“We’re starting to make the school more available to the public,” new principal Colin May said after taking over from Andrew Duchesne for the 2017 school year.

“We want the community to use the space we have.

“There’s no other school with 60 acres other than larger independent schools.”

Mr May said the school is interested in community groups and sporting clubs using facilities, and sees their value to the wider community outside school hours.

He is excited by the fact nearly half of the school studies agriculture in some form and the pupils and students learn as much as possible outside the classrooms.

The newcomer’s specialty is growing schools from places of purely primary education to also include a secondary school.

Mr May led the development of Beecroft’s Arden Anglican School into a three-campus preschool-to-Year 12 school which would come to include campuses in Epping and a Senior Study Centre in Epping’s Cambridge Business Park. 

He was also the school’s first male principal.

His long career has seen him work in a diverse range of religious schools, including an Islamic Arabic bilingual college, an Italian bilingual school, and also a Jewish school in Dover Heights.

The school also welcomes new pupils and a new kindergarten class for the 2017 school year, and their teacher is looking forward to what lies ahead.

Kindergarten teacher Anne-Louise Clark described her incoming pupils as “fabulous” as they sat in wait inside the school’s gymnasium for a lesson in the game of tennis.

The class had spent their first week of school looking after the school’s rabbits guinea pigs and chickens, reading, digging in the creek, playing soccer and getting some artistic creations ready for the Far South Coast National Show.

Pupil Matthew Keyte said his favourite part of school was playtime.