Call to provide adequate buildings for local school
Thursday, 08 March 2007 10:00
Mt Crosby State School has shown rapid growth from around 564 students in 2006 to 613 this year and a projected 645 in 2008. Despite this the government rejected a recommendation from the local education district to provide new classrooms to house the rapidly growing school population.
The department has required the school to utilise an old demountable building that is in excess of 20 years old and does not meet current specifications, click here to see a close-up photo of the building.
The building is expected to house two grade one classes, 53 students in one tiny room. Click here to see photo of the building.
The building has minimal veranda area and is not connected to water. Click here to see photo.
Parents have had to provide water containers for their children in the hot weather. The room is also not connected for computers. It has no withdrawal area and when full it has little or no floor area, meaning that young grade one students are effectively “chained to their desks”.
The Principle and Staff of Mt Crosby State School have done everything within their power to minimise the impact on students and should be congratulated for their care and diligence.
However this has meant that in order to avoid the unacceptable scenario of 53 young students in one tiny room, that after school care and music facilities have had to be cannibalised to provide class rooms.
The school which is now one of the state’s big primary schools is functioning on effectively half a library and has limited ability to provide space for modern educational resources such as computer rooms etc.
Next year with additional class/s the after school care building will be lost altogether, leaving the schools P & C contemplating how they can enter the school building business to provide classrooms that ought to have been provided by the state government.
I met with distressed parents. One parent from an emerging Asian country told me that education received better priority and better facilities in the developing 3rd World in Asia than it did at Mt Crosby.
Obviously buildings and resources are only part of a child’s education. Mt Crosby has clearly provided high quality education with a very dedicated team of teachers. It is however unacceptable that the government would fail to support those teachers with adequate resources to properly teach our children in the 21st Century.
Parents in the Mt Crosby area, feel particularly aggrieved in relation to the education of their children. Earlier the state government sold land for a potential new state high school at Chuwar to developers this means that there is no planned state high school between Ipswich and Kenmore. Then, as if to add insult to injury Education Minister Wellford, ruled that Mt Crosby, traditionally the largest feeder school to Kenmore State High School was outside the catchment area for Kenmore State High School, their traditional high school. This meat that students are no longer guaranteed a position in their local high school.
Click to see a scanned copy of the letter that I sent to Education Minister Rod Welford about this matter;
Click here to read page one...
Click here to read page two...