Gilles Street Primary School

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:31): Yesterday I had the enormous privilege of spending the morning at Gilles Street Primary School along with the education minister, the member for Wright, to celebrate its 125^th birthday. On 14 May 1900, Gilles Street Primary School opened. It was designed for 500 students, but just a couple of months after it opened inspectors found that there were actually 588 students enrolled at the school.

It has a remarkable history as one of South Australia's first public schools. It first began as two separate schools, the Gilles Street Practising School and the Gilles Street Infant Practising School. The period of the 1920s to 1960s marked the start of other organisations using the school's buildings, such as Correspondence School, Girls' Special Classes, the Deaf Blind Unit, the Language Centre and the Curriculum Unit. Then, in 1962, those two schools amalgamated into the present day Gilles Street Primary.

It was such a beautiful celebration yesterday at the school. We were treated to beautiful performances by the students, including their taiko drumming. Gilles Street Primary is quite well known for its taiko drumming. It is quite an iconic instrument for the school, and I want to thank Pauline Thomas for her teaching of the taiko drumming to students over very many years.

The school captains of the school did such a tremendous job MC'ing the event, and we were also treated to a beautiful rendition of I Am Australian which included sign language, and the Australian national anthem.

I had the pleasure of meeting one of the former students of the school. Her name is Bernice Dean, and she went to the school in 1942. She said that she had lived on Halifax Street and would walk to Gilles Street Primary but after the war her family did have to move down to Ascot Park. You could see that she was quite sad about the fact that she had to leave the beautiful Gilles Street Primary. My mum informed me last night, actually, when I was telling her about my day that my great-uncle Frank Major was the headmaster at Gilles Street Primary, Mum recalls, in around the 1950s. I think that is just an example of the one degree of separation that we have here in Adelaide.

Some other interesting history about the school was that it was actually named after Osmond Gilles, who was an early Treasurer of the colony. Today, it operates with approximately 300 students. It has a mainstream primary school and also an intensive English language program for newly arrived students.

I love the school's motto, which is 'The world in our city school', because it actually has students from over 40 different cultural backgrounds. I think that is also part of the magic of Gilles Street. It is such a diverse, inclusive, welcoming and creative school community that they have really been able to foster in the heart of our city. That is something they should be so incredibly proud of.

One of the other special moments yesterday was the unveiling of a specially commissioned artwork of the facade of Gilles Street Primary, which was painted by renowned South Australian artist George Linou. It was such a beautiful painting, and when the principal of Gilles Street, Angela Van Enkhuyzen, unveiled the portrait you could hear all the little voices of the students gasping in awe at just how beautiful this painting was of their school.

That was an effort by the parents and community engagement group, otherwise known as PACE, at Gilles Street Primary. I want to thank Sarah Ladewig-Jones and all of the parents on PACE at Gilles Street Primary School for organising such a beautifully commissioned artwork. They are going to be selling signed prints of that artwork as a fundraiser for the school as well. Congratulations to all of those parents on that effort.

It is also a very caring school, and that is why I worked with the school community, as one of my election commitments, to deliver a school crossing out the front of the school, a 25km school crossing. Cars used to be able to just drive past at 50 km/h. I worked with the school community to be able to deliver that crossing, so that we do have a much safer school community in front of Gilles Street and Pulteney. A huge congratulations to the students past and present, staff past and present and the wonderful school community that makes up Gilles Street Primary. Happy 125^th.