John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak, with some pride, about the wonderful small school of Nashdale Public in my Calare electorate. I was privileged to recently attend the school's 125th birthday celebration—all those years since its beginning! Nashdale is a small community located about 10 kilometres west of Orange, which is the largest city in the Calare electorate. Nashdale is a magnificent area, scenic and productive with orchards and vineyards. The nearby area of Borenore hosts the well-known Australian National Field Days, every year in October. It is Australia's original and national field days site.

Many students that attend the primary school come from small farm holdings and orchards around the district. However, around 30 per cent of the school's population come from the city of Orange, which says a lot about the calibre of the school when the city of Orange itself has many varied schools to choose from and this school is 10 kilometres away. It is also a progressive school. All students have the opportunity to learn using state-of-the-art technology. All classrooms contain 'smart boards' and each child from years 2 to 6 does have their own laptop. So the school has come a long way since it was founded in 1888.

To mark the occasion I joined with the state member for Orange, Andrew Gee, the Mayor of Cabonne, Ian Gosper, and the Mayor of Orange, John Davis, and a range of past and current students. There was even a fifth generation student, Chloe Eccleston, at the celebrations. I also had the honour of planting a tree along with Mrs Val McDonald. There were a whole host of other activities throughout the day including the opening of a heritage display, the ringing of the school bell—which is a lot older than I am—student performances, tours et cetera. I do take my hat off to the relieving principal, Kylie Toberty, for taking the lead with organising such a big event. My electorate of Calare is nowhere near as big as my original electorate, which was Parkes, but I am very familiar with small schools. I do not actually call the school at Nashdale small, as it a medium one, but it is small enough to have the benefit of being small. With schools of 10, 15 and 20 students and which have one teacher, the kids are very lucky because they end up with the best teachers. I don't know why but teachers at small schools become incredibly good and incredibly adaptive and the students benefit from it. Small schools are a good thing to have been at.