Shellharbour MP Anna Watson with Education Minister Prue Car in March this year at the site of the future Calderwood primary school. Photo: Zoe Cartwright.
The year Anna Watson was elected as NSW Member for Shellharbour, she started agitating for a new primary school to be built in West Dapto.
Since 2011 she’s sat on the opposition benches calling for land to be purchased for a future school to cater for the area’s surging population.
Fourteen years later, she’s “delighted” that funding has finally been approved to buy land and build the school.
West Dapto is one of four new schools which will receive funding in next week’s state budget. A preschool will be co-located with the school.
Ms Watson said a site had been chosen for the school, however the location could not be announced until negotiations with the landowner were finalised.
“West Dapto has been crying out for a new school for a very long time,” she said.
Ms Watson intends to ask the government to fast-track construction of the school.
West Dapto is the fastest-growing residential area in NSW outside the Sydney region according to Wollongong City Council.
Over the next few decades it will become home to more than 50,000 people.
In 2024, the student population at Dapto Public School – the closest to the fast-growing West Dapto area – sat at 792.
The school’s annual report said there had been a steady growth in recent years.
Last year it had 35 classes from Kindergarten to Year 6, a growing Aboriginal school population and students who came from 25 cultural backgrounds.
When Labor came to government in 2023, it promised new primary schools for Dapto and Calderwood and a high school for Flinders.
In March this year, Education Minister Prue Car visited the region to announce the new Calderwood primary school and co-located preschool would be up and running by 2028.
They will be located on the corner of Calderwood Road and Escarpment Drive in Calderwood. A Voluntary Planning Agreement is in place to secure the land from developer Stockland and the site is due to be handed over to the Department of Education later this year.
The 2023 state budget allocated funding for planning of the future high school at Flinders – Ms Watson says that project is next on her list.
