MANY of Brimbank’s most disadvantaged schools are in the dark about whether new state government funding will be used to improve the woeful state of their leaky buildings.
Education Minister Martin Dixon last week announced $51.5 million for more than 200 schools needing urgent work.
Mr Dixon said the funding followed an audit conducted last year which assessed the 27,000 buildings of Victoria’s 1539 government schools.
“The audit revealed a massive $420 million maintenance backlog,” he said. “The Coalition government has set aside this funding to urgently fix the worst buildings to restore them to an appropriate standard.”
Sunshine Secondary College principal Tim Blunt said the school was desperate for the government to commit to improving the school’s ageing infrastructure, some of which hasn’t been repaired since it was built in 1959.
“Sunshine College’s four campuses need major facilities upgrades which includes roofing, restumping and just general maintenance,” he said. “It needs to be a level playing field for schools, whether they’re in the west or any other area of the state.”
Sunshine College’s west campus, in Lachlan Street, West Sunshine, has sinking footings and large cracks in the roof where rain leaks in.
Mr Blunt said the school had received some funding to improve roofing and complete minor restumping, but it was still without a gym, students being forced to undertake physical education crammed into rooms with inadequate space. He said more than $20 million was needed to redevelop the school.
The schools audit, tabled in State Parliament late last month, found there were notable issues with 2042 buildings at 505 Victorian schools, with 3074 buildings below department standards.
The report said the western suburbs had 142 schools which required an average maintenance investment of $316,000 each to fix buildings that were potentially unsafe.
The audit came in the wake of the release of the One Melbourne or Two? report by interface councils, including Melton, which claimed the government had under-invested in buffer-area primary and secondary schools by $187 million. In November 2011, the Weekly reported master plans had been drawn up by Victoria University Secondary College to build a new junior school on the Deer Park campus and for a new senior campus on Furlong Road in Cairnlea.
Principal Genevieve Simson said no works had started and the existing school continued to decay. “We need more than $60 million to complete these works,” she said. “The state of the school’s infrastructure is making it increasingly difficult for students and staff. We have a lot of structural damage and the roof often leaks.”
