School Profile
School Profile and Prospectus for 2011 

Prairiewood High School is now a local comprehensive and partially selective high school - serving the wider "Parks Community".

Location
The school is located in the Fairfield Local Government Area (third largest in the Sydney area) and is surrounded by the suburbs of Wetherill Park, Prairiewood, Smithfield and Bossley Park, with William Stimson, Smithfield West, Prairievale, Smithfield and Horsley Park as its main partner primary schools. The Site The present site of almost eight hectares was first occupied in 1984 and is bounded by Prairie Vale Road, Restwell Road, the Stockland Centre and public housing area of Bogong Place. Two public hospitals, The Spastic Centre and a rehabilitation clinic are located "just across the road", with a neighbourhood youth centre nearby. A security fence around the school's perimeter provides an increased level of safety for our students.

School Facilities
The "early eighties" designed two-storey buildings, and surrounding grounds provide a very pleasant working environment for both staff and students. The school farm, a dance studio, a designated environment area, shade cloth covered seating areas, outdoor double basketball courts, a multipurpose hall and large playing fields are significant additional features of our site. Commonwealth Government funding has resulted in the complete refurbishment of six science laboratories (all equipped with interactive whiteboards), as well as a new connected classrooms, new outdoor classroom spaces and a school observatory.

A Multicultural and Changing Enrolment
After peaking at 1,510 students in 1995, the total student enrolment gradually decreased over the following six or seven years increasing once again in more recent years to 985 students for the 2011 school year (an increase of 40 students more than in 2010) mainly as a result of the changing demographic with many younger families now moving into this area – and, of course our ‘partially selective school’ status. Although 71% of our students are from almost fifty different cultural backgrounds, the actual breakdown in terms of cultural groups has changed quite significantly over recent years.

In 2011, the most significant LBOTE groups represented by students from an NESB/LBOTE background are: Vietnamese(18%), Assyrian (16%), Arabic (12%), with two percent of students from an Aboriginal background. These figures represent a noticeable change in the mix of students from a range of different cultural backgrounds over the past three or four years. It is also interesting to note that, of thirty-five new students enrolling in Years 8-12, almost 20% of these formerly attended a non-government school.

The Students
The majority of Prairiewood students are friendly, courteous, polite, well-behaved and interested in making a worthwhile contribution to their school work. Our students are representative of a wide range of academic ability, with some very hard-working students achieving outstanding HSC results in recent years and a significant number of candidates achieving results which place them in the top 10% or 20% of students across the State.

At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of students identified as experiencing learning difficulties and in need of additional learning support, with a recent increase in the number of these leaving school during Years 10 or 11 and being offered traineeships, apprenticeships or permanent employment, instead of remaining until Year 12 to complete the HSC. Twenty students are enrolled in the two Special Education (I.O.) support classes which operate at our school. Our student retention rate for students from Years 7 to 12 continues to remain higher than that of most other schools in the district, region or state.

Students at Prairiewood High, as well as those in our local partner primary schools, will continue to benefit in 2011 from extensive professional learning programs being funded as part of our school’s LowSES budget plan, especially in the area of accelerated literacy. At the same time, Prairiewood students in Years 9 or 10 who are experiencing difficulty in their studies and may be at risk of not completing the School Certificate or HSC are expected to benefit from a special careers and transition to work initiative which will also be part of the 2011 program.

The Staff
Prairiewood High School is fortunate to have a very stable and experienced staff, with 43% or more of the teaching and non-teaching staff having greater than twenty years teaching experience in schools and 43% of our teaching staff having worked at Prairiewood High School for 15 years or more. Many of our teachers regularly participate in School Certificate and HSC marking, with some also involved as members of Board of Studies Examination and Syllabus Committees or as members of District Training and Curriculum Support teams.

Teachers in all faculties continue to meet and work with staff from the other new partially selective high schools in our region to share ideas and develop teaching and learning programs and materials, with lots of practical support from teachers in more established partially and fully selective high schools in NSW. Once again, we have two complete selective stream classes commencing in Year 7 this year and with even more staff now fully qualified in the areas of teaching selective and gifted and talented students, I look forward to an even more diverse range of quality teaching and enriched teaching and learning experiences for all students at Prairiewood High School.

All teaching staff meet the professional requirements for teaching in NSW public schools.