By Robyn Grace
High school students have been moved back to primary school in inner Melbourne as the Education Department drags its feet in addressing a chronic shortage of space in one of the state’s fullest secondary schools.
Year 9 students from University High School have been given four classrooms at North Melbourne Primary School this year in an effort to alleviate overcrowding at the school’s Parkville campus.
Melinda Cooke, whose son is in grade 3 at North Melbourne Primary, said there hadn’t been any consultation with parents before the high school students were moved in.Credit: Eddie Jim
The move places up to 80 teenage students on North Melbourne’s grade 3 to 6 Errol Street campus. The high-schoolers have different lunch and recess times from the younger students and use a separate entrance and a new toilet block.
North Melbourne Primary School principal Sarah Nightingale told parents in a letter at the start of the year that the students would be housed at the school throughout 2024, “while the Department of Education supports University High School with more permanent arrangements to address the significant enrolment increase it has seen over recent years”.
It’s the second time Uni High has been forced to share space with a primary school. A number of students were temporarily housed at Carlton Primary while repairs were carried out after a fire in 2021.
West Melbourne mother Melinda Cooke said the government was failing to properly plan for the obvious growth of families in inner Melbourne.
Cooke, whose son is in grade 3 at North Melbourne Primary, said there hadn’t been any consultation with parents before the high school students were moved in.
“I’m fairly disappointed to be honest,” she said. “I don’t think many people would argue that year 9 isn’t a bit of a troublesome year ... let’s stick them down at the primary school doesn’t really sound like a good idea.”
Cooke said families had been warning the government for years that it needed to provide more public schooling in inner Melbourne.
“I don’t want to have to move just because there isn’t adequate schooling in the area,” she said.
Uni High has struggled to meet student demand since the state government tripled its enrolment boundaries without consultation in 2016.
Former principal Heather Thompson said at the time that the school was already scrambling to service its booming catchment area, which then covered North Melbourne, Carlton, Parkville and the northern end of the CBD. The expansion added the entire CBD, parts of Southbank, plus Docklands to the school’s zone.
By 2022, the Education Department’s own Enrolment Pressure Index showed Uni High was operating at 110 per cent capacity.
The department has not released an updated index but records from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority show the school added almost 100 students for most years from 2019 to 2023. Last year, the school had 1858 students. Enrolments for this year are not yet available.
Current principal Ciar Foster declined to comment about overcrowding, saying the school was “working with the department around accommodation and capacity”.
Uni High was the most overcrowded of 14 high schools operating over capacity in 2022, but inner Melbourne does not appear on the government’s list of new schools being built.
The government has already been caught out on student growth in inner Melbourne. In Docklands, it was forced to acquire land to build a primary school after not including one in the original plan. Two years later, it had to expand the school into a nearby shopping centre. All those children are currently zoned to Uni High.
A proposed inner-city suburb for 20,000 people around the new Arden train station in Melbourne’s north could also increase enrolment pressure.
Education Department secretary Jenny Atta told a public accounts and estimates committee hearing last year that secondary school provision across inner Melbourne was a “live issue”.
Greens MP Ellen Sandell said the government needed to find a permanent solution for both Uni High and secondary schooling in inner Melbourne.
“We have so many schools that are over capacity and schools that desperately need urgent repairs and upgrades,” she said. “Yet schools and parents constantly get the run-around by the Labor government and school building authority, with community consultation virtually non-existent and problems being left by the government to fester.”
Opposition education spokeswoman Jess Wilson said the state government had failed to plan and deliver adequate school infrastructure.
“Whether it’s overcrowded classrooms or too few teachers, Labor’s mismanagement continues to deny students the high-quality education they deserve,” she said.
The Education Department did not answer questions about what it would do to alleviate enrolment pressure at Uni High or whether it had plans to build a new secondary school in inner Melbourne.
“We’re working hard to address current school facility issues that are affecting the education sector across the nation – and we’ll continue to work closely with University High and North Melbourne Primary School to accommodate current and future enrolments,” a spokesperson said.
Get the day’s breaking news, entertainment ideas and a long read to enjoy. Sign up to receive our Evening Edition newsletter.