Willetton Senior High School

Campus

WSHS covers an area of approximately 4500 m2, located adjacent to Burrendah Primary School and Castlereagh School. There are seven main buildings, along with numerous transportable buildings, some many years old. A$5 million upgrade was completed in 2008 that resulted in the construction of a new gymnasium and several new facilities.

WSHS underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation and redevelopment that commenced in 2014. The school was closed for a week so the site could be inspected. Teachers were sent to work from North Lake Senior High School where they connected with students via the internet so that classes could continue.

The following phase of the redevelopment, involving the construction of another block of classrooms, commenced in February 2022. Construction was completed in early 2024.

Academic rankings

The Year 12 cohorts at Willetton perform consistently well in the WACE school rankings, and the school ranks well when compared to other schools in Western Australia.

In 2017, Andreea Ioan won the Beazley Medal for the top ranked Vocational Education and Training student in Western Australia.

Special programs

WSHS is one of 20 schools offering the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program with entry through a centrally organised testing program. Entry to the science-focused Gifted & Talented (G&T) program is managed at the school level. The school offers a specialist fine arts course for Years 8 to 10 and a successful senior school art program. A specialist course in computing was the first of its kind in WA and has recently been expanded to include a multimedia stream. A specialist basketball course runs from Years 8 to 11 and offers students a TAFE Certificate II in Sport Coaching and Sport and Recreation. Both male and female teams have won multiple national championships. As of June 2019, Willetton SHS introduced a program called the eSports Club where all students can prepare for a sports competition and practice against other local schools. Some of the team names include WSHS eSports and DLGC.

Basketball Team Achievements

Championship Men (Open)

• Australian Schools Championships : Third Place: 2017, 2018

International relations

WSHS has a sister school relationship with the High School and Junior High School of University of Hyogo located in Kamigōri, Ako District, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. Cultural exchanges between the two schools commenced in 1995 and a collaborative international partnership was established in 2005. WSHS maintains relationships that provide opportunities for French and Italian language students to study overseas.

Incidents

On 11 May 2020, a 16-year-old male student was charged with illegal possession of a firearm after taking a gel blaster and a knife into the school. Crime Stoppers received a tipoff regarding the gun before the officers were called to the school at about 2:30pm. In a statement "the Education Department said [...] no other students were impacted and the situation was well managed."

On 5 May 2022, a female student pled guilty to a charge of attempted murder after she stabbed a female teacher at WSHS in November 2021. The girl had a female accomplice, who pled not guilty to the same charge. Although the intent was to wound the teacher fatally, the teacher was not injured seriously, receiving a 1 cm wound near the left armpit. The attacking girl was 14 years old at the time of the stabbing, and the girl that assisted was 13. In September 2022 the attacker was "sentenced to three years and one month detention, but will be eligible for parole after serving 15 months, a sentence [...] lower than it could have been due to the poor conditions at Banksia Hill"; the crime carries "a maximum penalty of life imprisonment." The accomplice was sentenced 12 days earlier "to 11 months in juvenile detention, but she may be released after serving half of that", with this sentence also lower than it could have been because of the poor conditions at Banksia Hill.

Notable alumni

• Ebony Antonio – Australian rules football player
• James Hayward – Member of the Western Australian Legislative Council from 2021 until disqualified in 2023{{cite news |title=Not since 1910 has WA's parliament seen anything like the James Hayward scandal |first=Keane |last=Bourke |date=2023-08-28 |publisher=ABC News|location=Australia
• Ben Henshall – Basketball player
• Luke Jackson – Australian rules football player
• Daniel Johnson – Basketball player
• Shane OsbornFirst Australian to earn two Michelin stars , and runner-up in the first season of The Final Table filmed for Netflix
• Luke Travers – Australian basketball player
• Rhys Vague – Basketball player
• James Wan – Australian producer, screenwriter and director

References

References

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