Grade five and six pupils at Hoppers Crossing’s St Peter Apostle Primary School now have shiny new surroundings to spend their final two years at the school in.
St Peter Apostle recently opened its new senior learning centre, a double storey building that houses the school’s grade five and six pupils as an art room and project spaces.
Funded by St Peter Apostle school and parish community, the learning centre took 12 months to build and replaced an older building at the school which could no longer be used.
“We’d always wanted to build a new building however the need became more pressing when one of our older buildings suffered damage in storms in 2022 and had to be demolished,” said St Peter Apostle principal Karen Wilson of how the new building came about.
Ms Wilson said the centre was built in a way that encourages active and collaborative learning among students, rather than just housing a number of classrooms.
“It’s designed for senior students so the spaces are quite flexible, the children can either independently in small groups or in larger groups depending on their learning needs. All the classrooms lead onto an open project space which allows for the whole year level to meet or children to break out into smaller groups.”
And while the centre is primarily for grades and five and six, she said the addition of art facilities meant it would be used by all year levels.
“We didn’t have a dedicated art room before this building so this is a large art space which looks over our oval and all the children in the school have the opportunity to use this space.”
The senior learning centre doesn’t occupy the same site as the demolished building it replaced, with that space set to be converted into a basketball court and playground.
