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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-09-25 Daily Xml
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Beachport Primary School

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:58): My question is to the Minister for Education. Will the government commit to upgrading the Beachport Primary School? Mr Speaker, with your leave and the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: The Beachport Primary School is made up of numerous transportable buildings that date back 50 years. It has category 2 asbestos, limited light and ventilation and numerous safety concerns including a verandah with a concrete floor that has been enclosed to make a classroom. Additionally, there is insufficient space to accommodate the increase in students due to the implementation of the government's universal access to preschool for three year olds and the town's population growth.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:59): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question and his longstanding advocacy for schools in his area. I am aware of the issue to which he refers in his question about Beachport Primary School. I can't say I have visited the school yet, but I certainly intend to. I think it's got about 34 students, not dissimilar to the primary school that I attended myself. I know what is commonplace amongst particularly small regional schools is that often they have a lot of maintenance issues, often a backlog of maintenance issues, that we probably haven't got to.

We do have the added complexity at the moment of ageing infrastructure, which is not unique to South Australia. It is something that all education systems right across Australia are grappling with. I think the average age of a building in the South Australian education system at the moment is about 44 years, and that is despite a good, solid 10 years of investment and building. I thank the member for MacKillop for his advocacy on behalf of Beachport.

I am also aware of the fact that the majority of the buildings there are the notorious DMAC buildings. As the member said, they do come from 50 or 60 years ago. By their very nature they were designed to be temporary and portable. They have not stood the test of time well and they are not what I would like to see our students learning in now. The challenge for us as a system is how we get around to all those schools.

Just this morning, I was at Stradbroke Primary School with the member for Morialta opening up new facilities there, with $7 million that was actually committed by the member for Port Adelaide when she was education minister back in 2017. Certainly, it is my desire as education minister now to see the same level and quality of school infrastructure at all our sites, including those in regional areas like Beachport.

More specifically, in terms of the question the member asked, we sent representatives from the Department for Infrastructure's team out to Beachport in March of this year to review the site, I am told, in relation to asbestos, which unfortunately does exist in a lot of our schools. We do keep a register of that, and the level 2 nature of this asbestos is safe. It is monitored very closely. It is not a risk to students there unless it is disturbed. We have very stringent protocols around how that is managed if works are to occur.

We have looked very closely at the issues with the roof as well. I am expecting some advice to come back to me on the investigations that have been made by the department so that we can make an assessment, along with all those other projects that are in a fairly long list of work that we need to do around what we can do to support Beachport. Once that's done, I will be in touch with the member for MacKillop. I certainly hope that in the not too distant future I get the opportunity to join the member for MacKillop at Beachport Primary School. I am happy to inspect these things myself and speak with the school community about what we can do to better support them into the future.

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