing with my colleagues, supporting my colleagues, looking at best practice rather than myself being in the classroom interacting with those students," he said.

The teachers will have up to one day a week in the autism inclusion role and will continue as regular classroom teachers for the rest of the week.

Assistant Minister for Autism, Emily Bourke, said one day a week was the starting point.

"Today is the first day of our autism inclusion teachers," she said.

"If we didn't start here, if we didn't finally give in and start providing some support, we would be having this conversation still in 10 years' time.

Training for the new positions has just begun, and will be done through webinars and face-to-face sessions.

Parents of children with autism have welcomed the move.