26 Oct 2016 Benalla Ensign, Benalla VIC (General News) by JESSICA BALL Stage one of the Benalla P-12 College redevelopment is one step closer to lift-off. With the revised master plan completed, Minister for Education James Merlino and Member for Northern Victoria Jaclyn Symes visited the school last Wednesday. The plan will now not only include a senior hub, art and technology facilitates, additional change rooms and gym area at the Faithfull St campus but also upgrades at Avon St. Mr Merlino said construction is set to begin mid next year. Its coming along beautifully and its very exciting, Mr Merlino said. I think the school community did the right thing in terms of not expending that money initially back in the 2014/15 budget. Now with this full complement of $8.5 million the school can realise their ambitions for stage one. Ms Symes said the newlook master plan is ideal for modern teaching techniques and collaborative learning. I think (principal) Barb (OBrien) has driven a new future for the school and it looks great, Ms Symes said. The master plan was almost 10 years old and Im much more excited about what I saw today than what was on the table previously. Principal Barbara OBrien said the outdated plan had been redesigned for students of today and for the future. The previous plan had lots of areas in it that really werent going to benefit our students, Ms OBrien said. Every area that weve redeveloped in this plan is going to benefit our students and I think thats the exciting part. Ms OBrien said she was excited to include Avon St in stage one. That will give a lot of confidence to our community which has always felt that Avon St was the poor cousin and was left out a little bit, she said. We will be reducing the size of Avon St campus to allow us to redevelop Faithfull St as well but we will refurbish all of the Avon St campus and make it a much more exciting and state-of-the-art facility to what it is now. Senior students are expected to move to Faithfull St at the end of 2018 but Ms OBrien said once buildings are completed the school will determine the best time without disturbing their VCE studies. The school will seek further funding in future budgets to complete stage two and Mr Merlino said they are keen to finish what they have started. Caption Text: Updated: State Member for Northern Victoria Jaclyn Symes, Education Minister James Merlino and Benalla P-12 College principal Barbara OBrien discuss the schools revised master plan. Licensed by Copyright Agency. You may only copy or communicate this work with a licence