Principal's Report
As the very proud Principal of this vibrant school community, I congratulate the students and staff for a great year of highlights and achievements that culminated in last week’s Blackburn High School Awards Ceremony where we celebrated another outstanding year of academic excellence, exemplary student leadership and effort.
Our 2025 School Captains, Holly Trainor and Mitchell Wu, and school leaders were inducted and we announced the 2024 Blackburn High School DUX, Disha Gautam, who achieved an ATAR of 99.2.
We congratulate all the students for their hard work and effort throughout the year that has resulted in excellent VCE results with an increase in the school median study score and an increase in the percentage of students achieving a study 40+.
The outstanding achievements continue in STEM with two of our Year 12 students Alex Woodhouse and Liam Fraser both winning the 2025 Top Design for VCE Systems Engineering. Congratulations to Mr Metheringham for inspiring and supporting them.
Our school value of Citizenship was evident recently by two of our Year 8 students, Kai and Julian, who supported an 88-year-old woman at Blackburn Square, when she suffered a fall in the carpark. They rushed to her aide, alerted Centre Management, and even called Emergency Services when they saw that she had suffered a head knock, as well as a nasty gash on her arm, hand and knee. They stayed with her until the ambulance arrived and went above and beyond to be of assistance.
2024 has been an exceptional year for our music program with the largest ever contingency of students participating in Mt Gambier at the Generations in Jazz Festival, the Royal South Street competition in Ballarat, and the amazing performance by 50 of our students who mesmerised us with their rendition of Wallace & Gromit-The Wrong Trousers. We are also very excited to announce that our school is one of only five international schools, and the only school in Oceania, to be invited to play with the top US student ensembles in New York at the prestigious Lincoln Centre at the Essentially Ellington Jazz Festival in May 2025. Congratulations to Mr Ziino, the staff, and students for an amazing year of achievements.
Other highlights of 2024 include excellent Student Achievement in NAPLAN Literacy and Numeracy, with sustained excellence in VCE outcomes and completion rates, the VCE initiatives of the Master classes and the Year 11 Retreat, our inaugural group of Year 12 Vocational Major students graduating this year, our extensive wellbeing programs, high levels of student participation in school events in the interschool sports, clubs, Robotics, House events, our large school camps program including the Year 7 transition camp, the inaugural STEM Camp to Croatia, Music camps, Duke of Edinburgh hiking camp, Central Australia camp next year and of course, our fantastic state-of-the-art facilities and learning spaces that we provide for our students and staff.
On behalf of the Principal Team, Mr Conte, Ms Gachon, Dr Hartley, Ms Jenner and myself, I hope that our students, their families and staff have a safe Christmas break and a wonderful New Year.
Joanna Alexander
Principal