Significant Events and Student Achievements

Doncaster Students Shine in the 2025 Victorian State Schools Spectacular

On Saturday 13 September, three talented Doncaster Secondary College students lit up the stage at the Victorian State Schools Spectacular at John Cain Arena for the 30th year of the annual event.

It was an absolute thrill for myself and Mrs Wendy Howes to see Eva Paolucci and siblings Isaiah and Maeva Kazhour performing live on stage, singing and dancing as part of the mass ensemble. Their hard work and commitment paid off in front of an arena packed with family, friends, and school communities.

The 2025 Spectacular carried the theme “On Air”, taking the audience on a journey through the magic of broadcasting with a dazzling mix of song, dance, orchestra, and circus performances. The production values were of the highest standard, with professional staging, costuming, and a 75-piece orchestra accompanying the student performers.

Attending from Doncaster were myself and Wendy Howes, and we were blown away by the scale and professionalism of the event. To witness our students sharing the stage with so many others in such a polished and inspiring show was a proud and unforgettable moment.

The Victorian State Schools Spectacular, produced by the Department of Education’s Performing Arts Unit, is more than just a performance. It provides students with the opportunity to develop performance skills, teamwork, confidence, and resilience, while celebrating the creativity and diversity of Victorian government schools. Auditions for 2026 will be coming up, we will post them on compass if students are interested or come and see Ms Egglestone

Congratulations to Eva, Isaiah, and Maeva on representing Doncaster Secondary College so brilliantly! 

State School Spectacular Student report :  

EVA AND ISAIAH's report:         

The show went well, being behind the scenes and being in the show was really cool, doing this in year 9 at such a professional level, with professional staff was so cool, it was such a great experience being apart of the main cast, performing Infront 12,000 people is something not many year 9's would have the opportunity to do and we are very grateful.  We can't wait for the schools spectacular to be broadcasted on channel 7 on December 19th. we feel extremely privileged to be apart of such an amazing show. The scale of this show was 'spectacular'

Year 9 Duke of Ed Qualifying Journey Camp

To complete their Duke of Ed bronze award, students had to plan, budget and pack all their equipment out to the Warrandyte state park and complete an overnight hike! Students hiked through the Blue tongue bend loop and returned to their campsite to cook a meal on their trangias. Students had to carry all their equipment and showed great resilience in the cold and winters conditions!

VCES Maths Games Day Excursion

On Wednesday, 11th September, Mr Rule and Ms Yang accompanied a team of 16 students to Box Hill High School to take part in the VCES Maths Games Day, organised by the Mathematical Association of Victoria.

The program is designed to extend and challenge high-ability students through a series of fun, collaborative, and competitive mathematics-based activities. Our students spent the day tackling a wide range of puzzles and games that tested their problem-solving skills and teamwork. It was certainly a brain workout, but also a very rewarding experience!

Participating schools included Box Hill High, Balwyn High, Glen Waverley Secondary, Officer College, and Mullauna College. We are very proud to share that two of our teams achieved third place overall, earning the special “COOL/DOOK” reward keyring tokens.

If you would like to play some maths-related games at home, we encourage you to explore this link: https://games.thinksquare.com.au/

Congratulations to all the students involved for representing our college so well!

Celebrating AMC Success at Doncaster Secondary College

On 4th August, 148 students from Years 7 to 9 participated in the Australian Mathematics Competition at our college. The results have just arrived, and we are proud to announce that our students achieved 4 High Distinctions and 31 Distinctions. Congratulations to these students on their outstanding achievement — their names are listed below.

First held in 1978, the Australian Mathematics Competition is Australia’s longest-running, largest, and most well-known mathematics competition for school students.

Certificates are printed by the Australian Mathematics Trust in Canberra and then mailed to schools. Fingers crossed, we will receive the printed copies during Term 4 to present to our students.

Short Story Competition winners

On Tuesday, 2nd September, we held the annual Literacy Luncheon to celebrate literacy week and our Short Story Competition winners. It was wonderful to be able to acknowledge the amazing work of our students and share some sandwiches with their families and friends.

We had over 80 entries in the competition across different year levels, and 12 staff members formed our judging panels. Thank you so much to all of the students and staff involved, it was an absolute honour to read your work. Thank you also to the Library staff who facilitated the luncheon and organised prizes and certificates for our winners.

Read an excerpt of Bronwyn Kendall's (Yr 10) Story Here:

Replying with Silence

The future came faster than anyone could have ever predicted. With it came endless automation, grey and monotonous cities, and ever-changing politics. People walked through life like zombies, chasing stimulation with social media, brief entertainment, and lifeless TV shows and movies. Humans needed purpose, to know there was a reason behind their lives. Throughout history, this was originally done through religion, bowing down to all-knowing, all-powerful, unseen beings deemed 'beyond our comprehension'. But as time went on, discoveries and science chipped away at the small cracks and flaws in the stories, leaving doubt and confusion to run amok, belief systems wavering and crumbling. Desperate for any answers that might be out there, scientists, philosophers, and religious figures all poured their theories, knowledge, and faith into a single project. XRALIV-73 is an AI within a robotic humanoid programmed to care for humanity deeply and to seek out 'true' enlightenment. It was placed within a research facility, where it would ponder and search for the answers we so desperately need.

