Principal Introduction

Dear Parents, Carers, and Students, 

Term 4 is always an exciting time at Elisabeth Murdoch College as our year 12 students complete their VCE examinations, year 10 and 11 students finalise their assessments and we all prepare for the transition into step up classes. 

Our year 12 students have worked incredibly hard this term, and this was reflected in the way that they approached the VCE English exam with all students remaining in the exam for the entire length of the exam and crafting their best responses to the very end. VCE performance is a combination of hard work, dedication, sacrifice, celebration, quality teaching, and above all, continued support from home. As parents and carers, the value that we place on doing your best, applying yourself to a given task, working hard and persevering, has a dramatic influence on student outcomes, with this in mind I wanted to thank all our families with students in year 12 for their ongoing support in 2023. I look forward to celebrating our students’ accomplishments at the valedictory on December 5. This is a wonderful night where we recognise and celebrate every student’s successful completion of year 12 and highlight the excellent performance of so many of our students. 

This week we also celebrated two of our VCE Vocational major students at the Peninsula Applied Learning Awards. Abby Answer was recognised with the Applied Learning – Excellence Award for her organisation, commitment, work ethic and community engagement. Holly Davon was recognised with the Peninsula Applied Learning – Encouragement Award for her skill development, resilience to overcome adversity and her completion of a School based Apprenticeship. 

We celebrated the Visual Arts and technology students with a night of excellence in the Jakki Upward awards seeing Jess Gurney awarded the Jaki Upward Award and Ee Sun Chia awarded the People’s choice award. 

The evening was a wonderful reflection of the hard work of our students and staff and allowed us to wonder at the excellent learning outcomes achieved. 

We also have several sporting teams that are representing us at regional and state finals this term and we wish them all the very best of luck. 

• Year 8 Southern Metropolitan Region Final Hockey 25/Oct 
• Intermediate Girls Basketball Southern Metropolitan Region 26/Oct
• Northern Peninsula District Lawn Bowls 
• Year 8 Girls Southern Metropolitan Region Final Basketball 2/Nov
• Year 7 Boys Southern Metropolitan Region Final Basketball 3/Nov
• Year 7 State Softball 9/Nov
• Year 8 Girls State Hockey 10/Nov
• Year 8 Girls State Cricket 17/Nov

Our students always do the College proud when representing EMC at district, regional and state finals, with outstanding sportsmanship, passion and determination shown. 

This term we have continued to implement key programs to support students and their personal growth and development including ‘Flourish Girl’ and ‘Man Cave’. Man Cave worked with male identifying students and Flourish Girl worked with female identifying and gender diverse students. Both programs focused on building students self-awareness, self confidence and social connectedness, within the school community and other trusted relationships. Students were given the space to develop their social and emotional tools they need to connect with themselves and the people around them. If you would like any further information regarding the organisations please visit https://www.flourishgirl.org/ and https://themancave.life/.

We highly encourage you to have a conversation with your child about how the session went and what they took from it. Any questions or concerns around your child’s wellbeing, please speak to their Home Group teacher for follow up by Sub Schools.  

The EMC community should be proud of the achievements of our students in 2023 across all aspects of learning and performance and the College in general. There is a positive transformation taking place as we shake off the cloud of COVID and continue to build a positive inclusive environment that supports our community to realise their potential. The future is certainly a bright one for the students and staff at EMC, and we look forward to further celebrating academic success and excellence during November and December. 

Kind regards,

Dean King

Principal