Student News

Letter from the Prime Minister

As the year draws to a close I thought I’d share with you a letter I received this year. 

This was no ordinary letter and I’m not sure that I thought I would ever receive it. I am an English teacher at the college, but this year I took the opportunity to teach the brand new VCE Vocational Major, in addition to my English classes. 

At the beginning of the year the students and I were unsure how the year would play out, although we were excited about the prospects of what lay ahead. In a moment of spontaneity, I told the students that “if the Prime Minister were here in the classroom, he would tell you how amazing you are and how important vocational education is to the success of our nation”. I received a few quizzical looks and doubt could be seen on the faces of most of the students. 

This provided the spark I needed and so later that night I wondered how I might be able to get in touch with the Prime Minister?  So, I searched for his office online and found that I could send him an email. ‘What the heck’, I thought, the worst that will happen is that it is ignored. I wrote directly to the PM and told him what I’d said to my students, I asked if he would write to them and tell them why he thought education was important, to give them some encouragement and remind them that they are brave and resilient. I’ve never written to a person with so much importance, let alone asked them to write back! 

Nothing happened. I gave up on the idea that I would hear back from the PM. 

But…one day a letter (without a stamp) arrived in my letter box at home. “More junk mail”, I thought. But the paper was good quality for junk mail. I opened it and couldn’t believe that the Prime Minister had replied to my email. He had written to our students, telling them a bit about his own education and the value of vocational studies. He encouraged them to keep going, because they had already shown such resilience in the face of the COVID-19 epidemic.  

I was so excited to show this letter to the students and I think, in their own way, they were excited too. I hope they, and we as a community, realise that all education is valuable and that our education is about what is important to us both now, and into the future. For me, I learnt that sometimes it’s OK to ask for something from others, and that sometimes our requests will be ignored….but sometimes they will be answered. I have included a section of the letter for your information (I have the original in a safe place as one of my treasures of the 2023). 

Virginia Millard - Teacher