A parent-community campaign · Caulfield South, VIC Est. by the parents who kept it standing · #ItsBeenLongEnough · 日本語

Fix Caulfield
Primary

No more applications. No more excuses.

A 160-year-old state school, held together for a decade by its own parents' money, weekends and trade skills — while every application for basic capital funding came back rejected. We have the receipts. All of them.

$1.34M
net community money in just six years (2020–25) — after families' camp and excursion payments are stripped OUT. School's own audited reports
$0
state capital grants line, every published year 2020–25

Sources: CPS Annual Reports to the School Community (VRQA / school website), audited financial summaries. Net = Locally Raised Funds minus the Camps/Excursions/Activities expenditure line in the same audited statements, 2020–25. Gross community contributions since 2007 (including program cost-recovery): $4.7M.

#FixCaulfieldPrimary #EducationStateOfDisrepair

First, the system — in 60 seconds

How can a school in Melbourne possibly rot?

Most parents assume "the government funds the school" and that's the end of it. Here is how it actually works — because once you see the machinery, everything on this page makes sense.

1
Teachers and running costs are automatic. Every school gets an annual budget per student for staff and operations. That money arrives — though what it pays teachers is its own well-publicised fight.
2
Buildings are not automatic. There is no entitlement to capital works — ever. Upgrades come from competitive application rounds and budget-day announcements. A school can wait decades. Ours has.
3
Maintenance money is a floor-area formula — dollars per square metre. At our school it covers the small stuff, and when it runs out the answer has been glue, working bees, and parents' fete money.
4
So who gets the upgrades? The Auditor-General answered in June 2026: schools with "advocacy" and "an active local member", chosen through "often informal, undocumented processes". Noise, not need. Hence this campaign.

Sources: DE Student Resource Package policy (PAL); Victorian Auditor-General, "Delivering School Upgrade Projects", 17 June 2026. 日本語の説明はこちら。

Exhibit A — the grant ledger

We asked properly. Five times.

Every application went into a competitive pool against hundreds of schools in the same condition. A rejection is not a finding that the need isn't real — it's a finding that someone else's emergency outbid ours that year.

2022
Federal Schools Upgrade Fund — $25,000 toward replacing rotting heritage windows"The school will need to absorb the full costs of the repairs." It did: $78,215.50 — for just 12 windows.
Rejected
2023
VSBA grant — junior playground upgradeParents later funded and part-built it themselves.
Rejected
2024
VSBA grant — junior playground (reapplication)Same need, second attempt.
Rejected
2025
VSBA Capital Works Fund — student toilet refurbishmentThree cubicles each for the boys and girls of a 312-student school.
Rejected
2026
Department application — toilet upgrade, ~$600,000Decision due "end of 2026" — conveniently after the November election.
Pending
2024
Planned Maintenance Program — $366,625.64Arrived only after the Department's own assessors rated defects Priority 1 & 2 — a damaged boundary wall, a switchboard still running rewirable fuses, rotting window frames, and four separate roof leaks marked "further investigation required". Required fixes within 6–12 months. The system working as designed: reactively. (Itemised delivery breakdown: requested.)
Meanwhile Caulfield South Primary — 1.5km away, same suburb, same postcode — has $9.1 million on the Department's own project register, of which $9.0 million was announced in the 2025–26 State Budget for "a new competition-grade gymnasium… including music spaces, a library and canteen". Glen Eira College has $18.7M. McKinnon Primary $12.9M. Glen Huntly Primary $6.9M. Caulfield Primary's entire capital record on that register: one $66,603 minor grant, 2020.

Sources: school and department correspondence 2022–2026 held on file by the parent community (copies available); Victorian School Building Authority published project pages for every named school, retrieved 30 July 2026. Neighbouring-school figures count only dollars the Department attributes to that specific school — pooled "shared in $X" statewide allocations are excluded, which makes every comparison here conservative. Every rejection quoted is from the original written notice.

The ranking

Last of 26. Bottom 2.5% of Victoria.

In July 2026 we downloaded every school project page the Victorian School Building Authority publishes — 2,696 of them, covering every school in the state — and counted what each one has been given. Then we found ours.

