LOSS OF SCHOOLYARD INNOCENCE

Wilmot Road Primary School is a state school like any other, with its
wooden flip-up desks and brightly painted monkey bars.

Located in a suburban Shepparton street, right next door to a
secondary college, its motto is ``Happiness Through Achievement''. A
large sign proclaims it to be in a safety house zone.

Kids will always want to try the things their parents and the law
forbid, but the suspension of 11 of the school's children for smoking,
or looking on while others smoked, marijuana behind the school shelter
shed has shocked many in Shepparton.

It has even surprised those who acknowledge that drugs aren't too hard
to come by in this regional town where the P-platers fang down the
main street on a Sunday, techno music thumping through open car windows.

Even the twenty-somethings say they are shocked children so young
would be able to lay their hands on marijuana.

``There's a lot of drugs in Shep,'' admits 20-year-old Lane Burdett,
who grew up in the town but now lives in Melbourne.

``But to see it get into primary school is not something you want to
see happening.''

His friend, Ross Honey, calls it a sign of the times. ``When we were
young, smoking was the big thing,'' he says.

Parents with children still at school say they are frightened by the
implications. What will come next, one asks: Knives? Guns?

Aysen Cosar, who once worked at Wilmot Road, says she has considered
withdrawing her nine-year-old son, Omer, from the school.

``I was just petrified knowing my boy goes there. It's just nerve
wracking,'' she says, although she is quick to add she believes the
school has cracked down hard enough to ensure it will not happen again.

The children, all boys aged between 11 and 12, have been suspended for
between two days and four weeks. For Michelle Carey, a 34-year-old
mother with five children aged between one and 13, the suspensions
have not come as such as surprise.

Kids at the high school her daughter Rhianon attends deal openly in
the drug, she says.

``I just figure there's drugs around everywhere and if it's at the
secondary school it's going to filter down eventually,'' she says.

``It's not a nice fact of life but it is a fact that there's drugs out
there and if you want them they're accessible. You've really just got
to teach your kids about what they're putting into their bodies.''

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady