School silence

It’s abundantly clear that Mt Barker will soon need a new school.

With the rapid population growth that the district is currently experiencing, demand for proper investment into public amenities, such as education, is already at a deficit.

Government data that was uncovered about a year ago projected that Mt Barker High School would be over capacity by 2024, reinforcing that this sector – among many others in the Hills – is in need of prompt investment. 

Public money needs to be spent responsibly and priority needs to be given to the areas in most need and so investigations like business cases are important parts of the process when new facilities are built.

But the “priority” business case for a new Mt Barker school seems to have taken a long time, especially given that SA’s Education Minister Blair Boyer stressed its urgency when he announced it in 2022.

If it is determined that a new school is to be developed at Mt Barker, which seems likely, the facility won’t be built in a day.

So the State Government needs to ensure that, moving forward, action is taken promptly so we don’t find ourselves still waiting in a decade.

Families settling at Mt Barker need certainty around education and need to know whether they will have access to local schools that have the space and capacity to meet the needs of their children, or whether they will have to decide between paying for private education or travelling further afield.

The district is expected to have a population of 56,710 by 2036, a fifth of which is predicted to be school-aged children.

This Government needs to release the results of its business case as soon as possible, as well as the details of how it will deliver a workable and prompt solution so that Hills families can have certainty about their future.