By Lucy Carroll and Christopher Harris
Frustrated parents have criticised a decision to redraw Inner Sydney High’s catchment after the state’s education department quietly scaled back the intake area for the popular high-rise school.
The revised boundaries mean the intake area for the inner-city school will exclude a section of Redfern and parts of Double Bay, Centennial Park and Woollahra.
The $135 million public high school opened in 2020 on the site of the former Cleveland Street High after years of campaigning by parents and community groups who argued a lack of public secondary options was pushing parents out of the area or to private schools.
This year will be the first that Inner Sydney High has year 12 students sitting the HSC, with the school staging a new class of year 7 enrolments over the past five years.
Under the school’s new catchment, the southern boundary in Redfern will be moved north, cutting out a section of the suburb. Students living in Woollahra and Double Bay who were zoned for Inner Sydney High will be redirected into the catchment for the new co-ed Randwick High School or Rose Bay Secondary College.
Randwick High School will open as a new co-ed campus for the first time on Thursday when public schools resume for first term.
Parent Bec Foley, with her daughter Delilah, who will no longer be in the catchment for Inner Sydney High under the changes.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Licia Heath from CLOSEast, a group that advocates for public education in the eastern suburbs, said she was surprised when the initial boundaries were released for Inner Sydney High in Surry Hills several years ago, due to how far east the catchment zone went.
“It is ludicrous to mess with the southern boundary, which will disadvantage families who are in such close proximity to the school,” Heath said. “I know many families who deliberately bought in the Inner Sydney catchment, and the fact it is full after a few years shows how public schools are sought after and will only grow with the cost-of-living crisis.”
The catchment area for Inner Sydney has caused controversy in the past. The first intake areas, released in 2018, angered some parents when suburbs to the school’s south were left out. It was later redrawn to take larger sections of Redfern.
Redfern mother Bec Foley said shifting the boundary north means her daughter is no longer zoned for Inner Sydney High, which is the closest public high school, about an 850-metre walk from her home.
“We weren’t notified by the education department. She has to walk to school and by common sense she should go to the closest school. It seems illogical and also splits our suburb in two,” Foley said.
Another parent, Suzie Barnett, said Inner Sydney High had become a “cornerstone of the Redfern community”.
“The revised catchment area effectively divides the community, with families living in walking distance of the school now excluded from its enrolment zone, while children from more affluent areas – often not in close proximity – will still be able to attend,” she said.
Audrey Wigsten, whose home will be moved to the kindergarten to year 12 Alexandria Park Community School catchment under the redrawn boundaries, said the change means her son will be able to stay at the one school from primary to high school.
“Assuming I still live in Redfern in six years, this change will mean he will get to stay with his friends. Both Alex Park and Inner Sydney are new public schools and both are good options.”
While the NSW Education Department has in recent years dealt with a declining enrolment share, some schools and catchments were bursting at the seams.
The Herald revealed last year that north shore public school Cammeraygal High in Crows Nest is full just 10 years after opening, and it will refuse applications from students in its catchment.
Instead, all new students from years 7 to 12 will be redirected to enrol at Mosman High School, at the same time the area has been earmarked for thousands of new homes to be built around the suburb’s railway station.
In Sydney’s north-west, parents who bought a house in the Kellyville Public School catchment discovered late last year that they would have to leave their suburb and go to Beaumont Hills Public School from first term this year.
More than 400 people have signed a petition urging the Education Department to reconsider those changes based on safety grounds, while about 70 people attended a meeting opposing the changes in December.
A NSW Education Department spokesperson said that changes to Inner Sydney High’s catchment would “improve alignments between primary and high school boundaries, allowing more students to transition to high school with their primary school peers”.
“Under the previous intake areas, many primary school cohorts were split as they moved into high school. With the introduction of the new Randwick High School, intake area adjustments allow for cohorts of primary school students to stay together.
“Across the eastern suburbs of Sydney, there is capacity to accommodate more students across the network. The department continues to monitor demographic changes in the area.”
Randwick High has 300 year 7 enrolments this year, which the department said is up 30 per cent on last year’s student numbers for both single-sex schools combined.
Last year, Inner Sydney High was sitting just under its enrolment capacity with about 1000 students and capacity for 1080.
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