Achievements

Arsh M

Congratulations to Arsh M (Year 7) who has just been announced as a winner in the 2021 Edstart Achievement Awards Program!

Focused on supporting young minds from all around Australia, the program recognises students for their contributions and ambitions in an area they are passionate about. Arsh was the winner in the ‘Technology and Innovation’ category! As an aspiring engineer, his project is to design a mobile phone charging chair that is powered by piezoelectricity and renewable energy. Arsh also receives $1500 grant which will help fund his project. This is an incredible achievement, congratulations!

Rey D

Chess Champion!

Rey (Year 8) participated in the Victorian Chess Championships during the recent holidays and was crowned Victorian U14 Chess Champion!

In the photo below Rey is pictured with our specialist chess coach, Robert Jamieson (International Master). It turns out that Robert won the very same title 55 years ago!

Vivian L

Congratulations to Vivian L who has been recognised with a Premier’s VCE Award for her outstanding academic results in 2020. 

Vivian achieved a perfect study score of 50 in Visual Communication Design last year! She is among 297 students who received Study Awards as the top-performing students in the state. Well done to Vivian and to Ms Janet Irving (Visual Communication Design Teacher) for their amazing work despite the challenges of the covid-affected final year. 

Receiving such a prestigious award is a brilliant achievement and we are so proud of Vivian on her well-deserved success. Congratulations!

Indonesian Speaking Competition 

The Sayembara Lisan, Indonesian state finals was held last Saturday. Many of our students competing in the competition. All of them performed their best. We believe that more of our students should receive places on the state final. We are very proud of every single one of them.

Well done to all the students involved and congratulations to the students below for their amazing results:

Year 2: Dimitra F, 3rd place

Year 3: Rehan S, 2nd Place

Year 5: Felicia S, 3rd place

Year 8: Roy L, 2nd place

Year 10: Braedyn K, 3rd place

Year 11: Anjali S, 2nd place

Timi Ardiyanti 

Head of Indonesian Studies

Debating Finalists

The regional rounds of the Debaters Association of Victoria’s Schools Competition ended with an outstanding result for Huntingtower, with five teams qualifying for the Victorian state finals.

The Schools Competition is the biggest debating competition in the English-speaking world, with thousands of teams from hundreds of schools competing each year. The Glen Waverley region is one of the largest, and despite a hectic end to the season, with last-minutes switches to online debating as we jumped between lockdowns, our students have performed exceptionally well. Only the undefeated teams from each year level progress into the finals, comprising the top 5% of the competition, and out of the nine teams to quality from our region, more than half were comprised of Huntingtower students.

Year 12 Finalists

Patrick M, Martin G, Chelsey D, Kallista A, Kavithi K

Year 11 Finalists

Oscar L, Emily S, Haresh L, Ella E, Anjali S

Year 10 Finalists

Team 1: 

Pranav C, Michael X, Lithasha P, Danesh S, Rohan D

Team 2: 

Harshitaa N, Rishika D, Anushka S, Eleni M, Daphne G

Year 9 Finalists

Nihar P, Andy D, Nanda J, Alan L

These teams now progress into the Schools Competition State Finals: a series of seven knock-out rounds of competition where the competition halves each round. The finals will be taking place online until face-to-face events can resume, commencing this week with the first round of Playoffs. The first round of playoffs commence this week for our D Grade debaters, who will be debating whether the Australian of the Year award should be elected by the public.

Congratulations to all of our eleven teams who participated in this competition this year, many of whom only missed out on a finals place by a single debate. With thirty-two best speaker awards over the five rounds and an almost 80% win rate, and every single team winning multiple debates, they have all had a truly exceptional year and performed amazingly well in some often very trying circumstances.

The next stage in this journey now begins for our finalists, as they enter into a high-stakes and hectic finals series. We wish them the very best of luck, and congratulate them on an exceptional achievement.

A bit thank you as well also goes out to the staff who have helped with training and supervision of teams this year: Robin Clarke, Adam Drennan, Marta Lopez and Shan Christensen.

Debating will continue with students already having the opportunity to register for various British Parliamentary debating tournaments and the junior competition, which will all take place over the remainder of this year. Regardless of lockdowns or any other challenges thrown at our debaters, they continue to go strong!

Matthew McDonald

Head of English