From the President

Dear Old Virgilians

Welcome to 2025

The Old Virgilians extend warm welcome to 2025 for all the St Virgil's Community including students, parents/carers, the academic teaching staff and support staff of the College and importantly all past students and their families. We trust that 2025 will be a positive year for all.

With the academic year now well underway we extend our best wishes to all students for 2025. We note further growth in enrolments in Years 11 and 12 as this augers well for the future development of the College.

Some Early Year Positives

Congratulations to the SVC rowing team who recently took out the Aggregate Cup and Junior Shield at the 2025 All Schools Rowing Championship at Lake Barrington. It is the first time the School has won the cup since its inception in 1964 and a return to Senior School sport. SVC won the Cup by one point over The Hutchins School.

On a personal note, and whilst at Lake Barrington, I did overhear several conversations from competing school’s parents and teams as to how enthusiastic everyone was that St Virgil's were now competing across all levels up to the Open 1st VIII – something that was missed for many years and is now adding to the experience and competition for all schools. Listening to other schools and their enthusiasm reinforces the decision to return the College to Year 12 and is contributing to the broader community experience.

The future of OVA

As I have previously mentioned, your committee has been working on our association and its role in the School community over the last 12 months and this has included several conversations with the College and members of the Advisory Board of the School.

Your Committee are now proposing to establish a greater level of autonomy in managing the affairs of the association rather than relying on the College resources to support OVA. In so doing, this will not diminish the level of engagement or collaboration with the School but lead to an improvement in such collaboration.

Your committee will be proposing to members that OVA employ a Community Development and Communication Officer. Such an appointment will need to be funded from the Association’s financial resources. This is a significant commitment that the OVA is proposing as it requires the use of member funds. Hopefully this Officer can be recruited for the OVA community.

Your committee will discuss this matter more fully with members at the Annual General Meeting on Thursday 27 March 2025 to enable members to contribute their thoughts on such a commitment before the committee executes such a strategy. For this reason, I encourage members to attend the AGM.

The intended role will be responsible for maintaining and developing membership records of OVA members, encouraging membership engagement, communication (including OVAtions), organisation of member functions and supporting school reunions and developing content for OVA web presence including an app available for all past students (whether members of OVA or not).

We anticipate this will be a full-time job. Members will be aware that Graeme Rainbow has now retired from the College and the College is not currently able to resource any replacement at the current moment. There is a lot of work to do to meet the expectations of our members. Without this greater level of autonomy and resources of the OVA, it appears unlikely that OVA will be able to deliver on its mission and may well need to consider winding up the association which would be a tragic outcome for all.

OVA membership communication

Your committee will be writing to all members soon with the plans of the OVA and how the OVA Army is intended to be revitalised and deliver outcomes to members and the School community.