Serena Kirby, Denmark Bulletin

Site works will get underway in January for the construction of the $2-$3 million Golden Hill Steiner School high school facilities.

The $900,000, 6ha block that adjoins the school was purchased in October by a foundation for school use.

Half the block will be used for the new school buildings with the other half to be set aside for three residential lots.

Local company Westruct will build the PTX Architects-designed expansion in stages.

Extensive environmentally-sensitive landscaping will be undertaken to surround the new buildings and restore natural habitat to the site that had previously been used for farming.

School board chair Ariel Van Oudtshoorn said stage one of the high school’s construction would be a Year 7 and Year 8 classroom with an open-air learning space between them.

There will also be an amenities block and a manual arts room built during stage one.

Ms Van Oudtshoorn said students were expected in the new buildings before the end of 2025.

Stage two of the build will include more classrooms and a specialist science classroom.

“We hope stage one and two will run pretty close together so it’ll be an ongoing project and we’re really pleased a local building company secured the tender,” Ms Van Oudtshoorn said.

Funding for the school expansion includes $1.425 million secured from the Federal Government’s capital grant program that provides money to non-government schools to improve infrastructure.

The school will provide additional funds.

Ms Van Oudtshoorn said that the Steiner Education head office in Sydney had recently informed her that the Denmark school was one of their fastest growing Steiner schools in Australia.

“We’ll have a 40 per cent increase in students from January 2024 to January 2025 so we’ll have 185 students enrolled for the next school year.” 

This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 19 December 2024.