A primary school may get ‘state-of-the-art’ facilities to bring teaching spaces into the 21st century, if the application is successful with the Wagga council.
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Mater Dei Primary School has submitted a development application for new classrooms, including the demolition of two existing classrooms to form collaborative, single-storey working spaces that connect with the school’s library.
With an estimated cost of $1.74 million, Mater Dei’s acting principal Megan Masterson said she is excited for what these new spaces would bring to the growing school.
“We’re really fortunate as we have a high demand for enrolments and we’ve outgrown some of our spaces and teaching practices,” Ms Masterson said.
“While the current classrooms aren’t holding us back, the school is not young anymore and so it’s an exciting time to move into collaborative spaces.”
The Catholic Schools Office, Diocese of Wagga has engaged with Glendenning Szoboszlay Architects to prepare a proposed development that would promote better use of existing buildings reconfigured for learning and teaching in today’s world.
According to the application submitted to council, the design of the building aims to reflect a modern style to ‘project a positive future’, without comprising the existing school.
The school remodeling will likely take about six months and pending approval, Ms Masterson is hopeful the demolition and construction will commence in the Christmas school holidays.
“We’re going to have an open plan, state of the art facility that is flexible and caters to many subjects, activities and classroom sizes,” she said.
“It will have a beautiful big open space that will be really utilised by the school community and give us plenty of options.”
The Diocese of Wagga is hoping this development will see the school prosper and secure its future.
“We’re undertaking a number of capital and infrastructure projects as part of an ongoing effort to update classrooms and administration areas in our schools around the diocese,” said a spokesperson from Catholic Education, Diocese of Wagga.
This comes as the Diocese of Wagga is trialing co-principals as Henschke Primary School next year to meet the increased administrative duties.
“The proposed works at Mater Dei Primary will help to provide students and teachers with a truly modern and collaborative learning environment,” the spokesperson said.
“The demolition component of this project will remove two outdated classrooms that are currently bricked in demountables and replace them with an expanded open and collaborative learning space.”