School’s in for 2016

School’s in for 2016

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Byford Secondary College year seven students Nash Waldron, John George, Tori Schilling, Kira Gibsone and Abbie McKenzie are part of the school’s largest cohort yet. Photograph — Matt Devlin.
Byford Secondary College year seven students Nash Waldron, John George, Tori Schilling, Kira Gibsone and Abbie McKenzie are part of the school’s largest cohort yet. Photograph — Matt Devlin.

Byford Secondary College students have more room to move following the completion of three new buildings in time for the return to school this week.

Associate principal Paul Bottcher said the new buildings included an English and maths block as well as more staff facilities, which would help the school cope with its rapid growth.

“We’re now up to year 10 and we have about 850 students but we’re expecting to reach our capacity of 1450 to 1500 by about 2018 or 2019,” he said.

“This year we had 233 year sevens, which is our largest intake yet but we’re expecting our future intakes to be around the 250 plus mark per year.

“The new buildings have lightened our need for the demountables we’ve been using but we are still using them.

“The large cohorts are actually good because they allow us to offer a broad variety of courses and subjects.”

He said the new buildings were only a partial completion of stage two of the school’s construction, with an inclusion centre for students with a disability and performing arts centre slated for completion in late April.

“Hopefully we’ll have all of those online by early term two, which is actually about eight months ahead of schedule,” he said.

The school was also expected to unveil several new artworks in coming months including a six-metre cricket bat by artist Ayad Alqaragholli.