From the Principal 

We are now very close to the end of the year and this is our second last edition of the newsletter. I am amazed that so many activities have been running over the past few weeks. I have just been reviewing the final draft of our annual school magazine: Ripples, and it is full of so many opportunities for our students – it is a great celebration of the events that have run throughout the year. Please note that the magazine will be distributed electronically for all of our families, however, you can choose to purchase a printed copy if you wish to keep it as a memento. 

Last Friday, I attended the Sports Breakfast run by our Sport Team and celebrated the students that have performed to an outstanding level as well as those that have coached to support younger student groups in a sport that they enjoy. It was also great to celebrate the staff that have coached the teams, often running extended training sessions or giving up time to attend out of hours events. 

We have just had one camp group return from their outdoor experience and now 3 other camps are getting ready to go. You may have read about other schools withdrawing their camps programs this year due to the implementation of 'Time In Lieu' for teachers. Our school made a conscious decision to run all of our previous activities and camps this year, and in fact we have run even more camps, sports events and concerts than in previous years. We are currently planning events for next year to incorporate overseas trips as well. While all of these events accrue time in lieu, our staff have not been taking time off during the year but have been accruing the time to take at the end of the year. The activities program and the week following will be an opportunity for staff to take that leave. Our staff have been involved in so many areas of the school’s extra-curricular program that there will not be many staff onsite in Week 12, although we will still offer supervision for families that require it. 

Our Year 11 and 12 students have now completed their exams and with these assessments completed, we will now begin our Course Confirmation period and then the Senior School Orientation Program for our students going into Year 11 and 12 next year. You will see the dates for your child’s Course Confirmation day in this issue. Please note that students in the year levels participating in Course Confirmation will only attend school at the time of their Course Confirmation interview. Classes will be cancelled on this day so that all students have the opportunity to attend the interview with their Connect teacher who will discuss their progress and their program over the next year. 

Our "Back to NHS" event for our Alumni was a great success with approximately 50 ex-students and past staff attending. Our alumni appreciated our students that ran tours on the day, however, I think that many of the alumni had more to say about the school and how they remembered it! They were also impressed by the resources that students have that have been built over the last few decades and were surprised by the size of the enrolment now at the school as many of them attended when there were less than 100 students in each year level. I had requests from quite a few year levels to digitise their Ripples magazine as they have lost their copy of the magazine over the years. I am amazed the joy that they history of the school book brought to them as they reviewed the decade that they were at the school. 

This week as this edition is being finalised, we will be attending our End of Year Music Concert. I hope that you had the opportunity to attend and that our students had a great opportunity to perform. Finally, I hope you can join us at our upcoming Art Show, one of our last, whole school events for the year, where we will celebrate some fabulous student creativity. 

Chris Jones 

Principal