Under the plans, St Brigid’s Primary School will become a new Kindergarten to Year 6 school and St Mary’s Infants School at Greta will close its doors.

The new school, expected to be completed by 2011, will be built at Rosary Park near the existing St Brigid’s site.

“This is exciting news and it’s wonderful for the parish,” St Brigid’s Primary School principal Will Callinan said.

“With the various developments about to take place in the area, it’s going to be wonderful to be able to provide families with a new learning environment.

“The plan is to also go double stream when enrolments start to rise and they are already starting to increase.”

The amalgamation of the schools was flagged in 2000, but during the past nine years the plans have been plagued with false starts.

“We had a few objections, the money we had fell through and it just didn’t happen. But now it’s all coming together thanks to a lot of people who have put in a lot of hard work,”

Funding for the school is through the Rudd Government’s Better Education Revolution (BER) program.

“Essentially representatives from both schools got together and decided to pool our money from the BER program to build a new school, so really this is a Godsend,” Mr Callinan said.

Originally both St Brigid’s and St Mary’s were Kindergarten to Year 6 schools but in 1965 the Greta school became the infants department and St Brigid’s remained the primary section.

“This move is going to be sad for Greta because there have been a lot of people involved in the school, and who helped establish that school,” Mr Callinan said.

“But as far as future quality learning goes for children then I think we’re better off on one site. It’s better for the children’s education.”