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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-09-19 Daily Xml
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GLENCOE CENTRAL PRIMARY SCHOOL

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:25): I rise today to wish the Glencoe Central Primary School a very happy 40th birthday. I was there when the school opened in 1972, which came about after the closure of Glencoe East and Glencoe West primary schools. I was at the Glencoe West Primary School, following in the tradition of both my grandmothers and my mother, who went to that school. By the time they closed it in 1972 there were about 30 students left at that school. I for one was very glad to see the government of the day, a Labor government, closing two schools to make one really good school.

Glencoe Central is a fantastic school and I was proud to be invited back there a few weeks ago to make a speech and talk about my recollections of the school. It was terrific to see a former teacher, Val Hunter, who was my grade 1 and 2 teacher. She was a real stickler for spelling, I remember, and also reading aloud. We would have parents come in and listen to us read aloud. It is one of those things that I think if you get it early, that skill and that talent and that love of reading, but also reading aloud, it can lead to all sorts of places.

I look back, from this chamber now, to those days and think about how important they were in my formative years as a five and six year old. As I said on the day to Mrs Hunter, I thanked her personally and I thanked her publicly in my speech because all of our teachers, wherever they are in this state, play such an important role. While those memories never leave us, it was also great to hear Mrs Hunter say that she has been following my career.

They call them SSOs now, but back in 1972 they called them teachers' aides. Mary Phelan was the mum you had at school when you had left your mum at home. She was always there with some comforting words. She was the person you would go to if you needed a Disprin or a bandaid or something like that. I thank Mrs Phelan and all those teachers' aides who have looked after so many kids around the state over the years and the SSOs who have taken over that role, they play a very important role in not only supporting the students but supporting the teaching staff.

The school opened with an enrolment of 100 students. I was not there for the first week, I had the mumps and I was very upset about that because we had closed down the old school and we were very much looking forward to moving into the new school with the brand new desks. I was thinking that they would all be worn out by the time I got there and that I would not necessarily have the best spot in the class, but I must say that after a week I sort of fitted in quite well. I met all of the new kids from the Glencoe East school and I thought it was the biggest school in the state.

It was interesting to go back there a couple of weeks ago and see that the play area, which I thought was massive, is not quite as big as I thought it was and that Mrs Hunter is not as tall as I thought she was. It puts it all into perspective. The other thing that put it into perspective was going from a school of 29 kids to a school of 100 kids. I really did think it was the biggest school in the world.

A few years later, when I was in grade 5, we moved to Adelaide. David Tassell, who had been the principal at Glencoe Central School, became the principal at Pennington Primary School, so the three of us kids moved to Pennington Primary School for a few weeks while we were working out where we were going to live. The Pennington Hostel was just down the road from Pennington Primary School, so we had all these refugees from Vietnam. There were lots of English migrants in there, but we could not actually understand a lot of what was happening because where we had come from in the South-East there was not a lot of multiculturalism. There were a lot of English and Irish backgrounds and third and fourth generations.

The other thing about Pennington primary was that it had two-storey buildings. We had to go upstairs to get to the classrooms, which was completely different to having one open unit at Glencoe where we had grades 1 and 2 in one class, grades 3 and 4 in Mrs Peacock's class, grades 5 and 6 in Ms Daveron's class, and then Mr Tassell was the teacher of grade 7.

It was really great to see the 57 students who are there now, and they are doing a great job in carrying on the tradition of Glencoe Central Primary School, which is really well supported by the local community. I congratulate all the parents as well not only for the work they did on making the 40th birthday celebration a great day but also for the work they do day in, day out to make sure that the school is a focal point of the local community.

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