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 Departmentreview 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.
Loading
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.