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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-04-04 Daily Xml
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MAWSON ELECTORATE

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:31): I rise today to talk about some schools in the electorate of Mawson. This morning, it was my great privilege to be at Willunga High School to open more than $7.5 million worth of improvements to the school. We actually lost count of how much money was spent on it (I am sure the department will have it somewhere) but, as we went through the process of fixing up one of the most rundown schools in the state, we worked out that more and more needed to be done, and we found some things along the way.

We were going to do up half of the home economics area, but then the rats got in and ate the electrical wiring in the other half, so we had to come up with some more money to do the whole lot. We also had the problem of bubbling sewage on the school property, which meant more cost, but it was money that the department and the minister found so that Willunga High School can now rate itself as having some of the best facilities of any school in South Australia.

That was not the scene in 2005 when, as the candidate for the seat of Mawson, I was invited to Willunga High School by the then chair of the governing council. There were pretty bad old buildings that had not been replaced since the school was built back in 1960, and in fact some of the temporary buildings had been there since day one, so they were almost 50 years old. They had rotting wood, they had rats, and they were terrible places to try to study in and also terrible places to teach in.

It was also bad because they were the years 8 and 9 classrooms; parents would bring their primary school kids along to have a look at the school and quite often make the decision that Willunga High School would not be the place they would send their children to school because the conditions were not up to scratch. I took Jane Lomax-Smith (the then education minister) along to have a look, and in fact we turned up with the then premier on Janelle Reimann's first day as principal at Willunga High School.

Jane Lomax-Smith was taken aback by the conditions, and she described them as being like a concentration camp and vowed to do everything she could to fix the problem. I kept lobbying for the next year, and we got some funding to do a feasibility study. In the 2008 budget, I was very pleased that the money was there to do a complete overhaul, to build a lot of new classrooms and also to upgrade and retrofit the existing classrooms.

That is what we opened today—these sensational classrooms that in many cases have glass walls that open up so that you actually have the feeling that you are outside while still sitting in class. Willunga High School has gone from having some of the worst buildings of any school in South Australia to having the very best, which is only appropriate for a school that already boasts very fine students, a wonderful principal and great teachers and support staff.

Another school in Willunga (although it does not operate as a school anymore) is the James Bassett School, which is 158 years old. The National Trust in Willunga does a magnificent job, and on Monday night I presented them with a cheque so that they could buy computer equipment to enable them to do live links to schools around South Australia to show what schooling was like 158 years ago. I congratulate the National Trust on that, and it will be great to compare the old James Bassett school with this almost brand-new Willunga High School around the corner.

It is also a special day for another school in the electorate of Mawson—Woodcroft Primary School, the state's biggest primary school, which is today celebrating its 20th anniversary. Being the biggest primary school in the state, with almost 1,000 students, it is obviously a big part of the local Woodcroft community where 11,500 people live. The school is a focal point for all the parents and grandparents of children who go there, and it was wonderful to be at their sports day last month and see so many parents and grandparents out there, and to participate in one of the more fun events of the day, the tug of war. I jumped on the teachers' side and we took on the parents and we won the best of three competition—2-0.

I really want to congratulate Pam Kent, the principal at Woodcroft Primary School, all the teachers, the SSOs and the governing council (I am a regular at their governing council meetings) and all the wonderful students there. I look forward to seeing you the next time I am at the school or the next time you come in for a tour of Parliament House. All the best for your 20-year celebrations and all the best for a bright future.

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