Dilapidated classrooms and old halls at 16 schools in Hume and Whittlesea are set for a $4.2 million makeover.
Education Minister James Merlino last week announced details of a $27 million budget to renovate or refurbish ageing buildings at 153 state schools.
The funding will follow a 2012 audit of every Victorian state school building and be in addition to regular maintenance funding handed out to schools annually for upkeep.
About 15 per cent of the total funding pool will be channelled into Hume and Whittlesea schools.
Schools allocated the second – and third – largest sums of money in Victoria are Epping Secondary College, which has been granted $860,000, and Thomastown Secondary College, with $760,000.
The Epping college principal, Helene Alamidis, said the funding announcement had come as a “pleasant surprise”.
She said a briefing with the Education Department later this week would confirm exactly how the money can be spent. The 1976-built school has 1100 students, the number growing rapidly as the suburb expands.
Ms Alamidis said there were just 640 students when she took over as principal in 2009, and since then “we’ve almost doubled”.
Each year the school raises money to upgrade facilities it deems most urgent. It has recently raised $500,000 to replace a turf oval with synthetic grass.
“We’ve made a concerted effort to refurbish one part of the school after another,” she said.
Other northern schools to be funded are:
Dimboola Primary School ($59,000), Epping Primary School ($125,000), Fawkner Primary School ($22,000), Lalor East Primary School ($379,000), Roxburgh Homestead Primary ($13,000), Roxburgh Park Primary School ($335,000), Sunbury College ($586,000), Sunbury Downs Secondary ($260,000), Sunbury Heights Primary School ($184,000), Sunbury West Primary School ($89,000), Thomastown East Primary School ($334,000), Thomastown Meadows Primary School ($168,000), Thomastown Primary School ($281,000) and Willmott Park Primary School ($86,000).
