When our school was established and opened in 1881, it was known as Balgowlah Public School and comprised of a two-room weatherboard cottage catering for 22 students. Situated amongst bushland and dairy paddocks, the school grew rapidly and by the early 1890s a new school building was constructed on the site – today’s Balgowlah Seaforth Community Library on the corner of Sydney Road and Frenchs Forest Road – as well as proper fencing to prevent straying cattle from the neighbouring paddocks from their habit of roaming the school grounds.
The school continued to grow with further timber classrooms being regularly added to the site, and when the site was at capacity, students used St Paul’s Church across the road as temporary classrooms.
With the school having over 300 enrolled students by the mid-1930s, larger premises were urgently required. In 1939 the Kempbridge Avenue Campus was built on a portion of a former dairy farm and opened to its doors to 439 pupils in 1939.
By the mid-1950s the school had over 1000 pupils, and despite 12 ‘portable classrooms’ being erected on the Kempbridge Avenue Campus further expansion was again needed. An Infants School was built on Yatama Street to accommodate students from K-2 and opened in 1957 – today’s Yatama Street Campus
In 1963, after numerous previous calls for change, Balgowlah Public School finally officially became Seaforth Public School.
