Principal Message

Dear Parents, Carers, and Students, 

Welcome back to all our students, families, carers and staff for 2025. I hope you had a wonderful restful break and found time to do the things you enjoy! 

A warm welcome to all our new Year 7 students, their families, carers, and to all the new families and students who have chosen Elisabeth Murdoch College as the place to guide and nurture their secondary school journey. We hope your start at our school has been a positive one, and we are thrilled to have you as part of our community. Together, we are building a school that we can all be proud of. We encourage you to embrace the many opportunities available to you and to work hard in striving for your personal best. 

I am confident that 2025 will be a year filled with inspiration, personal success, and excellence for everyone in our community. We are starting from a position of strength, achievement, and a solid foundation. 

Pride is such a wonderful emotion and trait to possess. We work hard to cultivate this emotion across our students, staff, and community. Pride drives aspiration, it empowers us to be our best, and helps us to recognise our determination, courage, and hard work when we celebrate our achievements.  

As a college we are incredibly proud of our entire community and their achievements in 2024. Our Year 12 VCE classes were able to achieve something outstanding and unparalleled on the peninsula, a Median Study Score of 31 and 10.8% of scores over 40. This demonstrates the focus that our students had on achieving personal excellence. This journey started in Year 7 where we started cultivating a culture of high expectations. These high expectations were also seen in Year 12 Vocational Major cohort with 98.5% of student successfully completing their Year 12 Certificate. This outstanding outcome was celebrated at the recent Principal Forum, with EMC being recognised as a top performing academic school.  

Coupled with this we saw students excelling in Student Leadership, Performing Arts, Music, Sports, Debating, and STEM based initiatives. This success is changing our culture, and we are seeing more students focused on learning, more students focused on creating positive relationships, more students seeking feedback, and more students succeeding in school life. At EMC we provide a breadth of experiences that build connection and belonging and our students are thriving through this engagement. 

As Principal, and as a staff member at Elisabeth Murdoch College for over 24 years, I have never been prouder of our community and the contribution that everyone is making to help us to become a great school. A school where we excel in the right areas, and of most importance is the character of our students. Students at EMC are learning about our values, Respect, Empowerment, Aspiration, Courage, and Honesty. They are using these values in their interactions with staff, following instructions, adhering to school policies, and thanking staff for their lessons and feedback, creating an environment where students can excel in their chosen pathway. Most importantly students are actively involved in the improvement of our college and having a voice and agency in the decision-making processes. 

Our culture is an important element of the high expectations we are creating at EMC. We have this term celebrated our values and student leaders through the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Commemoration event. Staff students and special guests engaged positively in a wonderful morning. Where we recognised the DEMC AWARD reception Isabella Cauchi and the THRIVE Live your values award Anabelle Briggs, both students are outstanding role models and leaders in our school community. This is a culturally significant event for our entire community.  

We also formally inducted the College Captains, Kai Amery and Sophie Lovisa, long with the Vice Captains, Isabella Cauchi and Noah Thomas, they are outstanding leaders and role models.  

Penny Fowler (Dame Elisabeth’s Grand Daughter) continues to cement her connection with the EMC community and the iCAN Challenge as she took time to help us celebrate the contribution of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch and later taking time to discuss leadership with the new College Captains. 

Coupled with our values is a culture of service. This is exemplified by the events such as the iCAN Challenge. This year we have over 300 walkers signed up and training for the walk from St Kilda to Frankston foreshore. Teams have already raised over $60,000 for the Good Friday Appeal. This is a great start and will hopefully see the team exceed the 2023 total of $225000. If you want to sponsor a student, please visit the fundraising page https://fundraise.goodfridayappeal.com.au/event/elisabethmurdochcollege2025/home 

I encourage you to share this link with family and friends and support this wonderful cause.  

Our outstanding school-based results reflect our commitment to the community. Our improvement has been well supported over the past few years by through the voluntary contributions that families and carers make each year. If you have not yet made your 2025 college contributions, I do ask that you consider this and where possible contribute so that we can continue to provide an outstanding curriculum for all students.  

In recent times our college has been recognised for its transformative work in the areas of teacher professional learning, school wide positive behaviour support, whole school literacy, indigenous education, and attendance reforms. We have been successful in these areas as our staff are considered learners, researchers ensuring that evidence based best practice is becoming common practice across our college. I am so proud of our staff and their vulnerability and commitment to make small incremental improvements that are proven to improve student learning. Our student learning outcomes reflect this change in practice with outstanding results in NAPLAN and VCE in 2024.  

As we head into 2025 be secure in the knowledge that every staff member is focused on improvement at EMC, and that every student will be challenged to achieve their personal best academically, emotionally, and socially. We are a wonderful school that is achieving outstanding outcomes for our students.  

I continue to be grateful for family and community support, feedback, and engagement. We have been able to achieve so much with this support and we look forward to another successful year.  

Kind regards,

Mr Dean King

Principal.