School built in just 45 days for kids in Sydney’s ‘forgotten’ suburb

Children in Sydney’s “forgotten suburb” will now have a place to learn, after workers worked around the clock, in torrential rain and blistering heat, to complete Box Hill Public School.

In seven short weeks through mud, blood, sweat and tears, a small army of tradies has transformed a patch of grass into the state’s fastest-built public school, ready to welcome 300 new students in Sydney’s ‘forgotten’ suburb.

A fast-tracked flatpack version of Box Hill Public School opens next week and will eventually accommodate 600 children while their permanent school is erected on a site several streets away.

To the naked eye “it looks just like a normal school” new parent Michael Faulkner said.

His four-year-old daughter Astrid Faulkner will become one of the school’s foundational students when she starts Kindergarten on February 6.

The Faulkners, who bought a house in the northwest Sydney suburb 18 months ago, moved in only to find out his daughter wouldn’t have a local school to attend.

“We moved very much with the promise that all the infrastructure would be in place,” Mr Faulkner said.

“If the school wasn’t ready this year it would’ve meant another year at daycare for Astrid, keeping her back, because Rouse Hill Public School is already oversubscribed with 1300 kids.”

Box Hill Public School in northwest Sydney was built in just 7 weeks. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

A completed classroom. Box Hill Public School in north west Sydney was built in just 7 weeks.

The Daily Telegraph’s Future Western Sydney campaign successfully secured the new school for the ‘forgotten’ suburb, where families had been forced to do 90-minute round trips to get their kids to school due to the lack of public infrastructure.

A NSW Department of Education enrolment growth audit last year found the number of school-aged children living in Box Hill had multiplied ten times over between 2018 and 2023.

A development application to build the temporary school, which will accommodate 300 children in Kindergarten to Year 2 and expand to Years 3 to 6 by mid-2025, was approved by Hills Shire Council on December 17 2024.

Workers put in long hours to make sure the school was ready to open. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Forty-five days later, contractors were putting the “beautifying” final touches on its campus.

Robert McIlvena, operations manager at tender-winning firm ProGroup Management, said the mammoth effort to build an entire school – albeit a demountable one – in seven weeks meant work was underway non-stop from 7am to 5pm every weekday, and 7am til 1pm on weekends.

“The weather was our main factor here,” Mr McIlvena said.

“From the bucketing rain at one end of it, to pouring asphalt for the carpark in 42C heat at the other – we’ve really had the full gamut here.”

Progress pictures of Box Hill Public school.

Portable gazebos were erected above bricklayers as they set down the foundations, and plumbers and electricians donned plastic overalls as they swam about in the mud.

Between 35 and 40 contractors were on site every day, co-ordinated in a careful dance to maximise the day’s work.

Carpets are laid, turf will be rolled out next week, and in the library all that remains is for books to be placed on the shelves.

Founding principal Melanie Mackie has relocated from Bilpin Public School to take up the “once in a lifetime opportunity”.

“It’s a real honour to open a school from the very beginning, particularly for a community that has waited all this time to have a school,” she said.

Education Minister Prue Car visited the near-finished school last week, and said she is “proud and grateful to everyone who worked so hard to make this happen”.

Box Hill Public School is ready to open next week for kindy students Astrid Faulkner and Kesav Raja. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“We have gone from announcing this school to opening it just seven months later,” she said.

“The fast-tracking of this school while we build the permanent facilities shows just how dedicated we are to breaking the infrastructure backlog in rapidly-growing communities.”

Box Hill dad Aravind Vijay, a driving force in the campaign, said workers have “done a paramount job” with a project “nobody believed would actually happen”.

“Even though it’s a demountable, it’s nothing to sneeze at (and) beggars can’t be choosers,” he said.

“Of course this is worth celebrating, but there is more to be done, and we will be holding the government accountable.”