SWAN Hill’s St Mary MacKillop College is getting $6 million in funding to help build the new $50 million secondary campus it needs.
The project was confirmed this week by Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll.
Mr Carroll said the funding was part of a spending towards 67 projects at 65 Catholic school across the state.
“Thousands of Victorian kids go to a low-fee Catholic school every day – and we’re making sure those kids are learning in the best environments,” he said.
“We’re supporting our low-fee Catholic schools to expand, build new classrooms and open new campuses.”
St Mary MacKillop College principal Michelle Haeusler said the funding was a major step forward for the school, which represents more than a century of Catholic education in Swan Hill.
“This is a great bit of news for us, and we are all so excited,” Ms Haeusler said.
“And a great first step in a project which we have been working on since 2016.
“This $6 million will go with $8 million of our own funding for Stage 1 of the project to build this new campus on our new site in Grey Street.
“We are also so grateful to the many people who have supported us with this dream, such as Peter Walsh, our local member, who has been so helpful and always speaking up on our behalf.”
Ms Haeusler said she and school business manager David Rush had been working on the project for eight years, so the $6 million had been some time in the making.
She said with St Mary’s Primary School their main feeder school, they could see that if the enrolment trend continued there was no way the current college would cope.
She said the school’s current ideal capacity is 450, but there were already 500 students enrolled.
“Now we are able to get Stage 1 up and running, we will have to go through the process of planning permits and tenders, but we are really hoping we will be able to start using some of the new site by 2027,” Ms Haeusler said.
Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh had been working long and hard behind the scenes with the diocese in Ballarat to help the school build its case to get the funding.
“This is fantastic news for St Mary MacKillop College in particular, but also for the whole Swan Hill community in general, as it gives families better choices in education for their children,” Mr Walsh said.
“It will also give the school a cutting-edge campus to help it take its students through these vital senior school years.
“And while this will be a brilliant investment of Victorians’ taxpayer dollars, I am still disappointed the Allan Labor government is refusing to include the Catholic education system in its $400 student rebates.
“This remains a discriminatory policy simply because parents choose to send their children into the private education system – and that’s wrong and would not, and will not, happen under a Liberals-Nationals government.”
