Planning for schools must be front and centre of government policy

NSW has a history of inadequately planning for school infrastructure needs. Schools have closed, only for populations to boom in those areas, leaving successive state governments scrambling to play catch-up with demand.

One area hit with poor planning decisions was the north shore, where flawed demographic modelling in the early 1990s led to the then Greiner Coalition government closing eight primary schools in the northern Sydney region, arguing it was selling the assets to fund development in the west.

At the time, demographic modelling forecast a decline in the number of families with young children living on the north shore. The modelling proved flawed. Populations swelled. To meet demand, a new comprehensive high school opened in Crows Nest in 2015, named Cammeraygal after the Cammeraygal people of the Guringai nation who lived in the Willoughby area.

The school was meant to alleviate some of the demand for public high school places on the north shore, but by 2018 it needed to expand to the former Crows Nest TAFE site to accommodate its Years 10 to 12 students. Now the school is full and has taken the unusual step of telling its community that local students who live within its boundaries will need to attend Mosman High.

The Department of Education regularly reviews its boundaries to ensure a fair distribution of student enrolments, in the hope schools are not left under- or over-utilised. This is reasonable and far preferable to simply closing schools and prematurely selling assets, as has happened in the past.

However, as the NSW Labor government faces the huge challenge of delivering 377,000 new homes over the next five years, it must also ensure there is adequate infrastructure to cater for the increased number of people living in the state. Planning for schools is crucial.

The government cannot mount a sound argument for families to accept high-density living if they cannot be guaranteed there will be access to local public schooling. Cammeraygal, now bursting at the seams and sending local students elsewhere, will not help the government counter opposition attacks should it be caught short when it comes to infrastructure, which includes schools but also open space and road upgrades.

The government has set aside $520 million for infrastructure upgrades. It will undoubtedly need to spend much more to meet the needs of communities in the high-density suburbs.

Crows Nest is one of the 37 sites identified under government’s transport-oriented developments that will allow thousands of homes to be built near train stations. In the case of Crows Nest, this means 3255 homes along the spine of the Pacific Highway.

It is difficult to see how the government can guarantee it has ample public schooling for the north shore. The Labor government must not repeat mistakes of past administrations and ensure it puts planning for schools at the forefront of all housing decisions.

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