Thursday, 2 May 2019

Croydon Special Developmental School

Mr ATKINSON (Eastern Metropolitan) (18:09): My matter for the adjournment is actually to Minister Merlino in his role as Minister for Education, and it follows a similar theme to the matter raised by Ms Bath this evening. It is in respect of a school in the eastern suburbs, which you, President, would probably also be aware of, being the Croydon Special Developmental School. Like the school mentioned by Ms Bath in the Latrobe Valley, this school seems to be bypassed in terms of funding for crucial infrastructure works at the school, and support programs, in favour of other schools that perhaps have stronger populations of parents and so forth who are able to chip in and certainly to lobby government for additional resources.

The Croydon Special Developmental School has some 15 portables. Those portables obviously are rudimentary, and they are clearly not designed for children with special needs. In fact some of the equipment that exists in this school has been required by WorkSafe to be shut down and not used. They have been to the school and have seen that the conditions in some of these classrooms and the conditions surrounding some of the equipment are totally inadequate and in fact dangerous.

The ability of teachers to actually provide support to students, many of them with very challenging behaviours and some of them needing to be separated from one another and managed on a very personal schedule, is compromised by the facilities available to those teachers, the staff, the support staff and indeed those parents or volunteers who are involved in the school.

The school buildings are riddled with asbestos. The school have tried to address some of those issues through applying for some of the funds that are available under various programs, including the School Pride program, and in a number of cases they have actually had to do second submissions because they have been told, ‘Oh, no. Look, there’s no money in that program anymore, but perhaps if you apply over here’. This is a dreadful waste of time and effort and something that is really discouraging and frustrating for the principal, the staff and the parents who support this school. These children are obviously in need of our support, and I would ask the minister to actually look in the budget for, at the very least, master plan funding to ensure that this school could be upgraded.