Sacred Heart Primary School is a Catholic, co-educational parish school comprised of 220 students from Pre-Kindergarten to Year 6.
Sacred Heart is a multicultural inner city school community serving the areas of Highgate, Mount Lawley, Perth, East Perth and Maylands.
Sacred Heart offers a holistic education embracing the intellectual, spiritual, emotional, social and physical development of all students. Christian values support the pastoral care program throughout the life of the community. Student leadership is developed through the Student Council and class meetings.
Literacy and Numeracy are strongly promoted with quality class teaching supported by the early intervention programs of Reading Recovery and Extending Mathematical Understandings. Extension Mathematics and English, STRIVE, provides opportunities for talented students. Digital Technology is integrated across the curriculum. Specialist teachers enrich student learning in Music, Art, Science, Italianand Physical Education. Sacred Heart Primary School is actively engaged in the Performing Arts Festival and Interschool Sports.
History
Founded in 1897 by the Our Lady of the Mission Sisters, the Sacred Heart School motto of “Faith, Truth, Loyalty” to Gospel values embodies the tradition and lifelong learning of the students of Sacred Heart School, Highgate. Sacred Heart School is a heritage listed building.
“The strength, the passion and joyful perseverance which is the driving force behind the lives of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions came from their conviction that they are united with Christ.”
Matthew Gibney (Bishop of Perth from 1887-1910) had a vision to open a school on Highgate Hill. He reserved two acres of land to be set aside for a church and school both to be dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He believed it was important for people to be educated in their faith and that Catholic schools were the appropriate place for this to happen.
Timothy Quinlan, MLA and a Catholic layman, suggested that the school could be run by the Sisters from the Order of Our Lady of the Missions. Subsequently, discussions were held with the Superior General, Mother Mary of the Holy Rosary, who visited Perth on her way home to New Zealand from France. It was decided that the Sisters would open a school.
By the end of the first week twenty four more students enrolled and a piano had been purchased, beginning a long tradition of music education at Sacred Heart. The Sisters were confronted by harsh conditions, driving heat, flies, mosquitoes, and minimal resources. However, they were sustained by their belief in God and their call to mission.
The school offered both Primary and High School places and operated in a timber and iron church building before moving to a convent school building in 1899. From 1914 to 1980 the school operated in the purpose built parish building. The High School moved to Sorrento in 1980.
In 1996 the school was faced with the real possibility of closure. Through a concerted effort by the school community of the time the school remained open. Major renovations were carried out in the early 2000’s to bring the school facilities to what we now enjoy. The convent and school buildings are listed on the State Register of Heritage Places.
Since its inception, more than two hundred Sisters have been a part of the Sacred Heart community, and today their legacy is carried forward by a dedicated lay staff. With a lay principal and staff, the school continues to keep close to the original spirit and ministry of service that the founding Sisters established.
Euphrasie Barbier
Foundress of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions
Adèle-Euphrasie Barbier, known in religious life as Marie du Coeur de Jésus, was born on 4 January 1829 in Caen, France, into a devout family that valued honesty and hard work. Moved by a bishop’s account of his missionary work, she longed to serve in the foreign missions. In 1848 she entered the Sisters of Calvary in Cuves, was professed in 1851, and was sent to London. By the late 1850s, realising her missionary dream would not be fulfilled there, she left and returned to France, drawn by the prospect of joining the Marist Fathers’ mission in Oceania.
In December 1861 she founded a new congregation in Lyon, the Institute de Notre Dame des Missions, with a strong focus on the foreign missions. Its first missionaries, all French, left in October 1864 for New Zealand, where within a year they were teaching the children of European settlers and young Māori girls. Life was hard for the young foundress, but despite many difficulties the congregation thrived and opened new foundations.
Small and slight yet tireless, Euphrasie was affectionately called “the little Mother.” Though her health was weakened by hardship and illness, she remained full of enthusiasm, making demanding journeys to her communities in France, England, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Asia. Her letters and the memories of those who knew her reveal a woman of deep faith, strong will, integrity and warmth, ever concerned for her sisters and those they served, and above all a truly contemplative missionary.
As new foundations opened in England and India, completing the congregation’s constitutions grew more urgent. To her great joy, they were approved in 1890, three years before her death in 1893. Euphrasie is buried in the convent chapel in Sturry, England.
