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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-06-02 Daily Xml
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Ceduna Area School

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (14:36): My question is to the Minister for Education. Will the government invest in the Ceduna Area School's need for a purpose-built special education classroom, which is the crucial next step in this significant regional school grade. With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr TELFER: The Marshall Liberal government invested $4 million in the Ceduna Area School in 2021 to deliver significant upgrade works across the whole school, and a further investment would deliver this necessary special education class which would also allow for the return of much-needed space for the Ceduna community school library for this community.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:37): I thank the member for this really important question and note that we have had a couple of conversations already since the member joined this place about this very important issue. I might just, if I could, give a little bit of background about how the Ceduna Area School community library came to be in the predicament that it is in now.

The potted history, as I understand it, is that from 2012 the school converted one end of the library into a learning space for students with disability. By 2018, they had to then convert further space in the library because there was a growth in the need for special options placements at the school, and that growth has continued. Of course it is important that we meet that need, but what it means for the library long term is that there will be no room left for it essentially because the special options class will be taking up the remainder of the library space.

Can I say from the outset that, as someone who grew up in a country area myself—and this was actually a topic of conversation last night when the member for Chaffey and I visited Berri Regional Secondary College—I understand that public school facilities, particularly in regional areas, including in South Australia, are not just a school asset but also a community asset because those assets aren't otherwise there.

It is not like in metropolitan areas, where there is a library a few suburbs away or a sporting gymnasium or a performing arts centre. So when our public schools have things, which is often the case and it is the case at Berri Regional Secondary College as well, like a community library co-located with the school, I understand that there is an onus on us as the government to try to not only provide for those special options places, to provide for the growing demand in those special options places at schools like Ceduna Area School, but also preserve the assets so they are there not just for future generations of school students but also for the community. Very soon after being sworn in as the Minister for Education, I tasked the education department with trying to find a fix for this.

It won't be a cheap one. We are talking in the range of millions of dollars, but I am confident that we can find a way here and that we can land a situation where we do have space for growth in special options places at the school into the future and we can preserve the very important library space there. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I will be very happy that, if we can land that, I will be heading to Ceduna as soon after that as I possibly can, and I hope the local member will join me there to share in the good news with the community.

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