Principal's Message

Dear parents, families & guardians

We are now in week three of Term 2 and the school is in full swing again. In our first week back from holidays we held the Anzac Day Assembly. As always, our student leaders, Ruby Crofts, Amethyst Parlanti  (College Captains) and Haidee Sharpe (Middle School Humanities Leader) spoke eloquently about the sacrifice and bravery of the armed forces. We were reminded that Anzac Day commemorates what comes after the struggle of war which is peace and reconciliation. 

 

We annually pay our respects on Anzac Day at memorials, assemblies and marches and in doing so remember the loss and grief that is experienced when we lose friends and family. Each name etched on a memorial represents a person who did not return from war; every medal worn represents the struggle that comes with personal sacrifice – of placing country before self. We all paused for a minute’s silence with the Last Post being played perfectly by Erin Sanford.

 

On Sunday 21 April Wendy Harvey, Director of Girls’ Leadership and Engagement accompanied Annie Zhou (Senior EAL leader) and Lily West (Middle School Captain) to the Beaumaris RSL Anzac memorial service.  Annie and Lily paid their respects by laying a wreath and three books donated by the school. I thank them for representing the college on this important occasion. 

 

Last week we held our Open Evening for families considering enrolling their daughter(s) at MGSC. The attendance on the evening was excellent with roughly 700 people attending.  Whilst, my full speech can be found on the website, I will summarise some of the key benefits of attending MGSC.

 

At MGSC we continue to challenge the traditional views of what girls and women can achieve and we have an excellent track-record of our students entering into further education. Research into girls’ self-confidence and self-esteem in their adolescent years shows that, in a co-educational environment, that boys have a higher degree of these qualities than girls.  However, this is not the case in an all girls’ school – it is much higher. 

 

We instil in our students the knowledge that they are equal and that nothing is beyond their reach if they work hard for it.  Every leadership position here is held by a girl and our students won’t see a glass ceiling. Your daughters are more likely to be confident in their own abilities than they would be in a co-educational environment.

 

Like all government schools, MGSC has a designated neighborhood zone. However, we take a significant number of students from well beyond our local area with students travelling from over 71 different suburbs. Our students travel from places such as Somerville, Frankston, Port Melbourne, Elwood, Dingley Village, South Melbourne, Chadstone, Keysborough and the list goes on. For this reason, we encourage families to apply no matter where they live. As the only government girls’ school in the south eastern suburbs we feel we have a responsibility to fulfil the needs of families seeking to enrol their daughters in an affordable and high achieving government girls’ school regardless of whether they live in the zone or not.    

 

Our reputation for providing a learning environment where every girl from everywhere can experience success is based on fact and is visible in our results. The proof of our effectiveness is in our results. Our NAPLAN results are excellent compared with the state average. Our VCE results remain consistently above the state average with the number of students receiving a VCE ATAR over 90 having doubled in the last two years. 

 

Whilst co-educational schools may offer girls’ only mathematics and science classes to encourage girls into these subjects, we provide this to all of our students every single day. 

 

But as they say in the commercials, there is more. MGSC is regarded as one of the top five sport schools in the state. We have developed a strong sporting culture over the past 15 years to be now regarded as the top single sex sport school in the state. Over the past eight years, we have had state finalists in football, soccer, netball, badminton, hockey, squash, tennis, softball, basketball, cross country, swimming, athletics, diving, golf, aerobics and cycling.

 

We look forward to completing our new projects of the STEAM Centre and the all-weather running track by the end of the year so that our current and future students will have access to more state-of-the-art facilities.

 

Kind regards

Linda Brown