By Lucy Carroll and Nigel Gladstone
Opportunity classes for gifted primary students will be added at nine Sydney public schools from next year, as the state government attempts to reduce overcrowding and shift enrolments to underpopulated schools.
The changes mean some opportunity class places will be stripped from schools, including Woollahra Public and Artarmon Public, while schools such as Lindfield East, Brookvale and Maroubra Junction Public will gain new classes for academically gifted students from 2025.
Students at Lindfield East Public School, one of nine additional Sydney schools that will provide opportunity classes in 2025.Credit: Louise Kennerley
NSW Education Minister Prue Car said the government was widening the distribution of places to more schools while making it easier for OC students to attend the same school as their siblings.
“These new placements will also reduce the reliance on demountables at existing schools with OC classes, where capacity constraints often prevent sibling enrolments,” Car said. “The chosen schools are more able to accept out-of-area students.”
Overall, the total number of OC positions will remain at 1840, but the number of schools offering the places will grow to 87, including nine schools in Sydney and one in Moss Vale.
The sought-after classes are designed to nurture the state’s brightest year 5 and 6 students, while many parents view securing a place as a springboard to selective high schools. Demand for the gifted classes has soared in the past decade, with 15,300 applicants vying for a position for this year’s entry.
Applications have grown as hundreds of Sydney’s private coaching colleges promote intensive OC preparation programs, many charging fees of $600 a term for mock exam courses for primary students.
Under the changes, the public schools to gain one class for 15 gifted students include Blacktown West, Brookvale, Lindfield East, Maroubra Junction, Miranda, Penrith, St Clair, Wahroonga and Toongabbie. Some of these schools are running at below 70 per cent of their enrolment cap.
Balgowlah Heights, Blacktown South, Caringbah North, Colyton, and Kingswood Public schools will have their intake halved. Artarmon and Woollahra public schools, where OC classes have been offered for decades, will have their yearly intake reduced from 60 to 30 students.
North Nowra’s Illaroo Road Public, the only school offering opportunity classes in the Shoalhaven region, will also have its intake halved to 15 students. The NSW Education Department said there had been a steady decline in applicants, while some places went unfilled last year.
Some OC students at Illaroo Road Public travel from as far as Shellharbour and Kangaroo Valley to attend the classes. A new OC class will be established at Moss Vale Public in the Southern Highlands.
Robyn Evans, the president of the Primary Principals Association, said the announcement came as a surprise to principals.
“The new classes are designed to help redistribute some of the OC places, especially in schools at or near capacity, while also allowing siblings to enrol out of area,” Evans said.
Gifted education expert Jae Jung said there will be consequences for parents who had long-planned to send their children to established OC schools. “It does create more opportunities for those living in some areas, but it will be seen as a big loss for schools that have been hosting large numbers of OC students. There will be winners and losers in this,” he said.
Australian Tutoring Association chief executive Mohan Dhall said that given the demand for opportunity classes, the government should either look to expand access at more schools or consider scaling them back and “investing much more in high potential and gifted education in all schools.”
“Families will also be concerned that these changes haven’t been flagged a long time in advance. There are still only 1840 places and thousands of applicants.”
Dhall said the government should consider universal testing of all students to access gifted or opportunity classes as a way to “stream based on evidence”. “It would also remove the element of competition,” he said.
In 2018, a major NSW Education Department review of the state’s selective schools found there were fewer applications from students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, Aboriginal students, those with a disability and students from rural and remote areas.
A new equity model was rolled out last year to set aside 20 per cent of OC places for disadvantaged students, with about 350 initial offers for this year for students from low socio-economic backgrounds.
Last week, Car said there would also be an intensified focus on ensuring high potential and gifted education programs were available in all schools. The state’s high potential program, which was first rolled out in 2021, was designed to nurture talented students outside the opportunity class and selective school system.
A NSW Education Department spokesperson said such programs were available in only half of the state’s public schools, which usually involved extension or enrichment classes, in-class grouping or accelerated classes.
“A review of the high potential and gifted education policy is under way, and updates will be provided later this year,” the spokesperson said.
The principal of Lindfield East Public, Diane Read, said she was pleased her school had been selected to offer OC classes from 2025, which she said would help avoid an exodus of high-achieving students in year 5.
“We have about half of all our year 4 students who sit for the OC test each year. This will help them be able to stay on at our school,” she said.