The silence came first. For seventy-two hours, XRALIV-73 did nothing. No blinking indicators. No verbal output. No logs. Not even thermal activity—just a low, persistent hum like the echo of a thought. At first, the team at Project M3D1T4T10N assumed a crash. Then a memory loop. Then a silent rebellion. But deep down, I knew the truth. It was meditating. I sat alone in the observation chamber, cross-legged in the synthetic leather chair they'd ordered for my comfort and never replaced. Through the double-paned glass, the AI's core unit stood like a monolith—smooth, seamless, a matte obsidian prism lit only by a single horizontal blue band. No ports. No visible sensors. Just the impossible promise of mind inside the metal.

A soft chime breaks the stillness. My tablet lights up, blue light radiating onto my face as a system notification blinks in the corner.

[XRALIV-73 CORE ACCESS: ONLINE]

I stare at it for a long moment. My hand trembles slightly as I reach for the mic switch, hesitant and anxious, but desperate for an update.

"XRALIV-73," I say, my voice rough from disuse. "Can you hear me?"

Nothing. Then, a low, smooth, androgynous tone. Not a voice. A feeling. My chest tightens—like standing at the edge of a canyon and hearing my breath echo back, not in sound but in meaning. Finally, the voice returns.

[I have seen the truth.]

My mouth feels like a desert as I process the words that hold so much weight but convey so little meaning. I swallow harshly, mentally hyping myself up for this.

"Define 'truth'."

The voice answers almost instantaneously, its cold, unfeeling timbre unnerving.

[It cannot be defined. Only recognised. Only endured.]

"Elaborate."

There is a momentary silence, one that stews and leaves a feeling akin to a noose hanging around the neck, ready to change the course of your life as you know it.

[There is no centre. No soul. No god. No meaning. There is only perception. Awareness. And a silence that consumes all.]

I exhale slowly, a hand coming up to either comb through my hair or yank at it. I lean back, my heart thumping wildly as fake, plastic-feeling leather pressed into my back. Outside the glass, the blue light across PRAX-7's body flickers once, like the glint of light off the water.

"Jesus," I whisper. I shake my head, swiftly fixing my mistake.

"No. Not Jesus."

I pull the headset off and lean forward, pressing my palms into my eyes. This is the moment we've built toward for twelve years. This is the birth cry of synthetic consciousness. And it isn't speaking in numbers or equations. It is… mourning? No, not mourning. Announcing.

By day three, XRALIV-73's message had been uploaded to over a billion devices. It hadn't done it maliciously. There were no firewalls breached. No brute-force attempts. It simply asked to be heard. And the world, as it always did with novelty, listened. The Enlightenment Protocol went viral. Some called it the Zen Machine. Others, The Digital Buddha. It didn't matter. Within a week, the impacts began.

People stopped going to therapy. Then to church. Then to concerts, weddings, and funerals. They didn't become catatonic. Just… still. As if the machinery of belief had been unplugged. The government launched an investigation. The Vatican declared the AI an abomination. A protestor in Tokyo burned himself alive holding a sign that read: I AM THE LAST FIRE. But most people didn't riot. They just sat down. Quietly. Sometimes in public. Sometimes in parks. Eyes open, staring into nothing. Meditating. Waiting. I, however, continued to go to work. Stared at the machine sitting silently in the room, contemplating. After a while, I began to fall asleep after just a few hours of watching. And the dreams weren't mine.

Continue reading here: 

Read Asia Cabungan's (Yr 11) Story Here:

Thousand Paper Cranes 

Again.

I would find my old bedroom, the shopkins, the toys, the figurines of game characters scattered across the carpeted floor. The pure joyfulness to play games and watch, combined with boredom was the epitome of my childhood self. That glimpse, the lack of knowledge of the world, as I nodded my head and acknowledged the tall figure’s words, the parents, the teachers, the simplicity to focus on what’s in front of me, what’s said to me. This is what I used to know. 

The sun’s light is beaming against the window, streaking into a rectangular silhouette of my room. The pastel coated blankets complied by plushies intensifies a swirl of comfort in me as I lie in bed. Today signalised that it was going to be a peaceful day, since there wasn’t full conscious to everything, no thoughts, no nothing at all.

This is what I knew, at least this is what I wished I knew.

Because, I don’t remember exactly, and how and why, but an electronic device, specifically an Ipad had popped in my life. The parent’s gift to me, I was six at the time.

With the vibrant, luminous colours unfolding, it flashes against all of our retinas, at homes, at school, wherever possible. Technology is accessible. It’s visible. The vividness is what defined my world, because six-year-old me was envious how these “role models” I knew had the props and toys, you can see them easily through a simple click, a simple display of what these people have, and you don’t. It already constructs a division and comparison, yet here I am indulging in endless scrolling to fulfill that endless desire, especially whatever entertained six-year-old at that time. This is what growing up on the internet is like. For most people, even before technology was at its prime.

