Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Wattle Glen Primary School and meeting the principal, Gerard Fay. Wattle Glen is a great school, you would be well aware, and is the heart of a wonderful community now in the Scullin electorate. I was impressed by the commitment of the teachers and the enthusiasm of the students in the classrooms I visited as well as in the playgrounds. The teachers there do a magnificent job in nurturing the potential of students, and I have no doubt that the students of Wattle Glen Primary will make good use of their fantastic education and go on to bigger and better things.

Gerard brought to my attention the following matters among some of the things: the school tripling in enrolments in three years without a kindergarten or any new estates in the area; the improvements in academic results of the school; the increase in student attendance; and the 12 new staff members who have joined the school. It is a fantastic story, particularly in the shadows of some very difficult times for communities in that region, best evidenced by the articulate and thoughtful four cocaptains of the school who are leaders already.

Under Labor's Better Schools Plan, Wattle Glen Primary School should receive $.26 million more in public funding in the 2019 school year compared to what it received in 2013, a 36.3 per cent increase in per student funding. The funding will allow gifted students to be better catered for, improve specialist programs, offer more opportunities, and provide intervention teachers to assist those students identified at risk of not meeting academic expectations. The funding will assist with classroom modifications and new assistive technology for students with disability.

My visit brought home to me the significant impact on every student, staff member and school community member of the better schools promise.