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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2007-10-17 Daily Xml
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ANDAMOOKA PRIMARY SCHOOL

Ms BREUER (Giles) (15:35): On 29 September, I was delighted to attend the Andamooka Primary School's 60th birthday celebration. It was a wonderful night—a beautiful Andamooka night, of course. I have had a long association with the town of Andamooka and with the primary school, so I was very pleased to attend. I was at the opening of the original school library building a couple of years ago, which, unfortunately, is no longer there. The history of the school is that it was established in 1947 and, at that time, it was a simple wooden hut, with one teacher and 11 children. Later on, the community of Andamooka grew and it grew to quite a large school for the region in the 1970s and 1980s—of course, this was prior to Roxby Downs. At present, the school is a community-based primary school. In 2006, we had four devastating fires which burnt down most of the original school, all the teaching and administration buildings on the site.

However, I have to recognise the resilience and the spirit of the community. The staff, the local community, the parents and the students worked together, with support from the Department of Education and Children's Services, and maintained a program of learning and wellbeing for the staff and students at the school. After the final fire, the children attended the Roxby Area School for some months. During that time, a joint community and DECS decision was made to develop the school into an early year centre, and planning for that began last year. The school is still in a transitional phase, but plans have been well developed and tenders have been called for the new early years centre, and that should be completed by the end of this year.

A parenting program attached to the child-parent centre has also been established since the fires at the school. This program has been delivered through partnerships with Roxby Health Services and BHP Billiton. Other programs include a scrapbooking group for parents, a weekly toddler story time, an early years literacy program and a playgroup. School-wide baseline testing of all students has been done in literacy and numeracy, and all children at Andamooka Primary School have an individual education plan which has been developed in consultation with the parents. Another thing which arose out of the fires was a grounds revitalisation program. It is linked to a children's garden and a whole school integrated curriculum program for students.

I am looking forward to the results of this because it will include a new sports court, a pool recreation area, an adventure playground, a preschool playground and a desert garden and propagating centre. There have been many challenges for the Andamooka school over the years, from those harsh early days when there were no blackboards and only two books to the challenges faced by the school in that dreadful year last year. However, the community and the school have always pulled together. It now has 22 primary school children and a wonderful principal, Angela Turner, who has been an inspiration to that community through its troubled times. I do have to put in a good word for the school. One issue about which I am a little sad is the fact that year 6 and 7 students no longer attend the Andamooka Primary School, they now go to Roxby.

Lots of discussion has occurred about this issue. The reasoning is that it is believed that they are better off attending the Roxby school because they can mix with other children. I have to say that I feel for the community and I have had a lot of pressure from the community about this. They would like to get years 6 and 7 back to their school. I certainly hope that the minister will take heed of pleas that are on their way to her from a number of year 5 students who have to move next year and who want to stay in the area. The other thing to which I pay tribute is the completion of the Myall Place urban regeneration project in Whyalla in which I participated last week. The Housing Trust built its first homes in Whyalla in 1941, in fact they were the first country trust homes in the state. Myall Place was a project approved by this government and named after the western myall trees in our area, which is the main vegetation in the Whyalla area. It is a fine example of our investment in regional South Australia.

This project consists of a $1.6 million investment, and certainly it has paid off. Land sales have meant the construction of more than 100 new houses and money to renovate another 35. The whole project was instrumental, I think, in the housing boom that is happening in Whyalla. We now have a number of other private developers in the area building houses. The initial sale price for blocks of land in this project was $15,000. Similar allotments are now selling for more than $50,000, which reflects the prosperity and the great value this project has added to our community and which has spread out into the rest of the housing industry in Whyalla.

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