From the Principal – 6 September 2019

Developing Resilience
It was a cold and windy day and the girls were in shorts and sports tops. Blankets and coats were out and everyone was snuggling together. Conditions were described as frankly horrific; however, in true St Margaret’s and Berwick Grammar School style, the girls, ran jumped and threw with spirit and fortitude at the GSV Athletics. In the pouring rain the trusty St Margaret’s Unicorn mascot cheered from the sidelines, bringing, the girls decided, luck to our team only when the unicorn head was on properly. All will remember this for the next interschool encounter….

It was my great honour to present the Senior Trophy to St Margaret’s captain Shae Jones, and announce a (very close) second to St Margaret’s girls.

In typical Melbourne fashion, the SIS Boys’ Athletics was the next day in glorious conditions. Congratulations to the boys team who won their division.

Staff Success
Our Director of Curriculum and Innovation, Ms Meg Fortington, has been named as one of the top 10 education influencers in Australia by the Knowledge Review journal. Congratulations to Meg and very well deserved. Meg’s background reflecting years of involvement in technological and other curriculum innovation endeavours.

Annual Concert: Australia: This is Your Song
I wanted to acknowledge the incredible professionalism, talent, musicality and sheer joy evident in the annual concert recently. The overall standard was thoroughly impressive and all the families to whom I have spoken have been extremely positive about the growth and involvement in Music at the School. A huge thank you to Marten Vissour and his team. Very few know the huge level or organisation and communication required to manage such an event. It ran seamlessly. Conductors, AV, ushers, backstage, maintenance and other staff were all operating as one backed up by Educational Support Staff. I was also delighted to see the positive reaction to the announcement of the 2020 Musical – the students were literally crying with joy backstage afterwards!

It is important to acknowledge the link of the evening to both the School values and our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Murrundindi’s involvement and initial smoking ceremony were significant and reflect our growing commitment to this area.

Another reason to be so very proud of our beautiful school.

Data alone is not enough
It was my pleasure to attend a briefing by Professor Janet Clinton from the University of Melbourne recently. She explore the importance of organisations such as schools evaluating the copious amount of data they have at their disposal. A school like ours has NAPLAN, external academic testing results, internal school reports as well as data from competitions, and co-curricular activities such as debating and public speaking.

A key element of the capacity to evaluate effectively, is having structures that give appropriate time and emphasis to data analysis. It is clear that our new Senior School wellbeing and academic care structure will facilitate this. By separating responsibility for academic care, we are honouring the importance of data and its analysis. We are currently reviewing the structures implemented this year and look forward to augmenting existing structures so as to put the child at the centre even more to ‘be what they need us to be’ both as learners and young people.

 

 

 

 

 

Ms Annette Rome
Principal