Tuesday, 17 October 2023

 Jess WILSON (Kew) (19:14): (377) My adjournment is to the Minister for Education, and the action I am seeking is an immediate audit of demountable classrooms across public schools in Victoria to inform an urgent works plan to get students out of portables and into permanent fit-for-purpose learning facilities. It should go without saying that classrooms are vital to learning, and the Victorian School Building Authority says that its purpose is to help every Victorian child have a great local school that prepares them to thrive in the 21st century. I congratulate them in this aim, but I am concerned that many Victorian schools are still trying to teach 21st-century learning and skills in portable classrooms from the previous century.

Figures obtained by the Age under freedom of information show that there were nearly 6000 relocatable classroom buildings placed at over 1000 state schools as of August this year. Of those, 35 schools had 20 or more demountables and 137 had more than 10. Take, for example, Tarneit P–9 College, for whom demountables make up two-thirds of their learning and teaching facilities. For a school catering to a rapid growth area popular with young families, this is a completely unacceptable situation. Within just two years of opening, Tarneit had 21 demountables and has installed another 15 since, with three more to be added next year. Tarneit College principal Anne-Maree Kliman rightly called on the government to invest in existing schools, especially when:

… they’re rapidly growing and … recognising that there’s a need for those permanent buildings at that point in time, not waiting until it gets to a point where we’re overflowing with relocatables. It should be a constant review.

Alamanda K–9 College in Point Cook has the highest number of demountables, sitting at 61, while Hazel Glen College in Doreen has 49. Many of these portables at Victorian schools are decades old and do not meet the needs of a modern learning environment. Of course I do understand that portable classrooms have a purpose in our schools. They can be set up relatively quickly and easily to meet the demand for space when existing buildings cannot keep up with enrolments in the short term, but they have significant drawbacks. They take up a space on campus that we could use for other purposes, particularly for playgrounds or other outdoor spaces such as ovals, and it also seems that they may be giving the government an excuse to overlook the very real infrastructure needs of the school.

This government likes to talk about building new schools, but this needs to go hand in hand with investing in the infrastructure needs of existing schools. Demountables may be sufficient for a short period of time, but they will never replace purpose-built permanent classrooms that have been co-designed with the school community to meet their needs. Again, in the case of Tarneit College, it is a completely unacceptable situation that over two-thirds of buildings on campus are demountables. With nearly 6000 demountable buildings across Victorian state schools, it is clear that there has been a failure to adequately plan and resource the rollout of appropriate facilities for schools in growth areas. That is why an immediate audit of demountable classrooms to inform an urgent works plan to get students out of portables and into permanent learning facilities is necessary.