Mount Alexander College
Danny PEARSON (Essendon – Minister for Government Services, Assistant Treasurer, Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC, Minister for Consumer Affairs) (09:56): They say, ‘From little things big things grow.’ I was delighted to join my good friend the Minister for Education for the official opening of the new facilities at Mount Alexander College in Flemington. It has been quite a journey. I think those of us who choose a course in public life invariably ask ourselves, to begin with, why I want to do this. And then when you arrive here you think, what do I want to achieve. As the member for Essendon, I wanted to get this school right. This school was seen as what was described to me as a high-outcome school. When I asked what that meant, I was told it meant that kids go there and they cannot read and write and by the time they leave at year 10, they can. What you saw over the journey was this school just was not attracting a large cohort of students – I remember being there in 2015 with the then Minister for Education James Merlino, and there were 27 students that year in the year 7 cohort. With an initial investment of $250,000 by the government, Wayne Haworth, the then principal, did a fantastic job in convincing the community that this was a really important school, and it resulted in this fantastic development that we see now. So it is something I am incredibly proud of, and I was delighted the minister was able to join me.