By Cara Waters
School grounds should be opened up after hours and on weekends to provide the equivalent of 110 MCGs of open space for play and exercise.
Victoria’s peak infrastructure body is behind the recommendation that would open up around 500 schools – equivalent to nearly a third of all government schools – that are not currently open for people to access outside of school hours.
The George family play at Ascot Vale primary school in Melbourne’s north-west which is open to the public outside of school hours. Credit: Penny Stephens
Infrastructure Victoria used a major report to call on the government to unlock much needed recreational space by supporting government schools to share more outdoor areas with the community and to provide schools that are open to the public with more funding to combat vandalism and assist in maintenance.
Research by Infrastructure Victoria found Melbourne will need another 900 hectares of open space as it continues to grow and to buy this land would cost about $3 billion.
Many government schools in Melbourne’s east already open their grounds, but Infrastructure Victoria found the biggest opportunity was in Melbourne’s north, west and the south-east where more school grounds are closed to public access.
Murrumbeena Primary School in Melbourne’s south-east is one of 520 of Victoria’s 1570 schools closed to the public, with the school shutting its gates at 6pm during the week and all day on weekends.
The school and government declined to comment on the reasons behind the school’s closure to the public.
Infrastructure Victoria chief executive Jonathan Spear said around 1.7 million Melburnians cannot access a community sports field within a10-minute walk, but if all government school grounds were open, nearly half a million of those people would have access.
“It seems crazy to us that some councils are forced to spend millions of dollars on small pocket parks when more schools could be supported to open up their grounds to local communities,” he said.
Spear said opening up schools was likely to mean more maintenance for schools which have limited budgets and some schools had concerns about potential vandalism and damage.
Data from the Crime Statistics Agency comparing reported criminal damage on government school grounds which are open and school grounds which are closed found “no statistical association” between the reported criminal damage and whether schools are open or closed.
“In New Zealand where they’ve moved to open up more schools they rate different schools by risk categories, based on a level of damage or vandalism that might occur,” Spear said. “The schools get set levels of maintenance funding to actually help them address any additional costs associated with being opened up to the community.”
Spear said if schools are open to the community outside school hours, they should get additional funding to manage maintenance and other costs.
While shared facilities are probably more expensive and more complex to manage and maintain, Spear said it is more cost-effective to share school grounds than build separate facilities or bear the social and health costs of leaving communities without access to open spaces for play and exercise.
Amanda Murray-Alston, her husband Andrew George and their five kids, (from left) Benjamin 6, Thomas 8, Isabel, 10, and Oliver, 12, with Emilia, 2, in the front at their school, Ascot Vale Primary School, where they spend time after school and on the weekends. Credit: Penny Stephens
Amanda Murray-Alston’s children attend Ascot Vale Primary School and spend so much time there outside school hours that she said: “I feel like we live there sometimes.”
“We are there on the weekend kicking footies and riding bikes,” Murray-Alston said. “Our closest park is two kilometres away from where we are, whereas I can walk to the school very easily, it is just up the road.”
A spokeswoman for the Victorian government declined to provide a list of schools that are closed to the public or comment on why so many government schools do not allow public access to their grounds.
The spokeswoman would also not comment on whether the government had plans to open more public school grounds to the public. She said the government had invested more than $16.9 billion since 2014 in building new schools and more than 2200 school upgrades.
“The majority of schools already offer public access to their outdoor areas for general community recreational use, as well as providing access to specialist facilities such as indoor and outdoor courts for sporting clubs, community groups and organisations,” the spokeswoman said.
The Infrastructure Victoria report did not look at whether private schools should have their grounds open to the public, an issue highlighted by a stoush between the City of Yarra and Alphington Grammar when the council removed a gate the private school had installed to block community access to public land on Darebin Creek.
In NSW top private schools are facing pressure to open their grounds to the public, but Spear said the report was limited to government schools built on public land.
“Before we think about all the other ways which might be more expensive and more complicated, we’ve got a very clear opportunity before us to unlock that $6.5 billion of public land,” he said.
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