Booming Sunshine Coast School Adds New Facilities

The Sunshine Coast in Queensland is one of the fastest developing regions in the country, it needs schools for all the new kids arriving and Suncoast Christian College in Woombye, Queensland has opened its new primary facility which will take the school into the future, while giving a nod to its past.

Founded on reclaimed farming land in 1979 as the Suncoast Christian Academy, the school’s first building was an old pineapple packing shed. In the shadow of the Big Pineapple, Suncoast has since become a thriving educational facility with almost 1000 students.

The new building was designed by m3 Architecture and is phase one of a 25-year master building plan as the school looks to accommodate 100 more students in response to a growing student population. The school plans to offer individuals and families the chance to have their names immortalised into one side of the new primary school building through the use of stainless steel laser-etched discs.

The primary school campus’ new building was used for the first time on Monday 4th September.

Following the release of campus designs in 2021, Suncoast Christian College announced its move towards a more collaborative style of teaching. The new campus will replace classrooms with flexible environments designed to support the school’s ‘team-teaching’ pedagogy.

The classrooms feature a range of functional design features, such as bleachers, breakout rooms, curtain and acoustic treatments throughout the facility to facilitate a wide variety of learning modes so lessons can be matched to the specific abilities of individual students and varying group sizes. Teachers and teacher’s assistants will work together over two levels with students in groups of five up to 75, in years 1 through 6.

Suncoast Christian College Principal, Greg Mattiske, says the upcoming day is an exciting chance for teachers to envision how their classes can be enriched by the new state-of-the-art facilities while also showing students their new classroom setting.

“As the first glimpse of our new campus comes into view, we are reminded of what a crucial role our staff have played in the re-imagining of our school,” he said.

“By providing teachers with a collaborative, modern space that allows them to cater to a wide range of student needs, we are facilitating the best social, emotional, and academic outcomes for our pupils.”

“It is an exciting time to see years of vision being brought to life in front of us, culminating in a state-of-the-art, intuitively designed building,” adds Mattiske.