School History

Upper Swan Primary School is the school of choice in the northern section of the Swan Valley, with 65% of our enrolments coming from outside our intake area. The school is situated on the Great Northern Highway, a few hundred metres from the upper reaches of the Swan River. The school is steeped in the history of the Swan Valley, with many of the pioneer families having sent several generations of children to the school. Our three factions (houses) are named after some of those families: Belhus (bottle green), Loton (sky blue) and Shaw (gold). 

The first school in Upper Swan opened in 1857, catering for sixteen students. Over the next fifty years the school closed and re-opened several times as the number of children in the area fluctuated. The school has been running continuously since 1905, celebrating its centenary in 2005. The school's entrance, through an avenue of deciduous trees and personalised paving bricks highlighting the family history of many of our past students, draws the eye of prospective families.  

Although an historical school, the buildings are all relatively recent. We have five main buildings. The senior block with its five classrooms was built in the 1970's. Two of the classrooms were first used as the library and administration offices. The centrally located administration block, staffroom and library were built in 1992. The junior block was constructed in 2003. It has seven classrooms, a purpose built art room, a central multi-purpose activity area that includes a kitchen, a teachers' work room, education assistants' work room and storage space.  The building program continued in 2006 with the extension of the undercover area as well as a bitumen car park for staff. 

In 2009 major road works were completed on Great Northern Highway and the school access road to improve safety and traffic flow. In the second half of 2009 the Commonwealth Government's funding program enabled us to build shade structures over two adventure playgrounds, bituminise the parent car park, build internal walls in the senior block and increase the electricity supply to classrooms. In 2010/11 three permanent classrooms were constructed to house our Kindergarten and Pre Primary students. The undercover area underwent a second extension that enclosed the entire area.  

The school site is away from any defined housing development. The majority of stduents are drawn from The Vines, Brigadoon and the northern section of Upper Swan. A number of students attend from outside the school boundary: Aveley, Ellenbrook and the Chittering Valley.
 
Overall student numbers sit between 400 to 420 in any given year. In 2016 we are heading towards 450. Most years several composite classes have to be formed as we do not have enough students or staff to run a "two stream" program.