Minister for Education Sarah Mitchell gives an update on Yanco Agricultural High School's female dorms upgrade during visit

Students, the school's P&C and Member for Murray Helen Dalton campaigned the NSW government to upgrade these dorms, which were demountable buildings that some said were falling down around them.

NSW Minister for Education Sarah Mitchell recently visited the school to meet with infrastructure teams and the architects who are designing the new girls dormitories.

"We were able to show students and staff some of the early designs and concepts in terms of what it will look like," Ms Mitchell told The Irrigator.

"I was at Yanco Ag just around the time the pandemic kicked off and going at looking at those demountables at that time, it was shocking.

"It was not something that we (as a government) should be offering in public education in NSW. So I was very determined to make sure we could get the money to upgrade them, which we did in last year's state budget.

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"Now we are at a point where the expectation is that we will be able to move those old demountable dorms off site later this year and hopefully start some early works."

The NSW goverment will be lodging the development application for this work with Leeton Shire Council in the coming months.

Ms Mitchell said she would like to see construction start early next year.

"Possibly even later this year, depending on how we go, but certainly we expect to see a lot of construction on site from the beginning of next year," she said.

The dormitories will be new buildings and work will also be made to improve parts of the lodgings for male students as well.

"There will be more opportunities for the school community to provide feedback on the design and layout in the coming months as well," Ms Mitchell said.

"We're looking at refurbishing some of the other areas as well such as upgrading furniture in some of the boys dorms. We want the whole school to really get that lift."

Yanco Agricultural High School principal Marni Milne said the upgrade to the female dorms had been a long time coming and it was a project she was looking forward to seeing progress.

"Our existing male and female dorms will also be upgraded, it's going to be a great time to be involved with the school," she said.

"We're continuing that consultation process at the moment, starting with the visit from the minister to talk to the students. In a couple of weeks time we will have the School Infrastructure NSW group that are working with us, coming down again to talk with parents, staff and students again."

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