$66,603
Caulfield Primary's entire capital record on the Department's own project register — one grant, 2020
2.5th
percentile. Of 1,839 funded Victorian schools, only 46 have received less than this school
26 of 26
where we rank among funded schools in Glen Eira. Last
136×
the capital record of Caulfield South Primary, 1.5km away in the same suburb — including the gymnasium we have been refused
$2.2M
the statewide median for a funded school. We are 33 times below it
97.5%
of funded Victorian schools received more capital funding than this one
Caulfield South is experiencing the greatest amount of development pressure out of the three Centres… There is generally a lack of "green" public spaces in the core retail area, and no public open space near the activity centre. Glen Eira City Council — Caulfield South Neighbourhood Activity Centre Built Form Framework, adopted into the planning scheme via Amendment C231

Method: every figure is taken from the Victorian School Building Authority's own published project page for that school, retrieved 29–30 July 2026. "Funded" means a school with a stated dollar figure on the register (1,839 of 1,930). Two exclusions make these numbers conservative rather than generous: pooled allocations, where a page says a school "shared in" a statewide sum, are not counted; and where several budget years appear for one project we take the largest figure rather than adding them together. Caulfield Primary separately received $366,625.64 in Planned Maintenance Program funding in 2024 — that is maintenance, not a capital project, and it is excluded here for all 26 schools equally.

The receipts

What the parents paid instead.

When the state said no, the community said yes — with fete money, lap-a-thons, trade skills and weekends. Every figure below traces to an invoice, quote or dated email.

$78,215
Just TWELVE heritage-compliant replacement windows — $6,518 each, 2.5× the cost of modern windows, because heritage rules allow nothing cheaper. 22 more still rotting.
KLM BUILD QUOTE, AUG 2023 · WORKS COMPLETED 2024
$63,981
The soccer pitch — paid in a single month that emptied two-thirds of the parents' club reserve
PFC LEDGER, APRIL 2024
$46,850
Classroom carpet replacement — cheapest of four quotes the parents helped source
COMMITTED MAY 2023
$30–35K
The junior playground — funded by the PFC after two grant rejections; "more than half of what's in the PFC budget"
SAFEPLAY, INSTALLED 2026
283
Parent-performed repair jobs since 2018 — hooks, locks, doors, walls, roofs-by-drone — every one traced to a dated email, from a 461-line register. 290 counting jobs we remember but can't evidence; we quote the 283. (We first published "350+"; the audit trimmed it. That's how our numbers work.)
THE JOBS REGISTER 2018–2026 — AUDITED 5 JUL 2026
$82–123K
Audited, conservative value of that volunteer labour — every job priced at minimum call-outs and low-end hourly rates ($91–137K including recollection-sourced work like four whole-school air-filter services). Before any of the big invoices above.
THE JOBS REGISTER — FULLY PRICED, SOURCE-LINKED
1,221
…children this school educated in 1921, per its heritage registration. A century later, the state won't fund a hall for 312.
VHR H1708
Severely rotted window sill and mullion on the heritage building
FIG. 1 — heritage window, June 2026
Interior opening sealed with plastic sheeting and tape, water-stained ceiling
FIG. 2 — the "make safe": plastic and tape
Industrial drying equipment deployed in flooded school office
FIG. 3 — school office, June 2026
Degraded urinal trough with floor staining
FIG. 4 — the toilets students refuse to use
Bar chart on one dollar scale: net community money per year 2020 to 2025, between 175 and 273 thousand dollars, beside what the school needs — 143 thousand for remaining windows, 600 thousand for toilets, and a hall bar running off the top of the chart at 10 million, 45 years of every net community dollar

The arithmetic nobody can argue with

It's not a fundraising problem.

Strip out what families pay for their own children's camps and excursions, and this community's entire net contribution — every fundraiser, every hire fee, every voluntary payment — is about $223,000 a year, straight from the audited reports. What we actually raise is smaller again: fundraising averages about $36,000 a year (PFC records), and our best fete in history netted $30,229.

The toilets the Department has rejected twice would take 2.7 years of every one of those net dollars — spending nothing else at all. The hall would take 45 years. That's 331 record-breaking fetes.

Communities cannot fundraise their way out of this. It is a government decision, and it always was.

The unfunded mandate

Heritage rules. No heritage money.

The state put this school on the Victorian Heritage Register, which obliges conservation-grade repairs at conservation-grade prices. The same state offers no funding stream to pay for them — and its own funding formula admits the problem.

+20%
The Department's own maintenance funding formula applies a 20% heritage cost loading — their arithmetic concedes heritage schools cost more to keep standing.
DE STUDENT RESOURCE PACKAGE — MAINTENANCE FORMULA (PAL)
2.5×
What heritage-compliant, like-for-like timber windows cost against modern replacements: $6,518 per window. The rules allow nothing cheaper; the school paid from its own operating budget.
KLM BUILD INVOICE — 12 WINDOWS, $78,215.50, PERMIT EXEMPTION P38354
$0
Heritage-specific capital funding currently open to a Victorian government school: the VSBA Capital Works Fund excludes works needing a heritage permit, and the Living Heritage Program has no open round.
VSBA CWF GUIDELINES · LIVING HERITAGE PROGRAM, JULY 2026
EXEMPT
And the excuse doesn't even work in reverse: toilet and bathroom refurbishment is expressly permit-exempt under the school's heritage registration. Heritage is no reason the toilets are still waiting.
VHR H1708 — PERMIT EXEMPTIONS

Bigger than one school

We're Exhibit A for 221 schools.

