Catholic schools are seeing record-breaking numbers of students in their classrooms, with Marian Catholic College and St Francis De Sales Regional College taking in their biggest Year 7 cohorts to date in 2020.
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Marian's new Year 7 class is 156 students strong, and principal Alan Le Brocque said the school has also seen a large influx of enrolments across all of the year groups, bringing the grand total to around 720.
The school received so many applications in 2019 that Mr Le Brocque had to "look seriously" at putting a cap on enrolments, but so far all applicants have been accepted into the school.
To accommodate the spike in enrolments the school has employed several new teachers in 2020, resulting in the largest staff board in the school's history with 62 teachers and 35 support staff.
The school has also put in two demountable classrooms, and towards the middle of the year they'll be rebuilding their Technology and Applied Sciences block in addition to building a new admin area and new classrooms.
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"Our school is looking forward to what lies ahead with the new building program and our largest number of students," Mr Le Brocque said.
Meanwhile St Francis De Sales in Leeton has taken in 154 Year 7 students, which is the largest cohort principal Seb Spina has seen in all his 20 years at the school.
"It's a significant increase on previous years," Mr Spina said.
"Typically we get anywhere between 125 and 140 students."
The school had to hire another two teachers and teacher support officers in order to meet the sudden spike in student enrolments.
Mr Spina said a significant chunk of the enrolments came from Griffith and West Wyalong, with a large number of them being boarding students.
When asked, the NSW Department of Education did not say whether Murrumbidgee Regional High School's two sites saw a decline in student enrolments post-merger.
However, a department spokesman said that Year 7 enrolments were higher in 2020 than in 2019, which was when the school first opened its gates as a merged super school.
"The number of Year 7 students enrolling at Murrumbidgee Regional High School is up on 2019," the department spokesman said.
"The Year 7 enrolment this week is 213 with indications of further Year 7 students enrolling in coming days."
Kenji Sato
Kenji Sato is a handsome journalist at The Daily Advertiser who enjoys writing flattering bios about himself in the third person. He can be contacted by email at kenji.sato@dailyadvertiser.com.au or by mobile on 0448 927 612.
Kenji Sato is a handsome journalist at The Daily Advertiser who enjoys writing flattering bios about himself in the third person. He can be contacted by email at kenji.sato@dailyadvertiser.com.au or by mobile on 0448 927 612.
