Gungahlin College parents seek overcrowding solutions

Parents and Citizens Association president Rachel Armstrong said every single space in the school was timetabled for use, leaving no areas for students to study or socialise during free periods.

"We are absolutely squished in like sardines at the moment. The college has been so creative at trying to best accommodate teaching and learning there and using every sort of available space that we have," Mrs Armstrong said.

"But the reality is that we have classrooms that are too small to hold the number of students in a particular class. We have classes being taught in lots of open areas. Students even just being able to move around the college freely, that's difficult."

The issues were raised with ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry and ACT Education Directorate officials last October, but not many of the solutions discussed have been implemented.

Two demountable buildings were promised to provide four extra classrooms by term 2 this year but haven't been delivered.

A college near Gold Creek School is being planned but has no open date.

Preliminary results from the 2023 school census showed 1161 students were enrolled at the college in February this year, up from 1124 in 2022.

An Education Directorate spokeswoman said enrolments were projected to grow moderately in 2024 and 2025.

The directorate deemed the capacity of the college to be 1280 students in 2022.

Mrs Armstrong said this was based on the assumption there would be a strong uptake of night classes, which has not eventuated.

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She said the actual capacity was closer to 900 students, meaning the school was about 260 students over capacity.

Students zoned for Gungahlin College have been allowed to enrol at Dickson College since 2022. The directorate spokeswoman would not say how many students had taken this option, but it is believed to be a low number.

Mrs Armstrong said the college would get to the point where it wouldn't be able to take everyone in its priority enrolment area.

"Everyone knows this area has just grown and grown and grown and, really, there was a pretty desperate need for a second college years ago, to be honest," Mrs Armstrong said.

"We always hear that the directorate and the government are working on solutions, and they've worked with demographers from ANU. They've got all this data. But how did they not foresee this as being an issue?"

The directorate spokeswoman said some improvements were in progress, including enclosing balconies near specialist science spaces, internal renovations and providing "relocatable learning units" to add eight extra learning spaces.

She also said the directorate was investigating options to improve use of space in the Gungahlin Library, where the college already uses two small classrooms. No dates were provided for these initiatives.

The ACT Council of Parents and Citizens Associations urged the directorate to fund short- to medium-term solutions in a submission for the 2023-24 ACT budget.

One of the solutions was to expedite planning permission for the promised demountable classrooms and to relocate Gungahlin CIT to a more suitable place in Gungahlin so the college could have three extra classrooms and a staff room.

Another solution raised was turning the cafe in the Gungahlin Library into classrooms, but this would remove an affordable food option for the students.

"Measures to address the capacity issues at Gungahlin College are currently in the pipeline but even these are taking longer than expected, with some promised solutions not likely to be in place until at least 2024 and others looking like they may not progress at all," the submission said.

"Noting that college students only attend for two years, there are cohorts of students that are going through the college system with suboptimal infrastructure solutions in place."

Mrs Armstrong said the lack of library space was particularly problematic as students didn't have anywhere to study during free periods.

"They're wandering around Gungahlin or some students are telling us that they just go home because they've got nowhere else to work. So they have to travel in and out of Gungahlin and the reality is that some students will probably think, 'Well I'm not going to go back in the class'."

The 2022-23 ACT budget provided $1 million for master planning and preliminary design work for a second college in Gungahlin but no opening date has been set.