MacKillop Electorate Schools

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:48): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the Minister give an update to the house on the recent visit to the MacKillop electorate? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: Earlier this year the Minister for Education visited the school communities of Millicent, Beachport, Kingston, Tintinara, Meningie and Raukkan.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:48): I did greatly enjoy my visit to the South-East. As the member said, I visited a number of our sites there. I started off at Kingston Area School to formally open the capital works redevelopment there. It was a project first announced by the member for Port Adelaide, I think back in 2017. While we were there we visited the Kingston childcare centre. Many people in this chamber will be aware that it is a pretty innovative announcement made in conjunction with the council and with the federal government around finding a childcare solution for the Kingston South-East region, given there is a very long waiting list there. It was good to meet with the local community who had championed that cause and will actually see that that will now be delivered.

I also visited Millicent High School, Tintinara Area School and Meningie Area School as well, and I did visit Beachport Primary School at the request of the school. They wanted to speak to me very frankly about some infrastructure challenges that they have, and I agreed to do that. We went on a tour of the school. I saw the infrastructure, and I think I was pretty frank and honest to the school and governing council leadership in my assessment of that infrastructure—that it wasn't up to scratch, and I acknowledged that it needs attention.

In the spirit of being frank with them and not misleading them, I said that they are not alone there and that the government is doing what it can to improve the stock of our public education sites but that there is a lot more work to do. I didn't make any commitments to Beachport Primary about what can be done, but I did make a commitment to go away and speak again to the education department around what capacity we might have to look at Beachport Primary School specifically, in acknowledgement of having seen it for myself and confirming that it is not as we would like it to be.

I would like to put on the record that—despite that it doesn't make any minister for education's job easier when you meet with schools like that and they show you infrastructure that needs a bit of TLC—it is good to have our governing councils and our school leadership advocating for their sites and requesting to have the minister come out and make a case for why they deserve some further investment. I will meet the commitment I made to the school and go away and look at that and come back to the school as quickly as I can.