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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-04 Daily Xml
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Public Works Committee: Ardtornish Primary School Redevelopment

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:34): I move:

That the 93rd report of the committee for the Fifty-Fourth Parliament, entitled Ardtornish Primary School Redevelopment Project, be noted.

Mr CREGAN: It certainly is a pleasure to bring up the 93rd report of the Public Works Committee, entitled Ardtornish Primary School Redevelopment Project. The primary school is located in Saarinen Avenue, St Agnes, in the city of Tea Tree Gully. The school site has ageing accommodation and transportable amenities requiring relocation. This project also forms part of the extraordinary capital works program that the very diligent Minister for Education has been seeing through in the 35 months of this government. The school was allocated funding of $5 million as part of the Department for Education's capital works program. The Department for Education has advised that the proposed primary school project will deliver a total school enrolment capacity of 600 places by 2022. Ardtornish Primary School has 545 enrolments as of February 2020.

The scope of the redevelopment work at the primary school includes the construction of a new modular building, including general learning areas, breakout spaces with wet areas, student disability amenities, storage, teacher preparation, withdrawal spaces with connection to the oval and nature play spaces, demolition of ageing buildings and the relocation of transportable amenities to another school site. When complete, the redevelopment project will provide modern educational accommodation, meet legislative compliance requirements and deliver the department's benchmark accommodation for students in a primary school.

The key outcomes required at the completion of this project are to provide contemporary learning areas that support 21st century learning pedagogy, to develop creative, flexible learning spaces to enhance student engagement and allow collaborative teaching practices and to replace aged buildings with new, efficient facilities. The primary school redevelopment project will be staged, with construction expected to be completed in the course of this year.

The committee examined written and oral evidence in relation to the project and received assurances that the appropriate consultation in relation to this project had been undertaken. I also report to parliament that the committee is satisfied that the proposal has been subject to the appropriate agency consultation and meets the criteria for the examination of projects set out 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 the house that it recommends the scope of the proposed public works that I have earlier mentioned.

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (11:37): I rise with great pleasure today to talk about this project at Ardtornish Primary School, a fantastic local primary school within the north-east. I would like to commend firstly the Public Works Committee for all its work but also, importantly, the Marshall Liberal government for its significant support for school infrastructure not just in my electorate but right across our state. We are providing educational institutions that already do a wonderful job in terms of their teaching outcomes with world-class facilities to back that up.

Ardtornish Primary School is led by a fantastic team. The school's principal, Mark Hansen, does a wonderful job, as does deputy principal, Deb Pryor. On top of that, it is supported by the broader school community through an energetic governing council led by Corinne Walding. This primary school engages very much with its local community, particularly during the annual Tea Tree Gully Christmas pageant, when it holds a local fete on its oval. I have been able to attend a number of times, but unfortunately not last year due to COVID. Hopefully, into the future it will continue to engage the community in this way.

Ardtornish is quite a large local primary school with more than 500 students. It is very popular. There is actually quite incredible demand for it, as it has wonderful outcomes for students. The school is led by Mark Hansen, who has a really strong passion for and understanding of the importance of literacy in those early years. In fact, he was seconded by the department to help roll out the year 1 phonics check a couple of years ago right across the state—unsurprisingly, given that Ardtornish has some very strong outcomes for literacy in those early years, and we know how important it is to get those literacy skills in the very first years of school.

I am also pleased that Ardtornish Primary School participated in my most recent Christmas card competition just at the end of last year, and the year 3/4 classes all entered their designs. They selected from their own group the top 10 designs, and from there I was forced to make that unenviable decision of choosing a winner. In the end, Max was successful with his surfing Santa design, which I thought was something a bit different, and I know that quite a few people through the community who have received these Christmas cards were very pleased.

The school community, including past students, are incredibly excited about this upgrade. There is no doubt that there are some very tired and old buildings at Ardtornish Primary School that are well due for replacement. In fact, some of them have been sinking at one end, so they are very excited to see this project underway.

I visited not that long ago—a number of months ago now—with the Minister for Education, and we saw all the temporary prefab modular classrooms being set up, which was a fantastic set-up. A local firm, Centina, was doing this work. The quality of these classrooms, as the Minister for Education mentioned earlier, is not like the old days of the old style of transportables. These really are very good. In fact, many of the teachers and students commented on how much of a step up even the temporary situation was from what they had. They mentioned it very quietly of course because they are still very keen to have the upgrade, but nonetheless were very pleased with what the temporary classrooms were able to achieve.

The demolition works have been completed for this project and construction is about to start soon. The project is a $5 million upgrade with construction of a new modular building, including learning areas, breakout space with wet areas, student and disability amenities, storage, teacher preparation areas and withdrawal spaces, with connections to the oval and nature play spaces. I think it will be a fantastic addition to this wonderful school.

I am very pleased for this school to be benefiting from this fantastic project and from the support from the Marshall government. It is a fantastic school already achieving great outcomes for the school community, but now it will be backed up and improved even further through the construction of these world-class facilities. I would like to thank once again the Public Works Committee for its work and certainly commend this report to the house.

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