Mossgiel Park Primary School students crowd around one of the school’s few computers. Back: Principal John Wall, middle Grade six students Heba and Leonie with Josh in front.
By Rebecca Fraser
AN ENDEAVOUR Hills school has the worst computer-to-student ratio in Victoria.
Mossgiel Park Primary School has just one computer for nearly every 16 students, well below the desired Education Department ratio of one per every five pupils.
School principal John Wall said they had even been forced to throw out some aged computers that were no longer working.
In a further battle impeding the school’s provision of computers to students, the school’s electrical switchboard was installed in the early 1980s and has not been upgraded to cope with its current power needs.
“It is now so run down and overloaded that we frequently have up to one third of the school classrooms lose power due to overloading of one of the main switchboard 100amp fuses,” Mr Wall said.
“I have to replace them regularly and recently the meter exploded due to the overload. However, we were fortunate the melt down did not result in a fire.”
The school currently has a computer lab of 30 monitors servicing 450 students but Mr Wall said both he and his dedicated teaching staff were determined that students would not be disadvantaged by the shortage.
The vibrant and close-knit school community has recently attracted the attention of the New Zealand Ministry of Education with an official coming to see how the school successfully promoted student attendance and anti-bullying.
Mr Wall said the school was directing funds towards speech pathology and focusing on basic literacy skills to support and give students as many opportunities as possible.
He said the school funded a part-time student welfare officer and also had the need for a school nurse and needed to raise up to $22 000 per year to fund the school nurse position.
Mr Wall said Mossgiel Park Primary School served a challenging and very diverse school community — the challenge being the diversity — both socio-economically and culturally.
Thirty-three cultural background groups are represented within the school’s enrolment and Mr Wall said rental housing predominated in the immediate area surrounding the school.
Mr Wall said Endeavour Hills had no industry so sponsorship for school projects such as the purchase of computers was generally difficult.
He said the school relied on the community for all of its fundraising and were constantly drawing on the capacity of the same community members to pay.
Mr Wall said many students had no computer or Internet access at home and therefore relied on computers at school.
“As you can see the ability to service a lease to obtain up to twenty additional computers is beyond our ability in terms of cash flow to meet lease payments so as our current stock of computers become obsolete we will slip even further behind. We are not begging for funds, we merely want understanding as to why our computer to student ratio is so poor. I believe there may be quite a few schools in a similar situation to ours,” he said.
A Department of Education and Training spokeswoman said every school was funded to support a student to a curriculum computer ratio of 1:5.
“Schools have the flexibility to determine how these funds are allocated. In 2006, $19.5 million has been allocated to maintain this ratio, this funding is part of $116 million provided this year for ICT in Victorian schools,” she said.
