School Closures

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:17): My question is to the Minister for Education. Will the minister rule out any further zone changes or school closures during his tenure?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (14:17): I thank the member for the question. I indicate that there are a couple of schools that are currently administratively closed. I think Mintabie is one. Tantanoola was administratively closed at the beginning of this year with zero students. I anticipate ordering reviews into those schools. There may possibly be another that has slipped my mind, but I don't think that that is the category that the deputy leader is concerned about.

There are zone changes certainly in the northern and southern suburbs. We are soon to begin consultation on what the zones will look like for the two new schools that are being built in Aldinga and Angle Vale. These two new schools, which are designed, as the member would be aware, for 1,675 students, are going to have a significant and positive impact on their local communities—growing communities where there is both housing growth at the moment and significant population stress on the existing high school infrastructure. So there will be high school zone changes in those areas informed by community consultation.

There may be, from time to time, small zone changes in primary school zones. The member would be aware that these things happen pretty regularly because when the primary school zonings were created—I think in the late seventies—they drew a line on the map and said, 'This is the closest one' and often that created unintended consequences for some of those zones. The member for Playford would recall requesting one in his area that we were able to support in late 2018. These sorts of changes happen in primary schools. They are usually small changes, so they may happen from time to time, but I don't anticipate anything substantial in that space.

The issues confronting Springbank that lead us to contemplate a school review are unique in the metropolitan Adelaide area in that this is a school that is, by factors, smaller than any others and certainly smaller in terms of the number of students in its zone who are coming to it. That is why we are giving consideration to this school. There are no other schools in the metropolitan area that fall into this category and I certainly don't anticipate having to weigh this difficult sort of question in my mind in relation to any other schools.