Students rejected under tough new enrolment rules
Hundreds of Western Sydney students have been rejected from the public school of their choice after the introduction of tough new out-of-area enrolment rules.
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Hundreds of Western Sydney students have been rejected from the public school of their choice after the introduction of tough new out-of-area enrolment rules.
Data obtained from the NSW Department of Education reveals Parramatta High School received a whopping 508 out-of-area enrolment applications last year but rejected all but one student.
Macarthur Girls High School in Parramatta rejected 342 applications and only accepted 154, while Merrylands High School and Auburn Girls High School also refused an overwhelming majority of students.
The rejections comes follow an out-of-area rule change that means siblings of an existing student are not automatically admitted.
Western Sydney Labor MP Julia Finn said that a huge number of parents in her electorate of Granville sought an out-of-area school for a variety of reasons.
“The number one reason is to go to single-sex schools,” Ms Finn said.
“Sometimes the family has moved house and they want two siblings to go to school together.”
Boundary changes each year mean that a second sibling from the same family could be locked out from attending the same school as their family members even though they were in the catchment the previous year.
Granville mum Joumana Hamdan struggled to get her daughters Abbey, 16, Janah, 14, and Reannah, 11, into the single-sex Macarthur Girls school, which was a 15-minute drive from their house.
“The zone got a bit smaller because there was higher demand because everyone wanted to get into that school,” she said.
After calling every few days she got her eldest daughter enrolled but said the government needed to relax the rules to give parents more choice.
Primary schools are also bursting at the seams, with Westmead Public School last year rejecting 28 out-of-area students who applied and accepted just 13.
Sherwood Grange Primary School in Merrylands West rejected 14 students last year and accepted just nine out-of-area enrolments.