Fisher Electorate

Ms COOK (Fisher) (15:15): I rise today to speak about a few of the schools in my area and reflect on my own school years in sports days, which were always a highlight. I entered as many events in those as I could and always looked keenly at an opportunity to miss out on some structured lessons and take it a bit further and compete in the interschool sports as well.

One of my great joys representing the community is actually the opportunity to attend some of these wonderful events, including the sports days. Most of them are held in the first term at schools, with the best performers then able to go on to compete at district and state events. In the past few weeks I have attended five sports days in Fisher. Each school has a very different approach, and I would just like to talk to each of their sports days briefly if I could.

Happy Valley Primary School has about 275 students from reception to year 7 and, on the day, 100 per cent of their students participated together across four houses. They started the day with a great energetic warm-up led by a high energy dance instructor. The teachers participated, too, to the joy of the children. A huge amount of parents were also in attendance, and they thoroughly enjoyed it.

The upper primary students then competed in a mixture of traditional and participation-type events while the junior primary students did mostly fun events. Many of these were facilitated actually by six state sporting bodies, including basketball, football and others, and on that day the yellow team, the Nicolle team, for the fourth year in a row, was the victor.

On the same day, which was quite a warm day, I attended Reynella East College's whole-of-school sports day. That is P-12 school, so it has preschool through to year 12. I currently have my second child going through its education system. He is in year 9, and I am sure also takes every opportunity to miss out on structured lessons by participating in various sports. He actually, I believe, has lunch and recess as his favourite subjects.

It is a huge school with nearly 1,800 students across all years. The sports day had awesome participation with a mixture of events, including tabloid, athletics, relays and many other activities. A highlight was the P-12 relay with participants across all years. It was such a hot day and the teachers made a point of getting around with the sunscreen and making sure that the kids wore a hat. Honestly, that is just not easy when dealing with a bunch of fashion-conscious teenagers, but they did very well.

I volunteered over the lunch period on the governing council barbecue, and I can tell you that I smelt of sausage and onion for the whole afternoon, well into the evening and at an event later that night. The day was clearly a success, with students thriving on the inter-house rivalry. The Deputy Speaker, who has just vacated the chair, would be very pleased to hear that the blue team of Florey was the winner on points, so I will be sure to let her know.

Aberfoyle Park Campus Primary School is a trailblazing school with three primaries on one campus across state, independent and Catholic schools with Nativity being a Catholic school and Pilgrim a Uniting Church school and Thiele a public school. There are about 600 or 700 students, and the parental support on that day was superb. The school has got two really large playing fields and they were full of kids doing events. My favourite was the rubber chicken toss and noting a reception student with great talent throwing at least three times further than any other member of the class.

Clarendon Primary School has 90 students and is in beautiful settings in the hills with the original schoolhouse that was opened in the early 1900s. They had great participation and ran on a structure of having the events in the afternoon followed by a sausage sizzle with parents. The winner on the day both on points and in team spirit was Thorpe.

Aberfoyle Park High School has been led through cultural change by the principal, Liz Mead, and they had a whole-of-school Sports Day at Flinders University with everyone being abuzz with activity, although I do think that having both the European exchange students on the European handball team for one house was a little bit stacked. Barassi was the winner on the day but, on all days, the winners are our kids.