Mr Pallas (Tarneit) — The matter I raise is for the Minister  for Education, and the  action that  I seek  is that  the minister  confirm that Tarneit Senior College will in  fact be receiving the necessary funding to ensure completion of all building works up to and including stage 2. Tarneit Senior College was first planned and budgeted for under the previous government. Enrolment  in the school has more than doubled since last year from 75 to nearly 200. It has not heard anything about the second stage of its building works,  plans for the future are up in the air and it is expecting another 300 students to be enrolled next year. If the  school does not get any  funding, in 2014 it will have to operate out of relocatable  classrooms.  It  has  two  unfinished  science  classrooms  in  the so-called ‘finished’ stage 1 buildings.

Reorganisation  of  the department saw  regional  funding slashed,  and  now the school is not even sure that it will  get more buildings. In July last year  the Werribee  Star  reported  that  Tarneit’s  only  secondary  college  resembled a construction site more than a place of learning, that  the  principal  was being forced  to choose between a basketball court or science rooms and that  teachers were being forced to hold sports classes in the car park. The lack of facilities means that specific types of classes cannot be held and students will have to be bussed around to different schools.

The failure to attend to the needs of  school buildings in Wyndham is a habit of this government. Last week was the second anniversary of the closure of the Glen Devon school and  the  long  dance  of indecision by the education minister over what will be done with the site  has  continued.  Despite being offered detailed plans by the  local council,  the buildings have lain idle and dangerous for two years. Resources  have  been wasted,  damaging  property  values  of  the  local community. Buildings supposedly are being torn down sometime  this month, but no more information is available. I make the point that  these  buildings were part of an  operational  school until December  2010,  and not  declared  surplus  to educational needs until sometime in 2011.  But  still  no decision has been made about the future of the site.

Meanwhile the  perilous state of  educational  facilities in Wyndham  due to the ever-increasing population impact continues.

Wyndham  will  require  37  new  schools before  2031,  according to  population projections from the council, with an average of 2 new schools to be built every year. There are  65 babies born every  week  or 9 every day.  Parents  have been putting their  children on waiting lists for schools outside the local area, and they have no confidence  that this government will do anything. Council  reports that there  is a  serious backlog  developing due  to delays  in the delivery of funding to build planned government schools.  In 2012-13 the only  building work for schools in Wyndham funded in the  state budget  was for the refurbishment of an existing school but there are no new schools.

See Tim’s speech in Hansard here.