State Budget: Unprecedented education infrastructure spend will see more than 120 schools built or upgraded

EXCLUSIVE: Sixteen new schools will be constructed in Sydney growth suburbs as part of an unprecedented splurge in tomorrow’s state Budget. FULL LIST OF NSW SCHOOLS PROJECTS

An artist’s Impression of the Homebush West Public School upgrade.

• SEE THE FULL LIST OF NSW SCHOOLS PROJECTS

MORE than 120 schools will be built or upgraded, providing 1500 new classrooms and 32,000 student places, in an unprecedented $4.2 billion education infrastructure splurge in tomorrow’s state Budget.

School maintenance spending will also rise to $747 million over four years.

The increased $1.6 billion spending over four years on builds and upgrades is up 61 per cent on last year, and is lauded by the government as “the biggest NSW government investment­ in education infrastructure in history”.

The infrastructure splurge is the biggest in the state’s history. FULL LIST OF PROJECTS

The new schools all across the state will include a high-rise high school within Sydney Olympic Park, a primary school and high school at Oran Park catering for thousands of students, and others from Liverpool­ to Penrith to Wagga Wagga including a $110 million high school at Picton.

The Budget will also contain a Regional Growth Fund worth more than $1 billion in a bid to show that the government is not just about Sydney and help the Nationals strengthen their hold in the regions against One Nation and the Shooters Party.

An artist's impression of the Russell Lea Public School upgrade.

That fund will deliver the sort of “local projects” Premier Gladys Berejiklian said would become a priority when she became premier in January.

But the schools funding is the centrepiece of the Budget after pressure from the opposition and communities­ to address school overcrowding, with the population set to explode in the next 20 years.

An artist’s impression of the relocated Cleveland Street Intensive English High School upgrade.

The new projects — including at Catherine Fields, North Kellyville, Penshurst, Schofields and Ryde — are in addition­ to projects previously announced including high-rise schools at Surry Hills and Parramatta­, and Ballina High.

SEE THE FULL LIST OF NSW SCHOOLS PROJECTS

Over the next two years, the government pledges to start building or upgrading more than 123 schools, and complete work on another 33.

An artist’s impression of the Killara Public School upgrade.

The government is negotiating to establish a new education precinct with a high school at Meadowbank, near Ryde. There is also money for new schools at Wagga Wagga, Liverpool and Penrith, with no sites identified as yet.

“This is fundamentally the biggest challenge facing us in education over the next few years,” Education Minister Rob Stokes said yesterday.

“It’s an issue of increasing enrolments. In many ways, that’s because of the strength of the NSW economy.

“There has been a historic lack of planning for the enrolments surge and we are a government that now has the budget position where we can provide the infrastructure that has been needed for a long time ... it’s a very ambitious target but we have to meet it.”

An artist’s impression of the Rainbow Street Public School, Randwick upgrade.

Mr Stokes said that as well as building new schools, the government was upgrading and “retrofitting” schools to create the classrooms of the future.

Of the increase in maintenance money also being announced­ to fix things like toilet blocks and fencing, Mr Stokes said: “For the first time, we’ll be able to manage our maintenance liability.”

Ms Berejiklian said the government­ was “committing more funding to the construction of new schools and more school upgrades than Labor did in their last 11 years of office­ combined.”