Rob Stokes on why he’s building new schools

The new state education minister says planning and zoning are the answer to rebuilding our public system, writes Andrew Clennell

Education Minister Rob Stokes. Picture: Tim Hunter

A short time after Rob Stokes left Gordon Public School for the posh surrounds of Shore, his old school was closed by the former Liberal education minister Terry Metherell.

It was part of a number of controversial school closures under the Greiner government that led to massive demonstrations in the streets of Sydney in the late 1980s.

How ironic then that the 42-year-old new Education Minister from the northern beaches is now talking up a massive build in schools to come under the watch of the Liberals in the years ahead.

Stokes is the first Liberal Education Minister in the six years of Coalition government since Barry O’Farrell was elected in 2011, having replaced long-serving National Adrian Piccoli.

But, despite having Metherell’s former chief of staff Mark Scott as his top bureaucrat, there is no Metherell agenda ahead here.

Instead, Stokes says he will use his experience as Planning Minister to plot a way forward for the construction of dozens of primary and secondary schools to meet population demands — rather than closures — and is flagging deals with councils and preschools to allow school land to be used more efficiently.

“I attended Shore school but I also attended a local public school which was one in fact closed by Terry Metherell so ... I didn’t feel too good about that,” Stokes says.

“It was just after I left and it’s now a school that I wish we could reopen. It’s not possible anymore because there’s a bunch of units (there).

“It’s Gordon Public School. That’s a powerful lesson for me and so that’s something that when I come under pressure by Treasury to sell education land I will always be mindful of the experience of that government.”

The first stage towards an ambitious schools build of a dozen new schools a year is a new State Environmental Planning Policy on Educational Establishment and Childcare Facilities to be released on Monday.

The SEPP will allow more uses on school grounds without development consent, quicker approvals for schools and more capacity for preschools and childcare centres to be built on school sites. From now on, new public and private schools will now be approved by the planning department, not local councils.

“One of the big maintenance challenges that we’ve got is a lot of the schools that were built to accommodate the baby boom in the ’60s weren’t built terribly thoughtfully, so they’re reaching end of life, and they also weren’t built with some of the design quality we want to see in the future,” Stokes says.

“So the SEPP makes it faster to build, which therefore makes it cheaper to build … (it is also) liberalising some of the zoning of school sites.

“In some cases, a school site has been unable to be used for anything else. It’s been illegal because of the zoning.”

In his first interview as Education Minister, Stokes signalled an approach where he will listen to “parents and teachers” above “officials”, and he said he would use that philosophy to decide on a proposal by his federal counterpart Simon Birmingham to have testing applied to Year 1 students.

“As a parent I find the NAPLAN useful in helping me understand how the kids are going,” Stokes says. “It’s a great tool, we’ve also got to be careful with it though. It’s a tool to assist kids’ learning, it’s not to raise stress.

Planning Minister Robert Stokes

“I’m totally respectful of Simon Birmingham’s view but again my role is to listen to the parents and teachers of NSW.”

Stokes says that less than a week into the job he has already spoken to Birmingham, and says he is sticking to holding the federal government to the extra $1.2 billion in Gonski funding over two years first promised under federal Labor.

“The federal government haven’t clearly indicated their commitment to that but we have an agreement that was signed with the Commonwealth and we’d expect, like any agreement, that it would be honoured,” Stokes says.

Stokes may have been educated at the prestigious Shore school but says he attended a public primary school, as had his children, so did not see this as any barrier to running the public education system.

Stokes also spoke for the first time about being asleep in London on a study tour at the time Gladys Berejiklian was doing the numbers to become Premier — and how he had missed out on the top job despite some colleagues wanting him to run. Stokes had taken on a Masters of Planning at Oxford while Planning Minister and that appears to have cost him a shot at the top job — particularly with his friend Mike Baird having decided to resign at a time he was overseas. Baird’s actions made it clear he preferred Berejiklian as his replacement.

“I think Gladys Berejiklian is an excellent candidate for premier and she has already proven herself in the last couple of days to be an excellent choice and she has my full support,” Stokes says.

“She’s going to do an amazing job and my task is to support her, along with the rest of the team.”