ACT school moving sustainably into the future
Gold Creek Primary School in Nicholls, ACT is home to a brand new, $3.2 million environmentally sustainable environment centre and a new shade structure built with funding provided under the Building the Education Revolution (BER) program. The state of the art environment centre, comprising of a lab and two classrooms, is registered for a six star green rating, which puts the school in a group of only a handful of schools in Australia to already achieve this superior environmental standard.
The parents, teachers and students wanted an environmental and sustainable multipurpose, multisensory centre, where students could interact with the environment and play undercover with sand, learn about sustainable gardening with the space for propagating and potting plants. Principal Sue Jose said “It will give students an opportunity to interact with the environment, build sustainable gardens and build an orchard. It will enable them use technology to measure water usage, power usage, energy consumption and to record how much energy we’re generating through the solar panels. Having the lovely space will enable students to come from the senior site and other parts of the primary school and work together on environmental and sustainable projects.”
With high ceilings, wide verandas, wall and roof insulation, the building’s design utilises passive heating and cooling principles which Australian homesteads have traditionally used. The school’s north-facing photovoltaic panels can produce more electricity than the buildings require, with the excess returned to the power grid. Students are also able to monitor energy use through the computerised building management system.
Ms Jose said “It has enabled us to have more of a focus on environmental issues and sustainability this year. That has been an interest of the school for a number of years. Those priorities, on our school plan, were already there... so when we were given the opportunity, we said we would like an environment centre.”
In short, the school wanted to be a model for other schools to follow. Ms Jose was absolutely delighted to confirm that the school’s requests have all been delivered. Ms Jose said “I am very happy with the environment centre... we have a lovely building, a lot of potential and an attractive environment. We’ve had a fantastic opportunity and the school wouldn’t have had the capacity to build anything like that apart from that BER funding.”
Gold Creek’s senior site also received $200,000 funding for a covered outdoor learning area and a library refurbishment under the Nation School Pride element of BER. Ms Jose said “It’s a much more attractive library and there is better use being made of it. Because we changed the shelving and furniture and we changed the position of the interactive whiteboard, it’s made it much more accessible for staff professional development. It’s made us able to use the library spaces more effectively to run at least four or five classes in the library and adjacent rooms, at the same time. There is greater accessibility by students and greater efficiency and better use of the facility.”
The new facilities at the school have been well received by the local community. Ms Jose said “parents are really happy with the project and have been giving us lots of good feedback about the building... The environment centre, the library and the shade structure add to the attractiveness of the school. They make it more accessible and a better looking school.”
BER projects in the ACT have also supported the employment and training of many local workers in the ACT, with the Gold Creek projects alone directly supporting 176 jobs.