The Blackwattle Bay Campus of the

Sydney Secondary College Sydney Secondary College is a multi-campus urban government-funded, co-educational, dual modality, partially academically selective and comprehensive secondary day school, located in the Inner West region of Sydney, New South Wales, Australi ...

is a government-funded

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...

dual modality comprehensive senior

secondary Secondary may refer to: Science and nature * Secondary emission, of particles ** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products * The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding i ...

day school A day school — as opposed to a boarding school — is an educational institution where children and adolescents are given instructions during the day, after which the students return to their homes. A day school has full-day programs when compar ...

, located in the inner-western

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

suburb of

Glebe, New South Wales Glebe is an inner-western suburb of Sydney. Glebe is located southwest of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney, in the Inner West region. Glebe is surrounded by Blackwattle Bay ...

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

, Australia. Established in 1979 as Glebe High School, the campus caters for approximately 750 students in

Year 11 Year 11 is an educational year group in schools in many countries including England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It is the eleventh or twelfth year of core education. For some Year 11 students it is their final year ...

and

Year 12 Year 12 is an educational year group in schools in many countries including England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It is sometimes the twelfth year of compulsory education, or alternatively a year of post-compulsory educa ...

. Since 2005, the campus has served exclusively as the senior school of the Sydney Secondary College and its two junior campuses are Balmain and

Leichhardt Leichhardt may refer to: * Division of Leichhardt, electoral District for the Australian House of Representatives * Leichhardt Highway, a highway of Queensland, Australia * Leichhardt Way, an Australian road route * Leichhardt, New South Wales, inn ...

campuses.

History

Establishment of Glebe High School

Discussions of creating a new high school in

Glebe Glebe (; also known as church furlong, rectory manor or parson's close(s))McGurk 1970, p. 17 is an area of land within an ecclesiastical parish used to support a parish priest. The land may be owned by the church, or its profits may be reserved ...

started around late 1977 with many local teachers rising concerns over the lack of accommodation for an increasingly large number of local students. Hearing these concerns, the

NSW Department of Education ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , e ...

agreed to investigate the demography and needs of the local area. As an outcome of this study, the

Department of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

arranged to create a new high school in Glebe as a part of a new scheme and accommodate for the overflow of students from other schools in the local district. After deciding to create a school in Glebe, the NSW Department of Education was searching for a suitable location. A local

lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, wi ...

yard owned by George Hudson and called Hudson Timber Yard went on the market in 1979 and the Department of Education purchased the waterfront property for $1.86 million (equivalent to $ million in ) with the sale being seen as a "bargain". Glebe High School was established in 1979, starting with 110 students and 17 staff members and exclusively catering for Year 7 during its first year. Located upon the newly-purchased land, students and staff were all housed in demountable classrooms, with permanent buildings being included in the initial plan for the school.

Construction of Permanent Buildings

During a public meeting in July 1980, at Glebe's town hall, Glebe High School's student enrolment numbers were reported to be 1600 lower than expected, leading the NSW

to reconsider the creation of an originally planned permanent building. Following this discovery, Minister Paul Landa decided to defer the creation of permanent buildings until a more detailed report of Glebe High School was completed. An investigative report of the school was created by a working party consisting of two departmental officers, two local teachers elected by the Inner West Teachers Association and two members of the Glebe P&C. Construction of the school's permanent buildings began in December 1980, with the students and staff continuing to use demountable classrooms whilst the new buildings were being constructed. Permanent buildings were completed in the early 1980s.

Joining Sydney Secondary College

In 2002, the school became part of Sydney Secondary College and was renamed Blackwattle Bay Campus. Since 2005, it is exclusively a senior campus catering for Years 11 and 12. This enables the school to offer one of the largest range of Higher School Certificate courses in Sydney. Student enrolments increased significantly when the school was transformed into a senior campus.

Recent

The campus has a sister-school relationship with Malibaca Yamato High School in East Timor, and a volunteer project in community work.

Achievements

In 2005, Fawad Qaiser became the first student to sit for a Higher School Certificate (HSC) examination using

Auslan Auslan () is the majority sign language of the Australian Deaf community. The term ''Auslan'' is a portmanteau of "Australian Sign Language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the 1980s, although the language itself is much older. Auslan is relate ...

, the Australian sign language. In 2011, Chinese language teacher, Chorng Leu, was awarded a Premier’s Teacher Scholarship to undertake an international study tour. In 2012, local resident Robert Brand, his son Jason Brand, together with students from Leichhardt Public School and the senior students at the Blackwattle Bay Campus, launched and tracked a balloon into near space as a science project. The balloon reached approximately before it burst.

First in Course

A number of Blackwattle Bay students have been awarded first place in the state in various HSC courses:

Sports

The school offers various sports which are not compulsory for all Year 11 students, including

rowing Rowing is the act of propelling a human-powered watercraft using the sweeping motions of oars to displace water and generate reactional propulsion. Rowing is functionally similar to paddling, but rowing requires oars to be mechanically atta ...

which can be done in the morning or afternoon. Blackwattle Bay is on the waterfront, and accordingly offers both

and

kayaking Kayaking is the use of a kayak for moving over water. It is distinguished from canoeing by the sitting position of the paddler and the number of blades on the paddle. A kayak is a low-to-the-water, canoe-like boat in which the paddler sits fac ...

as sporting options, a unique feature of the sporting curriculum that sets it apart from other urban Sydney high schools. A wide range of sports are available at Blackwattle Bay Campus. A student has the choice to participate in

badminton Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players pe ...

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

netball Netball is a ball sport played on a court by two teams of seven players. It is among a rare number of sports which have been created exclusively for female competitors. The sport is played on indoor and outdoor netball courts and is specifical ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

, fitness walking, tennis, rockclimbing, boxing, swimming or

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

. Students with disabilities participate in an annual state athletics carnival that can lead to selection in the Australian team for the

Paralympic Games The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the ''Games of the Paralympiad'', is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of physical disabilities, including impaired muscle power and impaire ...

References

External links

Sydney Secondary College Blackwattle Bay Campus website
{{Public high schools in Sydney, state=autocollapse Public high schools in Sydney Educational institutions established in 1979 Glebe, New South Wales 1979 establishments in Australia Selective schools in New South Wales __FORCETOC__