A specialist gifted and talented public school that attracts the brightest children from across Sydney's northern suburbs will no longer accept out-of-area enrolments as the school joins a growing list of NSW primary schools that are bursting at the seams.
St Ives North Primary School, which has for 23 years run a gifted and talented program for years 3 to 6, will now only accept local children after its total enrolments surged more than 22 per cent between 2010 and 2015.
Northern Sydney has the most overcrowded schools in NSW, with some schools projected to be enrolling more than double the number of students they have space for within four years.
Primary schools on the lower north shore, including Artarmon, Northbridge and Chatswood, are well above capacity and high schools, including Killara, Willoughby Girls, Chatswood and Mosman, are also full. At Willoughby Public there are more than 2000 students on a site shared with Willoughby Girls designed for just 450 students.
The vice-president of the Northern Sydney Council of P&Cs, Steph Croft, said a chronic capacity problem plaguing the lower north shore was making its way north, as more families moved in to the Ku-ring-gai area to be close to "great schools in a lovely area".
A spokesman for the NSW Department of Education said the the gifted and talented program at St Ives North would continue but only with local students. The school has 826 students this year compared with 674 in 2010.
Out-of-area students already enrolled in the school will not be affected but new students will not be accepted, the spokesman said.
"Priority will be given to children within the St Ives North Public School catchment area when enrolling. Applications for out-of-area enrolment can be made, however it is unlikely they will be accepted," the spokesman said.
A report from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), released this year, warned that NSW will need an extra 386 primary school classrooms every year for the next decade to cope with booming enrolments.
The number of children in NSW primary schools fell by about 9000 between 2001 and 2010 but from 2011-2020 the population will have risen by more than 92,000 students, it said.
A long-awaited new school in Lindfield, which will take some pressure off Killara and Chatswood high schools as well as several primary schools, is planned for a former UTS site and is due to open in less than two years.
Dubbed the Lindfield Learning Village, the school will be a mixed primary and high school that may eventually include university-level subjects. It could cater for 3000 students.
The UTS building, which won the prestigious Sulman Medal for architecture in 1978, will be handed over to the department as part of a land swap with the university.
Designs for the school will be finalised next month and the school is slated to open in 2017, although it is unclear which year groups will be part of the first stage,
"It is anticipated that the first school operations will commence on the site in 2017. The scope and timing for when these operations, K-12 and specialist, will commence and in what order is still being determined," a department spokesman said.
