Geranium Primary School Site

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:50): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister update the house on the disposal of the Geranium Primary School? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: The Geranium Primary School officially closed last year following a decline in enrolments.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:51): I thank the member for MacKillop for this important question and I am happy to provide him and this place with an update on the disposal of that site. For those not familiar with Geranium Primary School, it was, in its day, a very large regional primary school. In fact, there were 247 pupils at Geranium Primary School I think back in 1965, so in its day it was what you would probably describe as one of our biggest country primary schools.

Unfortunately, as the population of the town dwindled, those enrolments dwindled as well, and the department made the decision—after a committee that was established in November 2022 to do a review into whether or not the school would continue—that, because there were no students enrolled or attending the school as at term 3 of that year, unfortunately the school would close.

I want to thank the member for MacKillop and the member for Hammond who both accepted my invitation to be on that committee as local members who have, of course, a really strong interest in that area and in regional schools in the parts of the state that they represent in this place for being a part of it. I know those committees are not easy. It is a very difficult decision to make to close any school even if it is one that no longer has any students.

But I am very pleased that we have made some progress, thanks in no small part due to the advocacy of the member for MacKillop, and those other members I mentioned as well, around trying to do what we could to preserve the site for community use. We know that in regional parts of our state particularly, more so than metropolitan areas, schools play a really important role over and above often just the education of the young people who live in that area. They are true community assets and, in the case of Geranium, there was a gymnasium and a swimming pool as well which are, of course, really important assets for the local community and not things that they had anywhere else nearby.

One of the saddest things, I think, about the decision that we took here in the end to close the school was that we are dealing on almost a daily basis with trying to make sure we upgrade our existing school infrastructure stock, refurbish it, fix it, maintain it, build new stock often at sites where they might have been used a bit beyond their original use-by date, but Geranium is actually in fantastic condition and a really good site.

Unfortunately, there are no students to go there, which is a great shame, but we have done some great work through the advocacy of the member for MacKillop and I must say the Department for Education led by Ben Temperly, who has had to take on something here which the department has not really done before, which is looking at actually disposing of the site and providing it to a community group so that they can continue the stewardship or maintenance of the site so that the community at large can continue to use that space. We are talking about some really important local—not just assets, but things like playgroups, the gymnasium, the swimming pool, a library and a play cafe, all things which are really important to the Geranium community which they would not have had we disposed of this site and sold it in the normal way.

I am very pleased to inform the member for MacKillop, and I thank him for his advocacy, that the formal transfer of the site will be completed by 31 January next year, which is fantastic news. It means it will go to the local community to be used as that hub, and those fantastic assets there, that have been built with South Australian taxpayer dollars over the years, will continue to be available for people who live in that part of our state for many years to come.