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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-10-30 Daily Xml
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STIRLING EAST PRIMARY SCHOOL

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen) (15:51): I am sure that the member for Norwood almost outdid the member for Morphett in the speed of delivery of that grievance, if that is possible, but I doubt it. I rise with the most pleasant grieve this afternoon. It is my great joy to talk to the chamber about one of the wonderful schools in my electorate, and I have many wonderful schools in my electorate, stretching, as it does, from the central Hills area way down to Mount Compass and Kangarilla. So, there are some fabulous schools.

In particular, today I want to talk about the school that happens to be closest to my home and the one that my own children attended, and that is Stirling East Primary School. I do not know how many members of the chamber saw the news during the week, but little Stirling East Primary School won the Tournament of Minds—not just the state Tournament of Minds, but the Tournament of Minds Australasian Pacific finals in Melbourne. This little team from Stirling East Primary School were the winners of the Australasian Pacific finals in Melbourne in the primary maths engineering section, beating not only all other states, but also selected teams from Singapore.

These kids from little Stirling East Primary School in the Adelaide Hills put themselves up against the best that the rest of the country—and even Singapore—had to offer, and they won. This is not a simple thing. In fact, when I read about the details of the actual problem involved, I was glad it was them and not me, because I do not think I could have done it. Admittedly, I married a mathematician and I have a son who is an engineer, and other people in the family seem to have some maths skills that perhaps are lacking for me. This competition is not just about maths engineering problem-solving.

I will name the team right at the outset, because I think that every one of their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and brothers and sisters deserve to know the names of these kids. They were: Emily Biggs, Lincoln Bennett, Mitchell Brunker, Isabella Shaw, Madeleine Kok, Daniel Handsworth and Austin Zilm. That is the group that did the test in this wonderful Tournament of Minds. My kids were also involved in it when they were at Stirling East Primary School.

These kids had to design a tower made from paper or light card cubes. They needed to create that tower in a zig-zag format. It also needed to be able to support the weight of 250 grams, and the cubes that they made could not be glued together. So, there was that part of the problem—actually constructing the cubes, making the tower in a zig-zag format, not being able to glue it together, and it had to be able to withstand the weight.

The second part was that they were asked to create a scenario play as to why the tower was built and why it was significant. So, there was a whole other side to this: not just building a tower, but creating a whole play scenario. All states were given the same materials, which were limited; and they were all asked to make props, costumes, masks, and so on, and they were to present it in a square three metres by three metres with no backdrop.

So they had a three-hour lockdown and the seven students I named had to work together, using their individual strengths and their pooled knowledge, to create a seamless presentation taking no more than 10 minutes. In addition to all this—as if this were not enough for them to do in their three hours—they were given a spontaneous problem to brainstorm together and select their top answer.

The Tournament of Minds is pretty high-powered stuff for this very young group of primary school students—when my kids did it they went, I think, to Flinders University and participated against other schools from the southern suburbs and so on—and I have no doubt that each of these seven students will go on to great things in the future, having achieved this. I congratulate those students, Stirling East Primary School and Suzanne Conboy, the teacher facilitator for the Tournament of the Minds at the school.

As I said, I am proud of all the schools in my electorate and I rarely get up to single out one above the others; however, having won such a prestigious national and indeed international event, it deserves the recognition of having it forever in the record of this house so that the school can have a copy of the Hansard and know that those efforts were recognised by all of us.

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