Melbourne’s shift to higher density living is expected to put pressure on schools in the inner city, as well as the northern and western suburbs, as Victoria looks to find classroom space for an extra 100,000 children in the next decade.
But a school in the city’s inner west says chances are being missed to acquire land in the area to prepare for long-term population growth, while education authorities refuse to act until the existing nearby school is nearly full.
Data from Informed Decisions, which tracks population growth for school planners and local councils, shows 17 suburbs across Melbourne’s outer north and western fringe, from Wallan to Werribee South, are set to add about 63,000 school aged children by 2035.
But the growing pains will be most acute in inner-city areas flagged for more apartments such as Box Hill – where the primary school age population is set to double by 2045 – and in North Melbourne as development accelerates around the new Arden station, says the group’s population forecaster, Jonny Barnard.
“Where there’s greenfield land, it’s … paddocks now, so the plans get reasonably detailed and are probably more straightforward,” Barnard said. “The concerns are more in the existing areas.
“They’re the tricky ones because how do you go and retrofit a school to these areas? It becomes quite an expensive process. There’s a cultural element that has changed in the last 20 years or so, where families live in apartments; there’s a lot more of that going on than there used to be.”
Valentina Smith, Indie Walles, 6, Katherine Sheedy, Charlotte Rogers, 10, and Kensington Primary School council president David Frazer.Credit: Jason South
In Box Hill central, the state primary school closed in the 1990s, but Barnard says a stream of new apartments could prompt planners to consider whether a vertical school would serve the area.
At Kerrimuir Primary School in Box Hill North, enrolments have steadily risen from 311 students in 2015 to 579 last year, and at Box Hill High School, several modular classrooms have helped the school expand its enrolments to more than 1500 students.
“The department is supporting us, but there’s constant enrolment pressures with the development in the area,” school principal Kellie Ind said.
In North Melbourne, the Arden Precinct is due to house 20,000 new residents by the middle of the century. The state government has committed to building a new primary school in the precinct, but its delivery could still be years away.
The nearby Kensington Primary School has 420 students and has not yet reached its capacity, but school council president David Frazer says the school only has room for a maximum of two more classes, which he expects will be needed soon.
“There’s an inevitability that’s going to happen,” he said. “We love our community, but it keeps getting bigger and we don’t have a lot of room
When the school council approached the department about an opportunity to buy nearby land to expand the school, Frazer said he was told “it’s a categorical no” because the school wasn’t yet at capacity.
“We’re finding the government is looking at this very much in the immediate,” he said. “But for us, buying the land is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because, of course, our school is completely locked in by housing.”
In 2021, the state government allocated $7.3 million to the school to renovate and modernise the buildings. Renovations were undertaken until last year, but rising construction costs have meant resolving accessibility issues, an expansion to rooms that could become classrooms, and repairs to rotten windowsills are still incomplete.
“We’ve literally got rooms in our school at the moment that we can’t use, and the population is growing,” Frazer said. “If the future is apartments in semi-low rise we can absolutely accommodate that. We just need to make sure schools can cope with the increase as well.”
Victorian Greens leader Ellen Sandell, whose electorate takes in Kensington, said the school was in a bind because it wasn’t able to improve the available space or expand its footprint.
“It’s a failure of governments to plan for the medium and long term,” Sandell said. “Kensington won’t be able to put in more portables because there’s only limited space to play, and the population of the area is absolutely booming.”
Other nearby schools are already straining to accommodate students. University High this year moved all of its year nine students to a temporary campus using two floors of an office building in Lonsdale Street. In 2023, Docklands Primary opened a second campus for students in the District Docklands shopping centre to accommodate surging enrolments.
Education Department secretary Tony Bates told a public accounts and estimates committee last week he was aware of the pressures on schools in the inner west. He pointed out North Melbourne Primary had opened a new campus in 2023.
”The population growth has exploded unlike anything we had seen before,” Bates said. “The number of families with small children living in high-rises are far exceeding normal predictions and patterns.”
In this year’s state budget, the government allocated $1 million to identify sites for new schools in areas experiencing population growth and $411 million for new and expanded schools. It is acquiring land for schools in Arden and in the Darebin, Casey and Melton council areas.
Education Minister Ben Carroll said the new school in Arden would add to the 123 new schools in Victoria, “19 of which we are opening next year in growth suburbs like Clyde North, Kalkallo and Cobblebank, one in Geelong and another in Wodonga”.
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