This isn't a Caulfield problem. It's an institutional one — ingrained over decades, under governments of both colours, every one of them spruiking "the Education State" while the buildings rotted on schedule.

Schools were prioritised for upgrades based on "advocacy from the school or community" and whether a school has "an active local member" — through "often informal, undocumented processes." Victorian Auditor-General, "Delivering School Upgrade Projects", 17 June 2026
221
Victorian schools officially rated "poor" — up from 182 two years earlier
2034
the quietly slipped target for zero poor-condition schools (was 2030)
2013
the year VAGO first found the backlog — maintenance funded at 32% of recommended levels, under a different government
16 Oct 2015
the day "the Education State" went on the number plates
$3,206
the per-student public school funding gap found by the Parliamentary Inquiry into Public School Funding, May 2026
$35B
what the government says it has invested since "the Education State" began — while this school's capital line read $66,603

Sources: Victorian Auditor-General's Office — "Delivering School Upgrade Projects" (17 June 2026) and school-maintenance audits (2013, 2017); Department asset-condition ratings as reported therein; "Education State" number plates launched 16 October 2015 (Premier's announcement).

The Auditor-General has confirmed what every parent at every ageing school already knew: funding follows noise, not need. So this campaign is the system working exactly as documented — and every school community in Victoria is welcome to copy our homework. The receipts template travels.

What we're asking — of every party

Three commitments. In writing. With numbers and dates.

Everything we ask of one side of politics we ask of the other, identically. Responses — and non-responses — will be shared with our whole school community before the November election.

Fund the toilets — now, regardless of the grant round

~$600,000 per the school's current application. Occasional seeping sewage, no warm water, three cubicles each for 312 students' boys and girls. Parents deep-clean them several times a year.

STATUS: application pending — decision due after the election

A safety audit of the heritage windows — urgently

The Department's own 2023 condition assessment recorded "Windows / Timber Framed / Rotting observed". Its own helpdesk rejected the principal's urgent Make Safe escalation in writing: "please try and isolate the area."

BENCHMARK: the first 12 heritage-compliant windows cost $78,215.50 — $6,518 each

An election commitment to a new school hall

The current hall seats about 200 of our 312 students. Assemblies happen outdoors in extreme heat, or not at all. Graduations are capped at two guests per child.

BENCHMARK: $10M — what the Government itself gave Caulfield South PS ($9.0M) and Hampton PS ($9.8M) for the same facilities in this year's budget

Sources: toilet figures — the school's current department application and June 2026 photo survey; window assessment — Department 2023 condition assessment and helpdesk correspondence (quoted verbatim); window cost — KLM Build invoice, 12 windows, $78,215.50, Heritage Victoria exemption P38354; hall benchmarks — Victorian Budget 2025–26 capital allocations (Caulfield South PS $9.0M, Hampton PS $9.8M); enrolment — DataVic school census 2025 (312).

Candidate response scoreboard — Caulfield district, election 28 Nov 2026
The Hon. Ben Carroll MP — Minister for Education (ALP)Council-signed letter delivered July 2026
Awaiting response
David Southwick MP — Member for Caulfield (LIB)Request delivered 13 July 2026 — responded same day: has written to the Minister seeking an urgent VSBA meeting and timeline, and committed to raise the school in the next parliamentary sitting week
Responded — acting
Other declared candidatesSame evidence pack, same asks, as candidates declare
To be invited

The honour roll

Meet the people who kept the school standing.

For eight years the school's maintenance department has been a rotating crew of parents with day jobs. A small sample:

The full itemised Jobs Register is done: 283 parent-performed jobs, every one traced to a dated email record, priced at what a tradesperson would have charged — conservatively $82,000–$123,000 of avoided labour (290 jobs and $91,000–$137,000 counting recollection-sourced work). Highlights include four whole-school air-purifier filter services and a principal's 18-item "handyman jobs list" that a paid contractor had already been booked to quote before a parent took it over.

Join in

312 kids. One ask. Your name.

Add your name to the community letter, share the receipts, or bring your school into the fight. Everything on this page is invoice-backed — take it, quote it, forward it.

Add your name Download the chart Contact the parents
#FixCaulfieldPrimary #EducationStateOfDisrepair #WeFixedItOurselves