Thursday, 24 February 2022

Mordialloc electorate schools

Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (17:04): (6237) It is a pleasure to rise tonight with an adjournment for the Minister for Education and Deputy Premier and to ask the minister to join me for a visit to Yarrabah School in Aspendale to celebrate the completion of building works and the wonderful community that underpins everything about Yarrabah. Yarrabah School is a specialist development school in our local community. It was for many years portable city. As the growth of this school and its need expanded into the future we saw more and more portables come onto site. I remember very vividly back in late 2014 the then principal coming to me and saying, ‘This is not a great outcome for students who need additional support. We need to do something about it’. A few years later we embarked on a journey—it is one of the greatest things to be involved in in the community—to rebuild Yarrabah School brick by brick to make sure that regardless of their circumstances every student in Victoria receives the very best facilities and the very best outcomes. So more than $20 million was invested to transform Yarrabah for the future—new buildings across early years all the way through to senior education. It is such a wonderful investment and transformation.

When we think about investment across the Mordialloc electorate, it is just up the road at Mordialloc College—we are up to stage 2 of building works, which are well underway—or up the road at Parkdale Secondary College’s stage 3 building works, with more classrooms coming on site to deal with some of that growth and capacity. When we look at the changes that have happened at Chelsea Heights Primary School, $4.5 million has been invested for new classrooms and learning spaces. There have been upgrades to the STEM centre at Edithvale Primary School and a new arts centre. There is a new library and new upgrades at Aspendale Primary School and then also most recently the master plan and first stage at Chelsea Primary.

We can look then at the investment that has been made also for our non-government schools, whether it is the St Louis de Montfort’s primary school—we are involved in that with building upgrades—or St Joseph’s primary school in Chelsea, the new school hall there and the wonderful transformation that has delivered to our community. St Patrick’s primary school in Mentone, which I share with the member for Sandringham—they are well underway with their building works as well.

We are seeing across sectors the investment that has been delivered to our students to make sure that no-one is left behind. The investment in our specialist schools—dozens have been upgraded and transformed in a very short period of time. These were old school buildings that were not fit for purpose, and across our state we have led that building agenda to make sure students with additional needs, students who need that extra support, get first-class facilities. That is what Yarrabah is all about. It was the little school with a big heart; it is a bit bigger now, but its heart is as big as ever—and I cannot wait for the Deputy Premier to join me and visit once again.