News

20 August 2024

I give the call to the honourable member for Warringah.

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. The state of many public schools in Warringah is a concern, there is concern that it is being politicised by the current government. Federal Education, here in this place, Minister Jason Clare has acknowledged that Australia’s funding and education gaps needs to be fixed and frequently raises the importance of public education, which I wholeheartedly agree.

Yet under the current New South Wales government our public schools in the State are underfunded by $1.9 billion dollars. Many facilities are past their prime, including in Warringah. Balgowlah Boys Campus, Bally boys as we know it, is one of- is an amazing school, one of five campuses in the northern beaches secondary College and Bally Boys is the highest ranked nonselective public school in New South Wales and I want to congratulate these young men for their work, but the impressive performance is done despite of the quality of infrastructure in which they learn.

It remains a significant community concern: demountable classrooms on playgrounds cater to growth in student demand, asbestos in buildings, limited toilets, sporting halls and music rooms that are from an entirely other era, and no access to outdoor space- or limited. So the request to the Premier and education minister to address this have been ignored and further we now have a review by the Department of Education who’s consulting on whether a significant change should be made to a number of those campuses including changing from year 11 and 12 for Freshie Campus to go from year seven, Bally Boys and Mackellar Girls to actually go to cohead education. Now these are high performing schools really addressing the needs of our community, and our young people, and their education, and so I encourage everyone in the community to have their say in this consultation paper, and I urge the NSW government to be mindful of that.