The location of the brand new public high school to be built in Jordan Springs has officially been revealed, and it’s just five minutes down the road from its feeder school.
Last Friday, Deputy Premier and Minister for Education and Early Learning Prue Car stood at the corner of Infantry Street and Armoury Road, Jordan Springs, to announce that this would be the future site of a brand new public high school.
Following the opening of Jordan Springs Public School in 2020, and campaigns by community members who have been sending their children to out of area schools or paying for Catholic or private education since long before that, Car said the announcement of its high school counterpart had been a long time coming.
“This community has been campaigning for this high school for at least a decade,” she said.
“We fought to have the primary school built, and then we just couldn’t convince the previous government that once our children leave Year 6, they’ve got to go somewhere to high school.”
This announcement was also somewhat of a personal win for Car, who has long advocated for public education in Jordan Springs in her role as Member for Londonderry.
“For the people of Jordan Springs, this is momentous,” she said.
“There wouldn’t be a day I don’t go to the shops and get asked about the high school, so I’m very proud as the local member to be able to deliver this, but I’m not going to stop until those Year 7 kids are walking through.”
The high school will open on the first day of Term 1 in 2027 with capacity for 1,000 students. Though the government has funded $70 million so far to get the school up and running, it’s being masterplanned for future growth, meaning more will be allocated over time.
The announcement came on the same day as the Enrolment Growth Audit was released by the NSW Department of Education, naming Jordan Springs-Llandilo as one of the top 10 student growth areas from 2018 to 2023.
Along with Schofields (east), Marsden Park-Shanes Park, Denham Court-Bardia, and Gledswood Hills-Gregory Hills, 2023 enrolments in the area of Jordan Springs-Llandilo more than doubled the 2016 projection for 2023, and have already surpassed the 2016 enrolment projections for 2041, indicating a clear need for school infrastructure in the area.
“The 2016 projections for 2023 were off by at least 100 per cent,” she said.
“It actually goes to show that communities like Jordan Springs that were arguing, ‘We need a high school’, ‘We need a high school’, ‘We need a high school’, were right all along.”
For Jordan Springs Public School Principal Kylie Walker, who welcomed 192 kindergarten students to the school last week, this announcement couldn’t be more exciting.
“We have a projection that every year, it sits around an average of 200 students [starting in kindergarten], so in order to be able to support them when they move into secondary education and into Stage 4, it’s imperative that we have an opportunity to have a collaboration with our secondary partners to be able to continue that curriculum development all the way through,” she said.
“What’s really exciting about our school at Jordan Springs is that we have the opportunity through the infrastructure and the development of our school [to provide] a really strong future-focused learning environment, and I’m really excited about the opportunity to be able to support the secondary principal, once they’re appointed, to do the same, and continue that educational journey on for everybody.”
Cassidy Pearce
Cassidy Pearce is a news and entertainment journalist with The Western Weekender. A graduate of the University of Technology Sydney, she has previously worked with Good Morning Macarthur and joined the Weekender in 2022.