About 50 parents and guests attended the opening of a new classroom at Warepa School, 12km southwest of Balclutha, on Friday afternoon.
Clutha-Southland MP Bill English opened the new facility, helped by the school's youngest and oldest pupils Henry Craig (5) and Madison Christie (12).
Mr English said he had not been to many rural schools that were adding classrooms, because it tended to be the other way around: rural schools losing classrooms.
"Rural kids get a better education than most urban kids.
There's a huge amount of support from the community," Mr English said.
Warepa School principal Sue Adcock said that since building a "multipurpose room" in 2005, the school's roll had been growing, and it had needed to use the room as a full-time classroom.
The school has 62 pupils, from year 1 to year 8, up from 39 in 2005.
"Having a new senior classroom means we get a great new space, and we get our multipurpose room back," Mrs Adcock said.
The multipurpose room is true to its name, used for school assemblies, library, cooking, arts and crafts and professional development for staff and other South Otago teachers.
The new classroom has an interactive whiteboard, brand new furniture and fittings, and two iMac computers as well as a staff room. A new playground was also built at the same time, recycling some of the old playground's equipment.
