Principal's Report

2025 Foundation Enrolments Now Open

The Department of Education has launch a new online enrolments portal that families with 2025 Foundation students can use to enrol students. 

Early enrolment greatly helps our staffing and planning for 2025!

Riversdale Principal Conference

On Tuesday 23rd and Wednesday 24th Stephen Roche and I attended the Riversdale Principal Network Conference at Cape Schanck. This annual event sees Principals from schools across our Inner East network come together to hear from experts and scholars in education and school leadership. 

Our Keynote speaker was Professor Pasi Sahlberg. Professor Sahlberg is a professor of educational leadership at Melbourne University whose previous work includes teaching and teacher education at the University of Helsinki, Director General at Finland's Ministry of Education, senior education specialist at the World Bank in Washington DC, the European Commission in Torino, and visiting professor at Harvard University. 

Professor Sahlberg worked with us across the whole first day and covered three broad concepts - the state of global education, the Australian education situation, and what can schools do to improve right now. His message was one of change with a focus on collaboration and collective autonomy, whole student and whole school approaches, and trust-based teacher professionalism. Professor Sahlberg's belief is that Australia has a world class education system - but not for everyone. There are inequities and significant differences, both between and within Australian schools. 

In the evening we heard from social demographer Simon Kuestenmacher the founder of The Demographics Group. Simon discussed the issue of the nation wide teacher shortage and other demographic challenges facing schools in the coming decades. 

On the second day we had a session with the Victoria Academy of Teaching and Leadership focusing on the Victorian Leadership Development Framework. We discussed Virtuous Leadership and leaders who lead with a strong moral purpose. 

We finished with a fabulous talk from Chelsea Roffey. Chelsea is a speaker, author, researcher and Winston Churchill Fellow who examines barriers and opportunities for diversity. Chelsea is a journalist and a goal umpire in the Australian Football League. 

The Man Box

This week we hosted Drew and Michael from The Men's Project to present on "The Man Box", which was a comprehensive study focusing on attitudes to manhood and the behaviours of Australian men aged 18 to 25. Drew and Michael worked with staff and then a healthy group of parents and carers around how we can work with our young people to challenge harmful norms about gender. Via evidence-based programs, they aim to support boys and men to live respectful, accountable and fulfilling lives free from violence and other harmful behaviour.

Thank you to the group of parents and carers who attended the evening session, as well as to Steve Roche for organising the session.

In the coming weeks, students in Years 5 and 6 will also participate in a series of workshops related to the Man Box study, again looking at challenging some of the gender norms and stereotypes our students may already be experiencing in their lives.

Peter Watson

Principal