Parents living in Leppington, Denham Court, Edmondson Park won’t decide their kid’s school

Parents in parts of southwest Sydney will be told which school they can send their children to amid fears there will not be enough space for the next cohort of kindergarten students.

Parents in one part of southwest Sydney will be told which school to send their children to in a bid to deal with overcrowding issues, amid fears there will not be enough space for the next cohort of kindergarten students.

Under the scheme announced by Education Minister Sarah Mitchell, kinder­garten children entering Leppington, Denham Court and Edmondson Park public schools next year will be told which school they are allowed to attend.

Parents will be able to rank their preferences from one to three, but a school board will be established which will have the power to decide which school a student is best placed to attend.

Students who already have a sibling at a school will be given priority enrolment there.

The new policy aims to spread students evenly across the three local schools.

Popular schools like Oran Park Public School can end up with rows of demountables. Picture: James Gourley

Across Sydney, parents often rush to get their children into schools which have better reputations, teachers and NAPLAN results.

Public schools are forced to take everyone who lives in the catchment, which can mean having to install dozens of demountables on playground space to accommodate hundreds more students than a school was originally designed to cater for. Meanwhile, other so-called ghost schools remain under capacity.

Education Minister Sarah Mitchell. Picture: NCA NewsWire

The minister’s office said there was a “unique legislative cap”, meaning that demountables could not be installed to accommodate the surging population at Denham Court.

Edmondson Park Public School will open next year.

Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said: “The new intake model will allow the rapidly growing area to better utilise the new schools being delivered.”

“This responsive approach allows us to be more flexible in how schools take students in through their enrolment boundaries, while still providing certainty to families,” she said.

“In order to make sure every family in the area has a place at a great local school for their child, from next year they will have the option to send their child to either Denham Court Public School, Edmondson Park Public School or Leppington Public School.”

In Sydney’s northwest, Carlingford Local Community interim president Mark Bernie said the government should try similar schemes in other areas of Sydney, like his.

He said Carlingford West Public was bursting at the seams due to its NAPLAN results.

“Carlingford West is now nudging up to 1900 students but has a cap of 555,” he said.

Mr Bernie said there had to be a better system than the current one, where catchments determines if a student was eligible to enrol.

He said parents often briefly rented a house in a specific school catchment so they could get their child enrolled but moved afterwards.

Meanwhile there were other schools nearby which had capacity.

“The NSW Auditor General in 2021 pointed out several areas that needed significant improvement, including this feast and famine and polarisation of numbers in NSW schools,” he said.

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