Kenmore High School overcrowding
Thursday, 04 March 2010 08:43
Our local State high school Kenmore High currently has more students than 100% capacity.
This is part of a state-wide overcrowding problem. There are 13,610 high school students in high schools that exceed 100% of their capacity. An additional over 40,000 students state-wide will enter our overcrowded high schools as a result of a Government move to transfer Year 7 from primary school to high school.The overcrowding at Kenmore High prompted the State Government to put a catchment boundary around the school that did not allow students even from such local areas as part of Chapel Hill, Karana Downs and Mt Crosby to attend the school. With nine local feeder primary schools there is no chance that Kenmore High School could cope with existing growth plus this enormous influx.
That is why I am so disappointed that the Government’s recent green paper (discussion paper) did not canvass the possibility of ANY new high schools in the whole of Queensland.
Given that national curriculum is due to commence next year and Year 7 syllabus is expected to be drafted for high schools and the Bligh Government is proposing to move Year 7 to high school as soon as 2014 planning for extra capacity and possibly an extra school is overdue and has become critical.
(NB KSHS has a full capacity of 1646 students but is already 34 over full capacity at 1680 enrolled.)