A similar amount will be spent on early planning for a new primary school in Chatswood,where the existing primary and high schoolsare struggling to cope with the booming population and are also being upgraded.
A site for the new primary school has not yet been identified,but there is speculation it will be on the corner of the Pacific Highway and Mowbray Road,a former electricity depot that is now a tunnelling dive site for the Chatswood to Sydenham Metro.
More than $16 million has been allocated to a Macquarie Park Education Precinct,which would include both a primary school and a high school on the site of the old Peter Board High School,which was also known as North Ryde High School.
The NSW government in late 2017 announced it hadreached an exclusivity agreement to buy back the site of Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s old school,which was closed in the late 1990s and the site sold for $51 million in 2006 by the Iemma Labor government.
Four years later,negotiations continue. When asked about the sale of the site by theHerald earlier this month,a NSW Department of Education spokeswoman said:“We are in discussions with the landowner about purchasing the site.
“While this process continues,the planning for the school progresses. The NSW government will deliver the Macquarie Park Education Precinct.”