Acting Principal's Message

We Grow Through Connection

Dear Families,

Another full and wonderful term is coming to an end with many highlights and amazing achievements by our students. We are so proud of all of them and how they represent our great school. Our College Motto, ‘We Grow Through Connection’, supports our students and community to continue to grow and improve through the positive connections we develop with others.

Our School Wide Positive Behaviour for term 3 was Opportunities for All, taken from our SOAR values, and so many of our students have taken this and excelled. From the school production, state school spectacular, our sports program and academic endeavours our students continue to do us proud. 

To anyone who missed out on seeing the school production of Beauty and the Beast, I am sorry as it was awe inspiring. The sets, the costumes, the performances entranced and delighted the audience and we are so proud of all the students involved behind the scenes and on the stage. The confidence and poise of our students was outstanding.

We were well represented at the State School Spectacular where we had a featured dancer, James Nimaya, an extraordinary young man. His sister Joice Nimaya performed in the main choir, and our wonderful mass dance troupe wowed the audience. All our students worked so hard to prepare. We thank Jamie Gourlay for her work with the students and I believe she summed up the evening the best, “they were spectacular”.

As a college we continue to focus on learning growth and our Naplan results show that we continue to surpass like schools and the state. These are results of which we are extremely proud, as should our whole community as it is a result of the dedication of our great staff and the work of our students to improve and grow in their learning. 

Term 3 reports were shared last week and we saw many families come through our doors for Parent teacher interviews this week. It was such a positive experience to be able to talk to everyone, if you missed the opportunity to talk to your child’s teacher they are always available through Compass email. Our VCE-VM students ran a successful BBQ in the afternoon of Parent Teacher interviews, a great project for them in organisation, budgeting and customer service, and the food was delicious too. 

As we move in to Term 4 our course counselling is finishing up and students can begin to focus on their next year, in particular our senior students. They have so many options between VCE, VCE-VM, VET subjects and the VET Mini-Cluster providing everyone with pathways to successfully completing their year 12 at Pakenham Secondary College.

We wish the students and staff who are off to Central Australia in the school holidays a good trip, fair weather and lots of adventures. This is an amazing experience and we thank Michelle Scheiwiller for all the work she has done to get this camp up and running over the last year. 

We have a busy term 4 of year 12 exams, excursions and camps, and Step Up in week 7 as students move up to their 2026 classes. We will also welcome our 2026 year 7’s in early December for Orientation days, very exciting. 

To all our students and families have a safe, relaxing and happy term break and we look forward to everyone’s return on Monday, October 6th.

Regards,

Kay

Kay Chandler

Acting College Principal – Pakenham Secondary College