Thursday, 30 October 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (23:12): (2069) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education. The action that I seek is for the minister to release the promised traffic assessment for Grahamvale Primary School and instruct the Department of Education to begin negotiations to acquire land that adjoins the school to provide for a safer student drop-off and pick-up area. Seventeen years ago I started asking Labor governments to acquire more land around Grahamvale Primary School, but nothing has been done. First in 2008 and then again in 2015, 2018, 2019 and most recently in 2024 I urged the government to acquire more land and expand the footprint of the school, which desperately needs more space for a safer student drop-off and pick-up area and for future expansion of the school.

Grahamvale Primary School was originally designed as a small school on the outskirts of Shepparton for a population of 75 to 100 students, but it has grown very rapidly and now has over 350 students enrolled. The rapid increase in student enrolments has resulted in a large traffic increase at the school. The school is not immediately connected to the residential catchment area, so there are no children living close enough to walk. There is also no bus going to the school, so almost all parents drive their kids to school and drop them off. Cars quickly fill up the limited parking at the front of the school and then begin lining up for 200 metres along the grass verge on Grahamvale Road, an arterial road, the C391, which forms part of the Shepparton alternate route that carries heavy vehicles around the town centre. Mixing traffic and small children walking on the side of the road is a recipe for disaster, and this danger is a result of policy choices by the Labor government, which has so far refused multiple requests from the school to acquire adjoining land for safer student drop-off and pick-up areas.

When I raised the matter in November last year, the minister said that the department would undertake a traffic management assessment at the school and consider solutions, including introducing a bus service. A year later the traffic assessment has not been released and there has been no word about the bus service. Grahamvale Primary School sits within the Shepparton North East Precinct Structure Plan. The precinct structure plan has already earmarked a portion of land immediately around the school for future expansion of the school site, and the rest of the land surrounding the school is identified for future residential development. It is expected that the precinct will support around 1500 new homes and approximately 4000 residents, attracting even more students in the future.

I met recently with Virginia Campbell, the new school president, who stressed to me that the Victorian government – (Time expired)