From the Principal

Dear Friends,

We are delighted to welcome families into the new College year, and I anticipate the fabulous start to the year bodes well for a successful term. I especially welcome families new to the College and trust it has been a smooth beginning at Oxley. Under this year’s College theme of how good it is for us to dwell in unity, we are looking forward to an enduring Christian excellence in the formation of young lives entrusted to us at Oxley. One of our primary goals is to support students to grow in wisdom and virtue by the development of a worldview informed by a Christian faith. I encourage students to become involved in the many activities and opportunities available here. Congratulations on being an Oxley College family with both the privileges and responsibilities that involves. 

It has been a great pleasure to welcome staff new to Oxley. We look forward to their contribution to many delightful classroom experiences of learning and camaraderie. Already, the Student Leadership Investiture and Year 12 Retreat have been well received. And there is now the full use of the landscaped Middle School play areas that students are enjoying. 

It is a great pleasure to again congratulate the Class of 2023 on wonderful VCE results. There were some perfect individual study scores among the many other excellent scores in the 40s. This was an amazing achievement by students and their teachers for which we are grateful. At our recent assembly, Tom Steuart was again recognised as the College Dux. 

In an opening student assembly, I posed the question of inheritance. That is, what do students anticipate by being part of the College? What will they leave here with that has value? What is an Oxley inheritance? The College believes it has the things of high value in teaching and learning to pass on, a common inheritance of great value. Among them are the awesome skills of development in the academic disciplines, a great delight to be experienced in our cocurricular programs, and the opportunity to participate in the kingdom of God. If Oxley can achieve these things, then we will have opened to students a very valuable inheritance. It could even be said that the ultimate task of education is the cultivation, the refinement and nurturing of the human spirit. To teach students to know what it is true, good and beautiful, and to serve those things above self, to walk in step with the divine plan, and to recognize that in having this kind of knowledge, lies the responsibility for the good of others. 

It’s no secret that we live in an age of soft tyranny. Our elites have stopped caring about what is good and what is noble and have fully embraced unethical morality and clothed it as virtue. Trust in our institutions is collapsing. And yet, in the face of it all, God’s truth remains. It is the only authentic means of unity among people, but secular society avoids it at all costs. It answers the question in the face of the gospel; that is; how then shall we live? 

Warm regards,

Dr Douglas Peck