Warracknabeal Secondary College has paid for upgrades to its campus after failing to receive State Government funding.
Principal Tony Fowler said the school spent $80,000 on installing a new staff kitchen, creating a silent study room for year 12 students, sanding and resealing the hall floor, repairing termite damage and upgrading an old classroom.
He said garden beds were also redeveloped and new natural and artificial grass areas were created.
"We have been waiting and waiting in the hope we would get new facilities but that hasn't happened," he said.
"The school was getting so dilapidated that we had to do something.
"We have a master plan and we are ready to go but we are waiting for State Government funding.
"We had a little bit of money in the bank so we decided to empty the bank account but the good thing is that the students who are here now are benefiting from it.
"When I walk around the school and talk to the students, they really appreciate the work we have done."
Mr Fowler said it had been a smooth start to the school year when year seven to 11 students started on January 30 and year 12 students returned to the college on Monday last week.
He said the school was trialling a new way of teaching mathematics to year seven students.
"We have two teachers teaching our year sevens at the same time and in the last 20 minutes of class they do some fairly quick assessment of the students by asking some questions and the students vote on their iPads."
"By that we are able to get a pretty quick understanding of who understands the principle they have learnt for that day," he said. "If a student doesn't understand, we will follow that up with them at the end of the day because we are trying to ensure that no student goes home without an understanding of the day's principle.
"It is a great example of seeing technology used alongside some high-quality teaching."
Education Minister Martin Dixon did not return Mail-Times calls before the newspaper went to press last night.