Victoria’s education minister has defended a decision to move hundreds of students from an overcrowded inner-Melbourne high school into a rented CBD office building, describing it as a “temporary” solution.
University High School’s principal, Ciar Foster, wrote to parents on Monday to inform them that due to “a significant enrolment increase in recent years” a temporary campus would be established at 399 Lonsdale Street under a seven-year lease agreement.
Currently the site of the Institute of Health and Nursing Australia’s Melbourne CBD campus, the office building is located about 2km – or a 30-minute walk – from the school’s main campus.
Foster said the building would accommodate 400 year 9 students from the start of term one in 2025.
“[The campus] will allow our students to continue receiving quality education in a safe and fit-for-purpose environment. We are excited to be re-developing the Year 9 curriculum program to take advantage of this new location,” she told parents in the letter.
The public school had previously operated a temporary campus at nearby North Melbourne primary school, which Foster said would close at the end of 2024.
Asked about the overcrowding at the school at a press conference on Tuesday, the education minister, Ben Carroll, said the department had worked “very hard” with the school to come up with the solution.
“We put … $1.3m into that relocation to support University High, [which has] had a growth in enrolments,” Carroll told reporters.
“This is a temporary accommodation facility, but we’ll continue to … work with [the school] on what long-term measures are needed, but they’re very grateful for the department’s assistance in having that new measure set up and that new capability at that new campus.”
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Carroll said other areas of the inner city such as Port Melbourne and South Melbourne had also experienced a surge in enrolments, leading the department to invest in “vertical schools”.
A factsheet compiled by the Victorian School Building Authority said the decision to create a temporary campus rather than renovate the exisiting school was made to “maximise recreational and learning spaces for all students and to minimise disruptions to school operations”.
The VSBA said the building would be “adapted” to suit the needs of the school and would include general-purpose classrooms as well as multipurpose practical learning spaces “filled with natural light through floor to ceiling windows with city views”.
“We are continuing to explore longer-term options for additional secondary school facilities in the Parkville, Flemington, North Melbourne and Arden areas to help manage enrolment demand at University High School,” it said.
The Victorian opposition education spokesperson, Jess Wilson, said a seven-year lease was not a “short-term solution”.
“Under Labor, students will be completing their entire high school journey in a temporary classroom,” she said.
“Overcrowding in Victorians schools has been years in the making and the Allan Labor government has no real plan to keep pace with enrolment growth.”