This northside school has gone without a decent playground for 30 years and parents have had enough

Jessica Ascione’s son is six and he and his friends have already outgrown the playground at Charnwood-Dunlop School.

“They have one playground that’s 30 years old and the children grow out of it in a year,” Jessica says.

“It’s shocking, when you look around at all the other public schools and most of them have two to three playgrounds already.”

The mother-of-two has launched a petition to the ACT Government to provide the public northside primary school with funding for a new, all-abilities playground.

The school opened in 1975 and caters to around 460 families, with preschoolers to Year Six students.

The Charnwood Dunlop School P&C* has campaigned for more than 18 months to raise funds for the project and the school has also come to the table and agreed to earmark some funding, but being a “smaller school in a lower socio-economic area”, it’s been a challenge.

“Playgrounds are expensive, especially when you have power chair users and children with childhood dementia, and we need to make this new one accessible,” Jessica says.

She said the primary school she attended in Taylor in the early 1990s had the opposite problem.

“The original playground couldn’t be used by all students, so they put in a junior one, but this school just doesn’t have a playground for the older kids at all.”

The issue was exacerbated earlier this year when the playground was rendered out of action for 10 weeks while a new part was ordered and installed.

She says a new principal at the school has “done a fantastic job” of obtaining infrastructure grants from the government to fix various safety issues, but as a result, a new playground has fallen towards the bottom of the priority list.

“But it’s been 30 years. You would think that the chain of principals over that time would have done something by now.”

The petition is sponsored by Canberra Liberals MLA Peter Cain and needs 500 signatures to be referred to a standing committee. It’s accrued nearly 300, but Jessica is confident they can reach the target before the petition closes on Saturday 31 August.

“A lot of parents have expressed the same frustration.”

The ACT Government has previously shown it’s open to improving the playground situation across Canberra.

A ‘New Play Space Strategy’ released in May 2022, laid out a framework for the “forward planning, delivery and management of more than 500 playgrounds across the ACT”.

“Play is essential to the cognitive, physical and social development of children and young people,” Minister for Transport and City Services Chris Steel said at the time.

In the year prior, a period of community consultation had revealed Canberra families supported a “quality over quantity” approach, and wanted the city’s playgrounds kept cleaner (and free from graffiti) and with more local community involvement in the design.

Since then, the Tuggeranong Town Park has received a new playground (to replace the iconic wooden and metal fort-style one) and one off Alston Street in Chisholm has been upgraded.

There are also new playgrounds under construction in Casey and Kaleen in Canberra’s north, Lyons and Gordon in Canberra’s south, and a new “destination-style” playground is coming to the inner north, near the Canberra Technology Park in Watson.

In total, the ACT Government owns and manages more than 500 playgrounds across Canberra, including those within public school grounds.

There are 6.7 playgrounds per 1000 children under 15 in the ACT, compared with the national average of 5.2, with most homes in Canberra within 400 metres of a local playground.

The Charnwood-Dunlop School playground petition is available on the ACT Legislative Assembly website.

*CORRECTION: This line originally read ACT Parents & Citizens’ Association.