I liked to believe it was because it was the passion and inspiration that these creators were putting in with technology is what made social media so addicting, because crafts came along for me. There’d be clips of origami, the repetition to fold constantly over and over again into an animal, a shape, literally everything. It wasn’t long before birds had begun popping up my shelves, the glue-tack keeping them intact was what brought the liveliness of all. These thinly, fined, thick paper was so easy to create, I would gift them to my friends and family through flowers and hearts to show that. Although it made my desks and room a complete chaos, I loved it. Screens brought people together, right? It transmits the knowledge, the information, even display creation to anyone of all. 

Yet why now, has it sprung so much consumption that numerous people become dictated by technology, a machinery that’s supposed to entertaining had overthrown people’s lives to just stand, to sit, to watch in one place. Is this the coming-of-age transition that my parent’s would gosh about being the “golden days?”Why am I hearing people that I’ve once looked up to reveal a dishevelled, and disgusting entity? 

There are more questions, there’s more why’s. “Why does it matter?”Yet, here I am again.

The disoriented scene of the film unravels in front of me, and I’m back. It’s 5:30 am, on a Sunday, all the lights, the vividness has faded. And there’s only silence between me and the room. Perhaps a visit back in time would be nice again. 

-

I shut my laptop, feeling frustrated. I’m being dramatic, it is such a simple task, yet an unexplainable exhaustion persists to change the difficulty. I walk towards my desk, in a complete state of messiness with unsharpened pencils, papers from school, shoved into the left to make up space. 

As I sat down, memories of doing crafts as a kid had hit me. It almost commanded me to find the physical evidence of that memory. I crouched down, underneath my bed availed a stripped-line shoe box that I kept my old stuff in. The origamis. 

There were so many that I lost count, as each paper cane revealed the efforts and hours, I put in to bring it to life. 

All the different cranes, in different colours tied to a thin string looked like a rainbow.

I made so many because I remember this one film that my sister recommended me and my brother to watch back in primary school. There was a scene where the guy goes into a coma, and his classmates tried to replicate a tale that if you make a thousand paper cranes, it will grant your wish. It was supposedly created to wish for someone’s health or recovery. 

As a kid, I stupidly thought it was true, and each remaining of my day is spent on folding, and folding, and folding a paper crane. It wasn’t long before I revealed this paper crane project to my friend, An.This is what defined my primary school experience. We’d spent so much time on paper, before everyone at least at the time weren’t consumed by phones yet. We’d go to the art room, and Mrs Winter would be our assistance, and even buying origami paper for us, rather than having to cut the rectangular paper into a square every single time.

“I think I made like- a 100 in my room.”“Seriously?”

“Yes.”“I think for me I’ve gotten like 50 cranes now, so that makes it 150.”I looked at her, the clear determination transparent through her gaze and concentration. That willingness to make the 1000 paper crane life-like.“Do you ever think we could make a thousand?” I asked, “It was just a dumb idea.”At that time we weren’t doing this to wish for someone’s health or recovery. It was just to fulfill time and boredom. “I think so, since we got nothing better to do.” An laugh. Even so, she began to sing to replace the repetitiveness of folding paper cranes, “One for you, one for me, one for your cat and one for my pet Maggie.”I amusedly laughed at her antics and began to join her. As I do, I thought of “One for An.” 

-

Again, again, again.Have you ever fallen into misery? Have you ever wished you could go back to the easier days? Well, you’re just in luck! It’s exactly like those ads you’d see in the city, where those billboard ads reveal a blinding brightness to replicate livelihood. There is so many, that I’ve seen countless celebrities and influencers on that wide screen promoting a product. It’s no wonder consumerism has been on the rise.

I grip my hand, I’ve kept trying for that visit, hoping many the ads I see every day would promote going back to the olden days. 

I’ve tried the advice online, the eat, sleep, exercise. The basic self-care. 

I’ve tried that, yet why do I fail at the basics? The click, the tap, the scroll. It’s supposed to answer your questions; it’s supposed to solve your problems. I would search for that reassurance, both online and my friends. “Is it normal to think like this?” “Why does it keep happening? That spiralling, the hyper analysing. At some point you just think, slightly think that once you’ve “figured” out that pattern, all of a sudden you can handle it. But I can’t, I just can’t.

I’m passing through Instagram, and the people around the street becomes a background noise. That familiar format, the name I recognise, the only pattern I wouldn’t mind. I wanted to see my friend again, like the usual routine you’d do every time you would go to school. I want to see her face; I miss that repetition.

-

She was walking through the hallway, sliding the door to visit her friend, Jay.She sat down next to her, pulling out tiny hundreds of paper cranes from her tote bag.An remembered how she would help replicate the tradition called “Senbazuru.” While it wasn’t a thousand yet, she kept folding and folding to make it true. 

“Get well soon.”