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An Andrews government decision to ditch plans to build a primary school in a booming Melbourne suburb is expected to force hundreds of future students to learn in overcrowded schools each year.
Internal planning documents released under freedom-of-information laws reveal Victoria’s Education Department has forecast enrolment demand will exceed supply at three of four government schools in Truganina, part of Melbourne’s fastest-growing municipality, following the decision to drop long-held plans for a primary school in the Ellarook housing estate.
The site of the proposed Forsyth Creek primary school in Truganina, which the Andrews government is seeking to hand over to the developer.Credit: Scott McNaughton
The documents, obtained by Wyndham City councillor Josh Gilligan, reveal the government’s abandonment of the Forsyth Creek primary school site will leave Truganina with a deficit of 233 school places once the suburb has been fully developed.
The documents also raise questions about the timing of the department’s announcement that it will seek to hand over the Forsyth Creek site to the estate’s developer, revealing the intention had been confirmed by July last year, four months before the state election, but the department waited until March this year to inform the local council.
They also reveal that two of the suburb’s three current schools are either near or beyond capacity, according to their “enrolment pressure index”, an internal measure of demand that is not ordinarily made public.
In 2022, two of the three schools depended on portable classrooms to accommodate most of their students.
According to the department’s planning briefing, Forsyth Creek was dumped because it is poorly located “and is not expected to yield sufficient primary school demand to realise a viable catchment”.
Population projections indicate a school at Forsyth Creek would attract no more than 115 students, but also that its cancellation means the region’s two other planned future primary schools, Truganina North and Skeleton Creek, are forecast to be 156 and 151 places short respectively.
“The broader Truganina primary school service network, [which] also includes Truganina P-9 College, is expected to have a capacity deficit of 233 places,” the briefing states.
Truganina P-9 College is the only government school in the suburb that is not expected to have a deficit, but is reliant on portable classrooms to meet demand. Already, 1300 of the school’s 1775 students learn in relocatables, the briefing reveals.
Two-thirds of students learn in portables at the neighbouring Dohertys Creek P-9 College, which was already at 109 per cent capacity last year, according to the department’s enrolment pressure index.
Forsyth Creek P-6 school was proposed to be built in Truganina’s north, within the new Ellarook estate. The estate’s developers, Intrapac, still advertise a “future on-site school” online.
However, Intrapac is “seeking formal release of the site from its previously identified uses to be developed for other purposes”, the documents show. The request follows the department’s determination that the site is “not required to be retained for educational uses”.
Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools had ruled out building a Catholic school on the site, a spokesperson said.
The government says it will instead expand capacity at the Truganina North education precinct, which will open next year.
A second primary school, with the interim name Skeleton Creek P-6, is also proposed for Truganina, though it is unfunded and does not count among the 100 new schools the Andrews government has promised to build by 2026.
Wyndham councillor Gilligan said the documents revealed that the department’s plan for managing future education demand in Truganina was to overcrowd three of four schools in the suburb.
“The Andrews government have led everybody to believe that without the school there is enough space, but they will have to breach their own standards to accommodate demand,” he said.
Gilligan argued that if the department’s projections were correct, building one potentially underutilised school at Forsyth Creek was a better plan than having overcrowding in three of four schools in Truganina.
“If the alternative option is simply to cram students into schools that are not able to manage capacity, then no deal,” he said.
The Victorian Planning Authority’s precinct structure plan for Truganina was finalised in 2014, then amended in May 2022 with plans for a “potential government primary school” at Forsyth Creek still intact.
Intrapac was contacted for comment but did not respond. Education Minister Natalie Hutchins has been contacted for comment.
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