St Agatha’s Catholic Primary School is located on a small site in Cranbourne, in what has been one of the fastest housing growth areas in the country. The school has certainly felt the enrolment pressure, and this, along with the need to replace aging facilities has resulted in the decision to implement two storey development to replace single storey, in order to not only preserve precious open play space, but to increase it. A new central “heart” to the school has been created.
At the same time the school wished to minimise the amount of disruption to student learning which extended building programs often involve. It was agreed that the procurement process would include off-site modular construction of the agreed architectural design.
The $5.5m Stage 1 & 2 provide 14 home base Learning Areas, plus Specialist rooms, student toilet facilities, a Small Group room, and teacher work spaces. The open nature of these spaces allows views across all spaces and home bases can be “paired” to facilitate Team Teaching. The students access Learning Areas via the central “Learning Commons” which doubles as additional breakout space. Teachers have good sight lines into that space, facilitating small group activity.
The ground floor features a new Administration centre. The school now wish to repeat this success with a third stage.