The Dickinsons have been sending their children to Bandiana primary school on the outskirts of Wodonga for more than eight years.
But at the end of 2023, the community suddenly received notice the school would be closing when the lease for the site expires at the end of 2025. Students will be enrolled at a new primary school being built at Leneva, another suburb south of Wodonga, set to open in 2026.
“There was really no communication,” Daniel Dickinson says. “We found it out through the school and the media.”
The new school at the heart of a growing subdivision would be a 20-minute drive from their house, in the opposite direction to their workplaces. There is no dedicated bus route.
Dickinson says he would have “loved” to have moved his children to the new school, where their friends and teachers are going, if it was closer to their suburb of Killara. But the distance and lack of communication from the department means they instead decided to move to Wodonga primary school at the start of this year, to minimise disruption.
Wodonga primary school has 900 students, Bandiana just 300. The new school at Leneva will be built for 525 students including 50 places for students with disabilities. The Dickinsons have one child with dyslexia and another with learning disabilities.
“I do understand why they’ve chosen [to build] near a bigger growth area,” says Dickinson. “But there’s also other schools around there that people could go to. It just leaves us without anything.”
The Victorian education department annually reviews the need for new schools using demographic modelling based on residential growth and enrolment trends. The 2024-2025 state budget included $1.3bn for building, expanding, and acquiring land for schools, and a government spokesperson said Victoria had the largest school building program in the country, spending $16.9bn over the past 10 years. It’s on track to open 121 new schools between 2017 and 2026.
But Dickinson and other affected parents say communication with the school community is lacking.
“We didn’t know when it was happening. We didn’t know how it was happening. We didn’t know anything about the bus [routes],” he says. “We were literally told this on the last day of school, like: here you go, mic drop, and now we’ve got this question mark over our heads.”
‘Our school is not keeping up’
Eight years ago, when Jennifer Broadbent’s eldest son started at Delacombe primary school, it had just over 300 students. By the time her third and youngest child started prep in term one this year, the school had grown to the largest in Ballarat, with 640 students and climbing.
Broadbent is concerned the school is so big now that her youngest, who has ADHD, may be left behind. Delacombe and neighbouring Winter Valley are the fastest-growing areas of Ballarat, projected to grow from a population of 28,834 in 2023 to 48,500 people by 2036.
“We desperately need a new school,” Broadbent says. “Winter Valley is growing so quickly and still growing and it’s unfair on children when schools get too big. They get lost in the crowd and there’s decreased teacher-child engagement.”
Delacombe primary school principal, Scott Phillips, says the school is managing the high growth “at the moment”, but current enrolment trends put the school at 800 students within the next two years. The Victorian government says the school currently has capacity for 725 students – but Phillips says he has been told their capacity is 675, accounting for the planned removal of a demountable classroom.
The student population is also undergoing a shift, with 7% now speaking English as an additional language and a growing number requiring in-classroom support.
“You have to find an office space for that person and it’s great to have that extra support for students, but where do you place that person?” Phillips says. “The template for our school is not keeping up with that.”
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It’s already stacked with demountable classrooms, including a new double-storey demountable installed this year.
Two new public schools – one primary and one secondary – were approved by the state government as part of a 2012 structure plan for the Ballarat west growth area prescient, which includes Delacombe and Winter Valley, in 2012.
The City of Ballarat lists the next steps for the project as “ongoing advocacy”. The Victorian government says there are no immediate plans to fund the construction of a new school in this area.
A new Catholic school in Winter Valley was announced in 2023 and is expected to open in 2028.
The delay in opening new schools has prompted some parents like Emma Edwards to turn to non-government schools. Edwards’ daughter was initially enrolled to start prep at Delacombe primary school this year, before they decided it was too big. She instead started at a smaller Catholic school outside their zone.
“[Our school] has about 265 students in total and there are only two foundation classes,” Edwards says. “The preps need more individual focus to help guide them in all directions.”
A 2024 report commissioned by the Australian Education Union says the number of public school students in Australia grew by 160,000 in the seven years to 2022 and is expected to grow by a further 160,000 by 2029, with the outer western suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney and established regional cities like Ballarat, Geelong, and the Sunshine Coast in Queensland the areas of greatest need.
Dr Emma Rowe, an associate professor in education at Deakin University says “band-aid temporary solutions” like adding demountable to increase the capacity of public schools, sent a message that public education was “undervalued”.
“If we really cared, we would build a school for students and ensure it had high quality facilities. Parents are obviously still wanting to choose the public school, but the government is not responding appropriately,” Prof Rowe says.