SCHOOLS — WESTERN SUBURBS

HON ALISON XAMON (North Metropolitan) [6.50 pm]: Justifiably, education is receiving a lot of attention at the moment, so I rise this evening to draw members’ attention to an ongoing issue for western suburbs schools. The previous government had planned to deal with overcrowding in western suburbs schools by reopening City Beach high school. To do that, the two private schools that had been renting space on the site were to move. That meant that the Japanese School in Perth was to go to City Beach Primary School. I do not know how large that school is, but the Japanese School has either 27 students, according to the My School website, or 40 students, according to the Department of Education information given to City Beach Primary School parents. The state government paid for the move and students at City Beach Primary School now have new shared arts and craft and music buildings. The state government paid roughly $7 million for the move. The buildings are complete and the Japanese School will move next term.

Secondly, the International School of Western Australia is to move onto the old Doubleview Primary School site. A new Doubleview primary was built on the top oval of the school site, with a capacity for 540 students. However, the department’s projections for enrolment numbers over the next 10 years already suggest that this will not be enough to meet future capacity. It is intended that ISWA will redevelop the old primary school site by refurbishing a number of existing buildings for the primary school and also by building a new double-storey, 12-classroom building, plus specialist facilities, which include a gym for the high school part of its operations. All the schools on that site will share the remaining oval, the new gymnasium and the hard courts. The new building on the site has further reduced access for Doubleview residents, and I will have more to say about that on another day.

The cost for the redevelopment is sufficiently high that approval had to go to the Metro North-West Joint Development Assessment Panel. The plans were bounced out of the JDAP on multiple occasions. Firstly, on 31 July because the JDAP needed legal advice on whether it could even approve the development of private school elements on a public school site. In other words, it needed to know whether the redevelopment would meet the definition of “public works”. The plans for the school needed to be reviewed for landscaping and parking because more trees needed to be kept and enough parking provided for the staff and students expected to attend, and to ensure that all plans provided to the JDAP were consistent with the information. Again, on 4 December last year, because transport advice and planning needed to be updated and corrected, it also needed revised information on tree retention and maintenance, which needed to be provided to the City of Stirling and also assessed for accuracy.

The plans finally passed on 22 February this year, but it did not happen without a fight. I note that two City of Stirling councillors, the people who probably have the greatest skin in the game locally, moved an alternative recommendation to refuse the application based on the development being inconsistent with the purposes of the land. But it eventually passed 3–2. The community remains unconvinced that the traffic plans are based on accurate information because some of the traffic data taken was not even near the school and because newer traffic data exists. There is a lack of regard for the expected traffic impact on the existing planned infill in the area.

The planned and proposed student numbers for ISWA are surprisingly difficult to pin down. All this planning has been done on the basis of 350 students; however, ISWA has existing approval from the Department of Education to enrol 600 students at the City Beach high school site and continues to advertise itself as moving towards 600 students. It had 270 students enrolled last year, according to My School, but 315 students according to the Department of Education. As mentioned previously, the public space situation in Doubleview is so dire even now that the City of Stirling is prepared to investigate buying the of the old Doubleview primary school site to not only maintain public access, but also retain 70 trees, including a number of mature tuart trees that will be destroyed to make way for the private school. The potential loss of those trees, which provide significant amenity in that community, has certainly distressed many local residents. The frustrating thing about all this is that it is completely unnecessary because the government has decided to not go ahead with reopening City Beach high school.

The agreement originally signed by ISWA had a sunset clause of December last year. That date was well after the government announced that the City Beach site would not be reopening and that, instead, it would be focusing its energies on establishing an inner-city high school. There is no driver for continuing to push ahead with this project. As recently as yesterday, community members received letters from the minister confirming that there are no plans for the City Beach high school site. Frankly, I have to say at this point, particularly when everyone is talking about a budgetary crisis, spending close to $30 million to empty a school site with no plan, if it is indeed the case, is unbelievable. The community is understandably worried that the government intends to sell the City Beach high school site, a concern that I also share, because we have already seen what the loss of public high school sites in the western suburbs has done to student numbers for the remaining schools. We know that we are making plans for Perth to be a city of 3.5 million people and that we are planning that 47 per cent of that new population will find their homes in infill developments, including in the western suburbs, so we are going to need every single existing school site we currently have, and particularly in this area because once it is gone, we are not going to be able to get it back again.

House adjourned at 6.57 pm

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