Enrolment Surge in Sydney North Shore Area

I have read the SMH article a few days back regarding the enrolment increase in NSW public School, you can find the actual article by following this link. I have particular interest in the North Shore area, so I thought I do a quick analysis of this area first. I have used the myschool to collect the data from 2008 to 2014. In there mere span of six years from 2008 to 2014, the enrolment number in the public school at primary level in the Sydney North Shore area went from 18417 to 22441, this represent an increase of 22%.

Detailed the school by school break down as following

20082014Percentage Growth
Artarmon Public School66798047%
Asquith Public School28233720%
Beaumont Road Public School5836084%
Beauty Point Public School24030025%
Cammeray Public School66487632%
Castle Cove Public School37549031%
Chatswood Public School68395740%
Gordon East Public School27235229%
Gordon West Public School42554829%
Greenwich Public School35548436%
Hornsby Heights Public School29738630%
Hornsby North Public School63382030%
Hornsby South Public School38951432%
Lane Cove Public School7898244%
Lane Cove West Public School32757676%
Lindfield Public School66072510%
Lindfield East Public School7177647%
Middle Harbour Public School3845635%
Mosman Public School59169618%
Mount Colah Public School38041910%
Mount Kuring-gai Public School168154-9%
Mowbray Public School26737842%
Neutral Bay Public School65489837%
Normanhurst Public School27031717%
Normanhurst West Public School36745023%
North Sydney Public School59875126%
Northbridge Public School46055521%
Pymble Public School53264822%
Roseville Public School6236200%
St Ives Public School3813933%
St Ives North Public School64277320%
St Ives Park Public School203167-18%
Turramurra Public School4705129%
Turramurra North Public School2983073%
Wahroonga Public School6817236%
Waitara Public School6096598%
Warrawee Public School38261762%
West Pymble Public School321306-5%
Willoughby Public School77899428%
Total Enrolment Number184172244122%

As you can see from the table there are some astonishing increase in number of enrolment for some school, in particular Lane Cove West and Warrawee Public School, each had seen 76% and 62% in total enrolment with just six years. There are twelve school in total had increase of more than thirty percent within the same time period. There are twenty three school in total recorded more than twenty percent growth in enrolment during this time period.

Twenty two percent overall growth is already very extreme, however some schools are experiencing very significant growth even higher than this rate. There really need to be some serious forward planning and capacity increase. From what I can see personally, this trend is unlikely to slow down anytime soon in Sydney at least in the North Shore area.

Many of the public schools in the area that I know off already crammed full of demountables or are in the process of building more to deal with the increase in enrolment. We really need to build and expand more classrooms. This shows how shore sighted the state government had been selling off all the state school sites not that long ago. Education is one of the most important investment we could make in a society and public education act as a safety net for the most disadvantaged which should have receive corresponding priorities.

 

 

 

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