Glen Innes High School began prioritising a number of significant infrastructural works yesterday after Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall confirmed the school had been earmarked to receive $1.1 million under the Department of Education’s capital works program.
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Mr Marshall met with GIHS principal Mike Gray and the school leaders yesterday and said the funding will be a welcome sight.
“The school does have some very old buildings that predate the establishment of the school that were originally built there for a prison that was never commissioned and at one stage in history those buildings were retrofitted to be a school,” he said.
“But it is a mixture of new and old buildings and there is a need for some major funding there to upgrade various parts.”
Principal Gray said the school will be consulting with parents and the community to prioritise projects.
“It is a great windfall for the town and it adds to what we are already doing,” he said.
Under the recently implemented Local Schools, Local Decisions initiative, Mr Gray and Mr Marshall said the school will have a considerable input with the Department of Education as to where the funds will be directed.
“Historically, if we were to say here is $1.1 million for Glen Innes High School, under the old system the department would have told the principal where that money would be spent,” Mr Marshall said.
“Under the new system there is consultation and the principal and the school community get to say to a large extent where that money is spent and how it is spent.”
Mr Gray said he was confident the DET would follow in the spirit of the Local Schools initiative and consult with the school community as the funding becomes available.
“I just think it is another great investment for the kids in the town,” he said.
Mr Marshall said, while there is no funding allocated for local primary schools in this round, the initial two years of the Gonski model adopted by the state government has delivered approximately $53 million for the 53 schools in the electorate.
“Schools in this electorate have already, in the first two years of Gonski, got over $6 million more in recurrent equity funding than they have prior to Gonski coming in,” he said.
“Schools now have more money than they ever have had before. But it is still very important that we keep providing large sums of money for capital improvement.”
