Popular Adelaide primary school running out of room after 40 per cent jump in student numbers

ANOTHER primary school is facing enrolment pressure after a 40 per cent jump in students in the past five years.

Parkside Primary is the latest Adelaide primary school to face surging enrolments.

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PARKSIDE Primary is the latest local school to face enrolment pressure after a 40 per cent jump in students in the past five years.

Education Department schools partnerships director Anne Millard said the Robsart Ave school was “under pressure” and would be forced to turn children away if student numbers increased further.

Overcrowding last year forced Rose Park and Burnside primary schools to only accept new Reception students, while Linden Park was forced to impose the same restrictions in 2015.

The state Opposition says the enrolment squeeze has reached “crisis point” and it has renewed calls for a new primary school in the area.

Parkside Principal Suzie Sangster said about 50 students would be based in the library until the school got more transportable classrooms later in the year.

“We have 15 classes this year and have room for an extra student or two in each of those classes,” Mrs Sangster said. “But to try and start a 16th class … we just couldn’t do it and we would be absolutely chock-a-block.”

Mrs Sangster suggested the school’s location in one of Adelaide’s most sought-after suburbs and strong academic results were behind enrolments increasing from 270 to 380 in the past five years.

She said the school had taken on students that could not get into Linden Park Primary School because of its enrolment cap.

Parkside Governing Council chair Peter Millard said the spike in students was due, in part, to parents who “were willing to go to extraordinary lengths” to move into the school zone to give their child access to Glenunga and Unley high schools.

“I look at our graduation from last year and there was lots of Year 7s who have been at the school for 18 months or less,” Mr Millard said.

“There are these high schools that are, for whatever reason, disproportionately more attractive, and I think this generation of parents have a fear of their child missing out (on getting into those schools).”

Bragg Liberal MP Vickie Chapman said the State Government needed to either build a new school or refit an existing site to ease pressure on schools “facing this (overcrowding) crisis”.

She said expanding Felixstow Community School, which has about 100 students, was one option.

An Education Department spokesman said there were no plans to build a new school.