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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-06 Daily Xml
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Public Works Committee: Adelaide Secondary School of English Redevelopment

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:06): I move:

That the 99th report of the committee for the Fifty-Fourth Parliament, entitled Adelaide Secondary School of English Redevelopment Project, be noted.

Mr Speaker, as you are aware, Adelaide Secondary School of English is located on Torrens Road, West Croydon, in the City of Charles Sturt, and the school offers an intensive English language program for students newly arrived in Australia between the ages of 12 and 18. It is a very important and significant campus.

Student numbers increase steadily during each term as a consequence of what is known as the continuous enrolment intake process, with students transitioning to mainstream schools upon the completion of their English language course. Due to the small class sizes, more general learning spaces are required to deliver English language programs compared with mainstream high schools. As a shared site with the School of Languages, more than 800 students use the classrooms and facilities for evening and weekend language classes as well.

Adelaide Secondary School of English was allocated funding of $5 million as part of the Department for Education's capital works program and the proposed redevelopment of the school will include demolition and new works to accommodate up to 800 students on the school site. The Adelaide Secondary School of English redevelopment project will, in particular, deliver a new single-storey teaching building, incorporating general learning areas, specialised teaching spaces, student breakout areas, teacher preparation and associated amenities, the demolition of five buildings, the installation of a grounds shed, landscaping, shelter and paving.

The proposed redevelopment works will be staged, with construction expected to be complete in July 2021. The committee examined written and oral evidence in relation to this project and received assurances that appropriate consultation and agency consultation had been undertaken. The committee is satisfied that the proposal has been subject to the appropriate agency consultation and does meet the criteria for the examination of projects described in the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991. Based on the evidence considered and pursuant to section 12C of the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991, the Public Works Committee reports to parliament that it recommends the scope of the works that I have described to the house.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (11:09): I am really pleased to be able to rise to reflect on the Public Works Committee reports. The Adelaide Secondary School of English proposal is a $5 million project being led by principal, Antonella Macri, Swanbury Penglase architects and Minuzzo Project Management, who are delivering the project. They are doing a fantastic job. It is expected to be completed in September.

This is part of the Marshall Liberal government's record $1.3 billion investment in public school infrastructure. It is doing a number of things: it is preparing our schools for the introduction of year 7 into high school, and it is preparing our schools for the increased enrolments which have been coming through our primary schools in particular in recent years and which are continuing to grow as we have urban infill in some areas, increasing the populations in those areas.

We have choices being made about educational facilities and a confidence in our public education system and, notwithstanding the coronavirus pandemic, we have increasing confidence in our state. Last year was the first year since before the State Bank when more people came to South Australia than left for other states. That is an extraordinary opportunity for our state's economy. It also means that there are of course more young people needing to be educated in our school systems and that is a challenge we welcome and are looking forward to.

The Adelaide Secondary School of English has a particular focus and a particular cohort. It is an area that has been challenged by the coronavirus pandemic, as indeed many students have had disruptions to their own engagements with their families, but particularly there has been a challenge to the number of people coming in. That is something that, looking to the future, I look forward to when we have more and more people coming into our country and into our state from overseas. Many of them will need some of that extra support that has been provided. They will get that extra support in some outstanding facilities at the Adelaide Secondary School of English.

From September, when this project is complete, we will see the new building with general learning areas and art rooms, student support services, teacher prep space and amenities, and external works to the perimeter of that building—it will look fantastic. There will be a new groundskeeper shed and a new garden shelter, which will help with the grounds, and the demolition of ageing infrastructure.

There are some significant examples of ageing infrastructure around our schooling system. Across South Australia, I think something like nearly 80 per cent of our schools in the South Australian public education system have old transportable DEMAC buildings still on those sites. Thirty per cent of the classrooms across South Australia are these old transportables. We are now building these modular facilities in an entirely different way to an entirely different standard.

Some of the facilities built in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and moved around are not the places that we would like our students to be learning in anymore, so removing a lot of this old infrastructure is tremendously important. They are called transportables, but it is a bit of an ironic name these days because you cannot transport these things anywhere. Their final removal to their final resting place in many of these cases is something we very much look forward to.

Some of that is being replaced by modern bricks-and-mortar facilities. Some of it is being replaced by modern modular facilities. There are South Australian builders, including Ausco, Sarah Constructions and others, that have set up new facilities to help support South Australia's schooling sector—not just our public schools but our Catholic schools and independent schools as well.

The advances in technology in developing these modern modulars are ensuring that the quality of the product that is coming into our schools is better than and unlike anything they have seen before. They are very popular in the schools. Apart from anything else, delivering some of these modular facilities means that they take a very brief time on site to be plugged in because they are being built elsewhere. In any case, that is probably less relevant to the Adelaide Secondary School of English.

I commend the report of the Public Works Committee to the house and I look forward to, as I am sure all members do, seeing the final work completed. It is one of more than 100 projects around South Australia, more than 70 of them in construction right now, a couple of them even completed, and many, many more to be completed in the weeks and months ahead.

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:13): I wish briefly to emphasise, as I have earlier remarked in the house, the gratitude of the government for the minister's diligence in seeing through perhaps the most significant education capital works program in South Australia's history. It is a particularly valuable program but an impactful and meaningful one too.

Motion carried.

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