WHILE the Anglican, Catholic and Uniting churches dominate WA’s top 20 independent schools, a Muslim school leads the way.
The Australian Islamic College is Perth’s largest independent school, according to the Business News List of WA’s Independent Schools.
The college has 1,681 students, ranging from kindergarten to year 12, spread among its three Perth campuses.
College director Abdallah Magar said the school had been formed to maintain the morals and behaviour expected within the Muslim faith.
The school’s creed is to help students achieve success in this life and the hereafter.
While the majority of students are from WA’s Islamic community, some of its students are drawn from Asia.
College principal Ahmed Deria said the school used to have about 100 international students but enrolments had fallen due to Asian economic conditions.
The school runs longer classes than the norm – one hour as opposed to 45 or 50 minutes – and has the smallest teacher to student class ratio of any WA school.
Dr Deria said a weekly report was prepared on each student’s progress. The report is given to the parents and also used by teachers to assess ways to improve that child’s learning.
Tutoring, both in religious and secular subjects is available both after school and on Saturdays.
According to the list, Perth’s top 20 independent schools tutor about 23,000 students, of which 40 per cent are located in eight Anglican Church affiliated schools.
The next largest student population rests with the Catholic Church which has five schools in the top 20-list and almost 6,000 students or 25 per cent of the top-20 student population.
