With a $79 million price tag, rock-climbing cubes and an iPad-ready playground, Harrison School may look to some like an extravagant education showpiece.
But the northside school, with its sustainable design, high-tech digital learning and big-picture teaching strategies, could soon be the typical Canberra school of the 21st century.
Harrison, which has catered for primary students for the last four years, yesterday welcomed Years 7 and 8 into its $51.65million secondary facilities.
Its completion takes the school's total worth to $79million, putting it alongside Gungahlin College ($72.4million) and Namadgi School ($56.5million) among the capital's newest and most expensive schools.
ACT Education Directorate director-general Jim Watterston said it was possible to build schools for half that price that looked great and functioned well, but he said the new schools were ''just something else''.
''I think the layout and contemporary learning spaces, the engagement the kids feel not just from being in the school but from being a part of something that is innovative, is just fantastic,'' Mr Watterston said.
''It's a hallmark of the ACT... we've had architects coming from interstate, from NSW and Victoria where they're doing some pretty innovative stuff of their own, to have a look at our models.''
The Harrison school has already won plenty of admirers for its attention-grabbing design.
Its eco-credentials are advanced - ventilation systems suck cool air in through vents in the walls and push hot air out through the roof.
Rainwater tanks supply the toilet and landscaping systems and energy-efficient lighting keeps greenhouse gas emissions down.
Learning, too, is high-tech with digital whiteboards in every class, wireless internet even covering the playground and staff rooms glass-walled to make teachers more accessible to students.
Classrooms are built in small clusters and walls can be slid in and out to allow team-teaching and group work.
And principal Dennis Yarrington points out that kindergarten students mix confidently with teenagers in open, but specialised, playgrounds.
''The primary school area has large open spaces for ball games but high school kids don't run around like they do, so we've got long cement benches and more sitting space so they can study or muck around on the iPads, mobiles phones and laptops,'' he said.
''We make it clear to the [high school students] that this is their area but that they don't own it. Students are free to wander and interact with whoever they want to, and they do.''
The new buildings come amidst one of the biggest shake-ups in education in recent memory.
The Gonski review into federal school funding is expected to be released next week, public school autonomy will be reintroduced nationwide in the next few years and states are in the process of implementing a national curriculum.
In all three areas of reform, the ACT is leading the way with its multi-million dollar schools, autonomy powers in 23 schools and on record as the only jurisdiction to have started implementing all four phase-one subjects (English, history, science and maths) of the national curriculum (including collaboration between all three sectors - public, Catholic and independent).
Mr Watterston said he did not think the sector received enough credit for the positive steps it had made.
But he also pointed out that other schools across the district had not been forgotten and hinted that extra funding for their upgrades may be on the way.
"We've got some old facilities but ... the ACT spends more on refurbishing and re-equipping schools than any other place I've ever worked in. We're not letting anything just sit back and crumble away.
"You'll see in this coming budget there's going to be money for capital improvement on those schools and there'll be a plan over the next decade, I think, to reinvigorate all of them."
This reporter is on Twitter: @breanna_tucker
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