Gympie’s fastest growing schools: search for your school here

High growth areas and interstate migration is spurring on enrolment growth in some schools across the Gympie region, as latest Education Department figures reveal the region‘s fastest growing schools and those that have lost big numbers

Gunalda State School Preps. (LtoR) Ayden Gill, Alexys Rensonnet, Jasper Warren, Erik Helm-Pascoe, Holden Walters, Leighton Summerville, Caden Caldwell. Teachers, Mrs Peta Loney, Mrs Karolyn Baumgart, Mrs Joanne Widdop are among the new students taht ahve helped the school double its enrolment figures in the past five years. Picture: Patrick Woods.

High growth areas and a flood of interstate migration is spurring on enrolment growth in schools across the Gympie region.

Latest Education Department statistics reveal Gympie East and Gunalda State Schools have been the region’s fastest growing public schools in the past five years.

Gympie East recorded an enrolment of 191 students in 2021, 85 per cent higher than its 2016 enrolment of 103 students.

Gunalda State School registered an even bigger jump thanks to its smaller numbers, with enrolments doubling from 20 in 2016 to 40 in 2021.

Less than one third of Gympie East’s students came from its catchment area, whereas at Gunalda more than half of the 40 students were from within the catchment.

Other schools to record growing enrolment numbers included Jones Hill State School (up 28 per cent), Goomeri State School (26 per cent) Chatsworth State School (up 25 per cent), and Monkland State School (22 per cent).

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At the opposite end of the scale, Bauple State School, Kandanga State School and Gympie Central State School all recorded significant drops in their enrolments across the five years.

Gympie East State School’s enrolment has jumped 85 per cent in five years.

Bauple’s student body experienced the largest drop, from 50 students in 2016 to 19 in 2021; a loss of more than 60 per cent.

In the Mary Valley Kandanga State School lost 52 per cent of its students in that time (from 70 to 33) while Gympie Central State School’s numbers slid 43 per cent (from 244 to 144).