By Adam Carey
Preston High School principal Sean Butler is dealing with a problem he hadn’t counted on.
The fledgling state school in Melbourne’s north opened its doors barely six months ago and already has more children vying to enrol than it can handle.
Preston High principal Sean Butler with year 7 students Marcus, Lili and Jasmine. Credit: Paul Jeffers
“We’re out of space already,” Mr Butler admits.
“It’s a good problem to have but it’s still a problem.”
The co-educational school opened this year at the Cooma Street site that was occupied by Preston Girls’ Secondary College, which faced the opposite dilemma.
It had to close in 2013 after 85 years due to shrinking enrolments, as the community drifted away from the area’s only all-girl government school.
“It didn’t have the confidence of the community,” Mr Butler says, something he is mindful of as he builds a new school community from scratch.
Early indications are local families are not short on confidence at all, and Mr Butler says the rush to join the school has surprised even him.
“We were told to expect 60 students in the first year and 178 applied,” Mr Butler says.
It ultimately accepted 125, and planned to take on 125 more next year, but received 300 applications.
It has accepted 175, all of whom live in the school’s compact zone, which also includes pockets of Thornbury and Reservoir.
The bumper intake has forced the school to scramble to secure a new double-storey demountable building for next year's classes.
It follows Department of Education forecasts made before the school opened that the local area would suffer a shortage of 1600 secondary school places by 2031.
The school is exclusively year 7s this year and will take a fresh batch of year 7s each year until 2024, when it be a year 7-12 school with an expected capacity of 1100 students.
Mr Butler says the school opened just in time to cater for a local population boom and that its first year cohort reflects the suburb’s changing demographics.
“We really represent the community,” he says.
“There are multimillion-dollar houses in Preston and we have students who live in them with barristers for parents and there are kids who come from different circumstances.”
Preston High is one of 100 schools the Andrews government has promised to open between 2019 and 2026 as the rush is on to find a place for 90,000 additional students in Victoria by 2022.
“We’re responding to demographic shifts by building new schools where they are needed most, such as in inner-city and metropolitan growth areas as well as booming regional areas,” Education Minister James Merlino said.
The government has so far invested more than $15 million in Preston High but will need to spend a total of $37 million to complete the full masterplan.
There are plans for a refurbished gymnasium and basketball court, food technology and performing arts spaces and a canteen (a shipping container serves that purpose now, which is basic but in keeping with Preston's hipster grunge vibe).
Mr Butler says the timing of the future funding will be crucial if the school is to realise it plans.
The Age visited Preston High as part of the Australian Council for Educational Research’s annual Principal for a Day program.