Light Electorate

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:22): Today I would like to bring to the house's attention to some matters pertaining to my electorate, the electorate of Light, and to a couple of events that have occurred recently which would be of interest to the chamber. First of all, last week I had the opportunity to attend for the first time the Northern Adelaide Senior College. For members, the Northern Adelaide Senior College is a new college which replaced the old Para West re-entry school on the old Elizabeth West High School site.

That school had been built probably in the 1960s, I would say, and had reached its natural life. The college was then relocated to buildings within the TAFE site at Elizabeth. Saying they have been relocated, the buildings were gutted out and refitted, and I must confess they are very impressive—extremely impressive. I would love to be a student at that college. The college is doing extremely well. You have to remember it is a senior college. It is only for years 11 and 12 and has over 550 students enrolled there at the moment, which is quite an achievement.

The school specialises as a re-entry college for young people who have, for whatever reason, left school early and have decided to go back to complete their SACE. The focus of the college is to help students obtain their SACE, and they also do some work in partnership with both TAFE and the Northern Sound System centre. I walked around the college as a guest of the principal, Colleen Abbott; Claire Blunt, the assistant principal; Anne Sim, the deputy principal; and also the governing council deputy chair, Braden, and another member of the governing council, Brad. The latter two of those are students at the college.

What impressed me about the college, apart from the actual premises themselves, which are really great, is that it has more of a flavour or feeling of a university campus than a school, which is probably ideal because these are young people who have left mainstream schooling and did not fit into normal school arrangements for whatever reason.

Importantly, this college is re-engaging young people into education. It is helping them to get their SACE and, hopefully, get them into either further education through TAFE, university, employment or an apprenticeship. I had the opportunity to talk to some of the students around the college, and they were extremely complimentary of the leadership of the college. In fact, a few of them said that if it were not for the leadership they probably would not be at that college. The quality of staff at that college is extremely highly regarded by the students.

The school provides a re-entry program, and students who perhaps once were FLO students have come back into what you might call a mainstream college. Also, importantly, it runs a program for young mums. The young mums program is designed to help young women who have left school early because they had a child. They provide a creche and other supporting facilities, which means these young mums are back at school learning. This is very important not only for their own independence but also for the next generation because their children are learning at the creche and also at the college through the childcare facilities available there.

The college also provides an English as a second language program. I had an opportunity to sit in on a class with students from right across the world. What impressed me about the students was what their goals are for life. They have set their goals really high, which is great. These are young people who have either migrated to Australia with their families, or younger people who have come here as refugees. These young people will make an enormous contribution to our community, and it is great to see them. They also run an Aboriginal program. In conjunction with the Northern Sound centre, they run a very high level music and performance program.

As I said, I was blown away by the college on my first visit, and I would like to commend not only all those people involved in establishing the college but also the current leadership and students for their great work. I think it is very important to understand that this college serves quite a large area. It serves people from Mawson Lakes to the Barossa area. There are a wide range of students who, if it were not for this college, would not be learning. So, they are in a situation where they are learning and, hopefully, will be earning an income in the future.

Time expired.