A war of numbers has been sparked between Greater Shepparton Secondary College principal Barbara O’Brien and Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell over enrolments at the school.
In parliament last week, Ms Lovell called on Victorian Education Minister Melissa Hutchins to audit the school’s enrolment numbers.
Ms Lovell said the school was missing 600 students from projected enrolments, with just under 2100 students at the school in 2023down from the 2645 students enrolled across the four schools which merged to form the GSSC.
“If students have just dropped out, they need to be re-engaged with education immediately to ensure they have the opportunity to meet their full potential,” Ms Lovell said.
“An audit of students that have left GSSC is necessary to identify where these missing students are, including; if they are attending other schools, if they are being homeschooled, if they have obtained work or most importantly if they have been lost to education and employment altogether.”
Ms Lovell cited the Shepparton Education Plan from March 2017, which projected 5848 students across Greater Shepparton by 2026 — 3117 of those at a government school.
The plan, however, said that figure “does not take into account a Catholic P-12 college currently under construction in Shepparton”.
Ms O’Brien said there was “context around those numbers” Ms Lovell was overlooking, but had “never heard of” the estimation of 3117 students.
“It’s nothing like that 600 figure (missing),” she said.
She said while the school was built to accommodate 2700 students it was never expected to hit capacity so soon.
“Before we moved to one school the numbers of students at government schools were declining and we’ve taken a net positive of 109 new enrolments this year,” Ms O’Brien said.
Ms O’Brien said the school kept track of numbers weekly and the school had lost “a little less than we expected due to attrition”.
She said the opening of new high schools across the region would continue to curb growth of GSSC’s numbers and also said government schools were dipping state-wide.
“Five hundred new positions opened for students across Shepparton last year, across the whole of Shepparton we’ve got so many places for students,” she said.
“I’ve been in education for 46 years and I’ve never seen the investment being made now, it’s a benefit to our community.”
She said aside from seven students who had changed schools, 36 students had left either for employment or for other education settings such as TAFE and another 35 students had left the area, “not for any reason to do with the school”.