Schools pay to re-clean filthy classrooms

Schools are forking out tens of thousands of dollars to clean filthy campuses that should already be sanitised as the school cleaning fiasco reaches crisis point.

Yellow “muck” covers the floor in the children's’ toilets at Glendal Primary School.

Schools are forking out tens of thousands of dollars to clean filthy campuses that should already be sanitised as the school cleaning fiasco reaches crisis point.

One school even banned students on Tuesday from using a toilet block deemed too dirty to safely use.

Livingstone Primary School in Vermont South has ripped $11,000 out of its budget in five months — since the Department of Education overhauled its school cleaning contracts — to hire further cleaners to do a job that should already be done.

Next year, it has put aside $25,000 to pay extra cleaners.

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A water trough at Glendal Primary School, just after it had been cleaned.

The Department’s overhaul intended to stamp out underpayment of cleaning contractors but has led to schools having cleaning hours slashed and campuses left dirty.

At Glendal Primary in Glen Waverley on Tuesday, 150 young boys were told their toilets were so unsanitary they weren’t permitted to enter.

Desperate principals and teachers say they are spending hours cleaning dirty classrooms every week since the overhaul in July.

“They don’t clean the children’s drinking troughs, there’s dust all over the floor,” Glendal Primary principal Deborah Grossek said.

“I don’t know how the children can go in (the toilets) because they smell.

“The school is getting dirtier and dirtier and I am getting to my wits end about what to do.”

When the changes were made, the school’s cleaning hours were cut by one-third.

Yellow “muck” covers the floor in the children's’ toilets at Glendal Primary School.

Built up yellow muck covers the floor in the children's’ toilets, drinking troughs are choked with filth and dust covers classrooms.

Livingstone Primary School council president Andrew Freeman said its book budget was down this year when it had to pay $11,000 for further cleaning.

“The cleanliness is just disgusting,” he said.

“One day, we had a child vomit and it sat there for three days.

“Almost to the day the Government cancelled the contracts, the school has been an absolute disgrace.”

The conditions come despite the Andrews Government announcing an audit in August to ensure schools were getting enough cleaning hours and workers were being paid properly.

Glendal Primary assistant principal Marilyn Newsom said they weren’t just dealing “with a dirty school, we’re also dealing with an upset community”.

“It’s just atrocious — it really is atrocious,” she said.

Australian Principals’ Federation president Julie Podbury said if parents knew of the conditions some schools were facing, “you wouldn’t want your kids to go to school”.

Rubbish lies outside a classroom at Glendal Primary School.

“I would be mortified if it were my children,” she said.

“We just want this issue fixed as soon as possible — it’s the last thing (principals) should be dealing with.”

Education Minister James Merlino said reforms were made to “address the systematic exploitation of workers”.

“I will not tolerate any drop in standards from any of the contractors and this has been made very clear to them,” he said.

A Department spokesman said it “will continue to closely manage the performance of all service providers”.

An investigation by the Herald Sun last year found that more than 80 per cent of Victoria’s school cleaners were potentially being underpaid.

The Department then took control of cleaning contracts from schools, replacing 100 contracts with just eight.

@ashargoon