NSW public schools are in disrepair but capital works funding is failing to materialise

When a pitch for state funding for his daughter’s high school in Sydney’s north was accepted, James Wiggins thought he would finally see the dilapidated school redeveloped, and it would begin to claw back dwindling enrolments.

It was hoped the money would, to name a few items off the wishlist, replace the gas lines used for experiments in the science labs which were too dangerous to use in certain classrooms; upgrade facilities that had not been updated since Wiggins graduated from the school in 1980; and replace the leaking roof which has left mould and damp marks all over the walls. But Wiggins says the funding for Narrabeen sports high school was whittled down to a point where straight repairs are no longer feasible, let alone refurbishment.

“They’ve eroded any opportunity or any ability to even result in a decent school,” says Wiggins, who is the head of the school’s P&C. “The students don’t want a five-star hotel, they just want an environment that respects them as human beings.”

When the Gonski review was released it 2012, alongside setting a needs-based model designed to provide a baseline education to students by 2023, it recommended that governments boost their capital works spending on schools. The review found that poor infrastructure in public schools was affecting staff and teacher morale, as well as school enrolments.

But a decade on, Correna Haythorpe, the president of the Australian Education Union, says the public school system is still dealing with major infrastructure needs.

Haythorpe says while the states have increased their capital works funding to public schools, it is not enough to cover the gap left by the commonwealth government scrapping its recurrent capital works contribution to public schools in 2017. That decision further deepened an already large divide between public and private school infrastructure, she says, as the commonwealth continued its recurrent funding of private schools.

A 2021 report into school funding commissioned by the union found that between 2013 and 2018 for every dollar invested per child for facilities in a private school, a child in public school would get between 27 and 50 cents.

In the 2023-24 budget, the Albanese government committed $215m to capital works for public schools, but Haythorpe says the government needs to restore a recurrent funding pool.

“We want to see a permanent fund established,” she says. “It’s the right of every child to go to school in a high-quality teaching environment.”

The independent member for Mackellar, Sophie Scamps, says she toured Narrabeen high school earlier this month after being invited by the school community. She was shocked by what she saw.

“I just couldn’t believe there was a school that was like that in Australia in this day and age,” she says. “It was unsafe.”

In 2018, Wiggins says the school made a combined pitch with the local primary school for upwards of $100m to repair the school, while the Coalition was in government in New South Wales.

The school ended up with about half that, with the bulk of the money going to the primary school and secondary school set to receive $19.5m. But the money is yet to materialise.

A spokesperson for the NSW education minister, Prue Car, says the school community has a right to be “disappointed” about the project stalling under the previous government, and the new government is committed to delivering upgrades.

Wiggins says the delay is having an impact on enrolments, with Narrabeen sports high school losing about 50 students between years 10 and 11 each year to other schools.

It’s not all to do with the school’s state of disrepair, but Wiggins says it has spurred a self-perpetuating cycle.

“Part of the overall perception is that because of the visual, the physical state of the school, the teaching experience or the learning experience must be better at a school that’s better maintained, and to be honest there is some truth to that,” he says.

“But it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it means if our best students leave we then have worse HSC results and it becomes a domino effect.”

Craig Petersen, the head of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council, tells a similar story.

“Wherever I go, it’s a similar conversation: our teachers are doing great things, we’re delivering the same curriculum, but parents are choosing to go past the local public school because it’s that standard 50-year-old boring box brick design – it looks run down,” he says. “And they’re going down the road to the private school and whether it’s a brand new nongovernment school, or it’s an old sandstone one, it looks impressive.”

Wiggins says he is concerned many of his daughter’s school teachers were attracted by the promised redevelopment, and he fears it is wearing thin.

“I’m scared all of those enthusiastic young teachers and the experienced older teachers are going to say ‘well it’s never happening, I’m leaving.”