Mr Pallas (Tarneit) –The  matter I wish to  raise is for the  Minister  for Education. The action I  seek  is  for  the  minister  to provide written advice concerning what action  is being undertaken  to address the infrastructure needs of existing schools in Wyndham. I note that no existing schools in my electorate of Tarneit  received new capital funding allocations in this  year’s budget. The previous government planned  and budgeted for  stage  2 building works  at  both Tarneit Senior College and  Tarneit P-9 College but the coalition government has ignored the plans.

Meanwhile,  enrolments in both schools have continued to  grow rapidly and their resources, never intended to be left like this, are more and more stretched. The Napthine government’s lack of funding commitment has left Tarneit Senior College with very little in the way of specialist learning areas.

This limits the subjects that can reasonably be taught at  the school.  It means that there is no space for the provision of subjects such as music, drama, PE or food technology, let alone  the luxuries  of a  new staff room and extra canteen space.

This government’s failure to provide consequential funding and development means that  the school  has  to  struggle harder  than  others  to provide  effective, relevant  and  varied educational outcomes  to students in  the western suburbs. Tarneit P-9 will be reliant on approximately  10 relocatable classrooms in  2014 and at least double that  in  2015.  The cost of bringing relocatable classrooms onto the site is approximately $85 000 each. To integrate these effectively into the school will cost the school between $150 000 and $200 000 per bank  of three classrooms. Hopefully these will one day be removed to  make  way  for permanent buildings, but the way it has turned  out the school will have  been forced into spending more  on  bringing  the relocatable classrooms in and out of the school than it would have cost the government to just build stage 2 in the first place.

These are not the only  schools  impacted  by the government’s failure to commit funds to existing schools in Tarneit.

Warringa  Park  School,  a  school  catering  for  students   with  intellectual disabilities, is at  capacity, with 380  students  enrolled and a  waiting list. This  school must be adequately resourced so that local families do not  have to take their children as far away as Footscray, Sunshine or Port Melbourne because there is no capacity at Warringa Park.

Finally,  Werribee  Secondary College, the  only state school  to  have achieved status as a full international baccalaureate  diploma provider, is still waiting for stage 3 building works — a pre-election commitment of Mr  Elsbury, a member for  Western  Metropolitan  in   the  other  place.   The  body  that   provides accreditation for the baccalaureate, the Council of International  Schools,  has basically said that it is not up to modern standards.  It is a sad indictment of this government’s short-sightedness in so-called savings — the false economy of not investing in  education. The hard work of the students both in the classroom and in advocacy for their schools is a credit to the students and teachers.

See Tim’s speech in Hansard here.