It’s hard to disagree with recent calls for a new public school in the city’s west, given the region’s growing population and plans to urbanise rural land at Anambah and Lochinvar.
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But the state government’s plan appears to be to make the region’s existing schools bigger, rather than build new facilities.
According to the latest census data, Maitland’s population grew from 59,167 to 73,447 in the decade to 2013 – an average of 1428 new residents each year.
More than 5000 residential lots will be carved into rural land at Lochinvar over the next 15 years to house about 14,000 new residents.
So, it was puzzling yesterday when Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said there were no plans to build a new public school in the Maitland electorate.
He said the Department of Education had not planned a new school for Maitland because the government didn’t want to spread the region’s students across too many schools.
His comments came after he announced $5 million for major upgrades at Bolwarra Public School, where the student population had grown from 301 to 475 since 2009.
Later, he went to Rutherford Technology High School to watch work begin on expansion works at the school, worth $15 million, which had also been spurred on by population growth.
While these upgrades are great news for those school communities, it suggests that the government is addressing population growth in the short term, but not looking at the big picture.
The $20 million spent on these upgrades would almost be enough to cover the $25 million it costs, on average, to build a new high school.
The government simply making existing schools larger is a bandaid solution that the region may soon out-grow.
