From the Principal's Desk

 Term 4 Update

On Monday October 20 our Year 12 students had their final classes of secondary school and on Tuesday morning we celebrated their contribution to the college over the last 6 years, with a BBQ breakfast, a whole school assembly to thank the students for their contribution to our college. 

It was fantastic to have the students dress up and respectfully celebrate their time at Lara Secondary College. 

The Year 12 students will now prepare for their final exams (starting Tuesday) or VCE – Vocational Major final presentations. While Year 12 classes have formally ended I would like to remind families that teachers are still available to support students in the final preparations for their exams, meeting outcomes and careers and pathways support. 

A big congratulations to the class of 2025, who we look forward to further celebrating at graduation on November 25th.   

In other very exciting news our College Captains for 2026 are:

Captains: Annelise Hook & Austin Rea

Vice Captains: Elsha Anderson & Seth Walczuk

We were very fortunate to again have many incredibly strong candidates, which made the selection process difficult but a brilliant outcome. 

A big thank you to Josh Walker for leading this process.

We look forward to Annelise, Austin, Elsha and Seth’s continued leadership of the student body at the college, their passion for ensuring that all students feel connected to school and have a positive experience was evident throughout the application process. 

We are looking forward to adding a third assistant principal in 2026 and have appointed Drew Steven to the role, which will oversee Disability Inclusion, School Operations and the Rugby and Cricket Academies. Drew will be joining us from Barwon Heads Primary School where he has held a range of roles over the last 20 years, most recently in Disability Inclusion and Wellbeing. 

We are incredibly grateful to the Bendigo Bank for their continued support of the college and for them again subsidising the cost of our annual leadership camp in December, meaning that there will only be a very small fee for students to attend the 3 day camp, to Lady Northcote YMCA.

Our Year 9 students will be getting ready to spend some quality time in the great outdoors for their camp to Cumberland River. . 

The Camp(s) will take place in the Great Otway National Park at Lorne / Cumberland River, where a series of scenic bushwalking trails enable students to connect with the natural environment, which is important for both physical health and mental wellbeing. Along the way, students will be faced with various obstacles and engaging challenges, each of which provide opportunities to further develop skills in teamwork, leadership, planning, organisation, problem solving and resilience.

Lastly, over the weekend just gone some of our students and community members participated in the Lara RSL Kokoda Memorial Challenge, walking 96km (the length od the Kokoda track) in 24 hours. A big congratulations to all involved. Those wanting to make a donation can do so via the below link

https://shoutforgood.com/event-ticketings/larakokodachallenge

Student Collection and Car Park Access  

Thank you to families who have been communicating with us about student absences. We greatly appreciate this and have been working hard to ensure that students are at school as much as possible. Research confirms that there is a strong correlation between students attendance and their social and academic outcomes. All students should be aiming for a minimum of 95% throughout. 

Finally, I would like to again remind families of when they are picking students up during the school day that to minimise disruptions to learning, we kindly ask that student pick-ups be scheduled during our break times to allow continuity of learning. Wherever possible it is best if students know what time they will be picked up. If you do need to collect your child during class time we will not make unnecessary calls to classrooms, as we do not want to disrupt the learning of all students. 

Please see our break times below:

Recess: 10:14-10:35am

Changeover between session 2 & 3: 11:49-11:55am

Lunch: 1:09- 1:50pm

I would also like to give a friendly reminder to please drop off students to school outside of the school gates, the carpark next to the school can be an excellent spot for this. We have experienced issues of congestion in our staff carpark.

 Thank you for your assistance with this. 

Luke Skewes

Principal