St Brendan's Primary School Bankstown

Education Directory introduces St Brendan's Primary School Bankstown in Bankstown, for all your education and learning needs.

Bankstown's Catholic population grew strongly after World War II. By 1950 the Josephite school in northern Bankstown had over 600 pupils and so the parish priest, Fr Lawrence Corridon, and the Sisters of St Joseph cooperated to start a new school in Cambridge Avenue, Central Bankstown. St Brendan's opened on 13 May 1952, with 52 pupils in Kindergarten.

In 1953 the parish of St Brendan's Central Bankstown was established, with Fr Wilfred Paine as Parish Priest. St Brendan's was a primary school for girls from Kindergarten to Sixth Class and for boys to Third Class and then on to De La Salle to complete their Primary education. St Brendan's is a Systemic School belonging to the Archdiocese of Sydney.

In 1990, Mrs Margaret Di Salvio, after being appointed as Principal by the Catholic Education Office, took over administration of the school from the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. The school, having a high proportion of migrant children was classified as disadvantaged, which attracted funding under the Disadvantaged Schools Programs. Many families were refugees, who were from Europe after World War II, from Lebanon in the 1970's and from Vietnam in the 1980's. Programs were introduced to cater for the resulting multicultural mix: a New Arrivals Program, English as a Second Language, and a Vietnamese Bilingual Program.