Thursday, 18 May 2023

Adjournment

Berwick College

Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (17:02): (181) I raise an adjournment matter for the Minister for Education, and I ask the minister to come out and meet with some students from Berwick College. I had some students do some work experience with me recently, Sanj and Madeline. They raised some issues around their school. First and foremost, I must state that I have been to the school many times. It is a fantastic environment for learning. The teachers there are wonderful; principal Kerri Bolch is amazing. Some amazing students have come out of that school – probably including myself, although I did not quite finish and I do not want to go on about myself too much. They have raised some issues which come directly from the students, and I would love the Minister for Education to come out because they need some funding to get some upgrades at that school.

Some of the things that these students have listed are desks that are damaged, graffitied and full of chewing gum. The projectors and HDMI ports are faulty, glitch out occasionally and are outdated. Obviously this is affecting and impacting learning. The power points in a couple of classrooms are faulty and do not work. The toilets at Berwick College are broken – the seats and doors have fallen off. We all remember when we got into government in 2010 the then shadow minister Rob Hulls brought in a door from his school signed to say that the school needed repairs forgetting the fact that he had been in government for 11 years. The door happened to fall off the day the Liberals were elected. We are saying this is a problem that the government needs to address.

The air conditioners at the school are old and do not work. If they do work, students cannot even feel the cold and occasionally hot air blows in, again impacting their learning. The chairs in the classrooms are broken with either the backs of the chairs broken or legs somehow missing. The classrooms themselves are portables and are visibly crumbling under the number of students going through. There are currently about 1800 students. What they wish for is for the minister to come and have a look through the school and examine the horrible conditions that these students are experiencing, because they cannot continue in that learning environment.

I will give credit: we have had funding at that school in the past for the health and wellbeing centre, something that I would encourage looking at for more schools, not just Berwick College. It has had some outstanding results. We have had young people go through there who have had a range of mental health issues and have needed extra support to improve their learning, and the school has managed to work with some of those students and get them engaged, which is absolutely magnificent. I put that down to the teachers and principal but also to the new facility, which did come from funding from this current Labor government but also from support we put forward. We started to push for this facility after we had suicides in the area that were quite tragic.

These students want the minister to come out, have a look through and see and experience what is happening at the school to ensure that when the government is considering the budget money comes to Berwick College so we can get it up to the standard these students deserve so they can have the ultimate learning experience.