The expansion is planned for the next eight years but Victory Christian College operations manager Bruce Rodgers said stage one would be operational by 2019.

New football oval, gym and swimming pool

Initial works – currently awaiting approval at the City of Greater Bendigo planning department – would include a bus drop-off zone and an Australian Rules football oval.

“Which is very exciting as, at the moment, we’ve only got a soccer pitch,” Mr Rodgers said. 

Stage one would also include construction of infrastructure for future development – including roadways, power, water and sewerage on the site – and has been costed at $3.6 million. 

The next stage would include what Mr Rodgers described as a state-of-the-art sports gym facility.

Mr Rodgers said the final piece of the plan would be a 25-metre indoor pool and aquatic centre which would be shared with other schools as well as the wider-Strathdale community.

“There’s nothing out in this side of town and with the new pool in Kangaroo Flat we saw a community need for that sort of facility,” Mr Rodgers said. 

“So we’ve left land against the road for future construction of the pool so that other schools and the community would be able to use the centre.” 

Music school of excellence

It is not just sports which would be catered for – the operations manager manager said the jewel in the crown of the school’s expansion would be a music centre of excellence.

“In the long-term, we want our reputation built on an amazing music program and we’ve really put a lot of resources into it over the last six months,” Mr Rodgers said. 

But those resources are likely to be dwarfed by the construction of new music facilities which would see the creation of a music school of excellence. 

And Mr Rodgers said it wouldn’t only be students who would benefit from new recording studios and practice rooms. 

“The reality is students are only here from the morning through to the afternoon, so we’d be looking at making them community use after school hours,” he said. “If you’re a young person in a band now, there’s not a lot of facilities in Bendigo.” 

Drones, robotics and other purpose built classrooms

There would also be a number of purpose built classrooms for subjects such as science and art. 

“There’ll be more specialty spaces, including exciting concepts like large volume spaces and also a space called ‘making’ which would move into robotics and drones, where students could use old technology and new technology,” Mr Rodgers said. 

New land for more students, staff

The proposed development would occur on an approximately 2.4 hectare block of land adjacent to the current school grounds. 

It would see the school expand onto 230 Condon Street so that One Tree Hill Regional Park would almost entirely comprise its eastern boundary.

The school would envisages it would expand from its 403 students to a maximum of 736 by 2023 and see its current staff increase from 55 to about 85.

Mr Rodgers said Year 9 and 10 students would be moved onto the site to retain its “small school feel”.

The whole idea of the redesign is building schools within schools, so that we don’t become one large school and we can keep that small school feel, with small classrooms and where we have relationships with our families and students,” Mr Rodgers said. 

“We cherish that and see that as distinctive to our school – as well as our faith-based education.”