History:
Sacred Heart school was founded in 1915 by the Sisters of the Good Samaritan. 1990 marked the 75th anniversary of the opening of the school. Originally Sacred Heart primary school was staffed by the Sisters of the Good Samaritan but today the staff are all lay people. The original school population was mainly from anglo-saxon backgrounds, while today the school experiences the enrichment of more than twenty nationalities.
Recent years have also seen external changes to the school building, Which dominates the skyline along Bell Street. Classrooms, administration areas, canteen and a multi-purpose room have been added, whilst extensive renovations have been made to already existing areas.
Description:
The children are from a variety of cultural, social, religious and linguistic backgrounds. At least twenty-six language backgrounds are represented in the school, the main apart from English being: Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tamil, Italian and Greek. Many of the children are Australian born into families where the language spoken at home is other tan English.
The socio-economic background of the school population is characterised as working class, non-professional. Family structures vary from nuclear to extended to single parent families.
Features:
Sacred Heart school uses the CLaSS approach to literacy and all classes have a literacy and numeracy block timetabled into their program. The school has a mother tongue Arabic maintenance program and Italian as a community language. The school has upgraded its learning technology resources and all classes have access to computers. Reading Recover and Corrective Reading are two reading intervention programs used with children at risk. Student welfare is given priority in the school and we have a pastoral care coordinator.