From the Principal

The year 2025 has been a significant one for Lakeside College. Our community has continued to grow and flourish and we have had to be flexible and accommodating to these changes. Throughout 2025, we have seen many changes to our environment, including the establishment of four new demountable classrooms, the beautification of the garden and outside recreation areas and of course the creation of our wonderful sensory garden for the Primary School. As a community, we are blessed to have such a wonderful environment in which to work, socialise and learn.  We will continue to work through our Masterplan in stages with many exciting projects on the horizon.

One of our foci emanating from our strategic plan is centred around building a stronger learning culture across the school. We are unapologetically ambitious for our students and continue to have high expectations of them in terms of their commitment to their studies, their correct wearing of the uniform and their behaviour at school. In the learning and teaching space, we have made a concerted effort to concentrate on student voice and best practice in assessment and reporting. Teams across the College have worked hard on reviewing and evaluating how we assess and report student progress with an emphasis on growth learning. Our focus on student voice has been significant. We believe very strongly in the value of student agency in learning and provide all students with a vehicle to share their experiences of learning with their teachers through surveys. The surveys completed by our students provide teachers with invaluable data they can use to reflect upon and improve their own practice. Teachers have used this data to create their own professional learning plans for 2026. 

This year was certainly a year of firsts in many ways. We continue with three streams at Year 7 and will continue to have three streams running through the Secondary School permanently.  Having the extra stream running through the Secondary School will allow us to offer a much broader range of subjects and electives for our students and provide us with the student base to run a great range of co-curricular activities. 

One of the main highlights of this year was the inaugural Year 9 Environmental Camp to Cairns. It was wonderful to see 65 of our Year 9 students gather to take a plane trip to the tropical north and explore the amazing environment that exists. Taking the students to see one of the seven wonders of the world in the form of the Great Barrier Reef and allowing them time and space to explore such a wonder is amazing. Students were also able to explore the Daintree Rainforest and participate in Aboriginal cultural activities during their visit. This immersive experience will stay with our students for the rest of their lives, and we are so pleased that we were able to provide this opportunity for our students. I am sure we will have some scientists and marine biologists emerge from this amazing adventure.  My hat goes off to Mrs Joanne Rothwell and the staff who attended the Year 9 Environmental Camp for making the experience so enriching and memorable for our students. 

Our Yearbook is an opportunity for us to celebrate the year, and it would be remiss of me not to mention all that helped make 2025 such a great year for Lakeside College.  I would like to acknowledge and thank Mr Lester Kerber, our Board Chair and all the members of the College Board, for their continued dedication and support of Lakeside College. I would also like to acknowledge our Parent Teachers and Friends Association (PTFA), who have worked hard to fundraise for our school and who made a significant contribution to our Sensory Garden in the Primary School. The continued support of the PTFA has enabled us to bring so many wonderful projects to life. Our teachers, administration, and support staff have also played an invaluable part in ensuring our students achieve the best outcomes possible. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their dedication, care, and commitment to our students. 

I am both excited and optimistic for what the future holds for Lakeside College. May God bless and keep you well over the break, and we look forward to seeing you in the new year. 

Mr Robert Tassoni

Principal