From the Principal's Desk

The Fourth Quarter

I am writing this newsletter entry during Week 8 of Term 1. We are well into the final weeks of the term, and today our Year 9 students waved farewell to their parents as they departed on their first Nossal camp. Our Yr 10 and 11 students are spending the day (and the rest of the week) undertaken a range of activities which have been specially designed to help them both plan for and take part in life beyond the school grounds, while our Year 12 students are eagerly anticipating the start of their final Nossal Camp, which begins tomorrow. 

It is a busy week, and one that we will be reporting on in a special edition of the newsletter soon. It's also an important week; it's a time where our commitment to preparing our students for a life of genuine adult engagement is made very prominent, as does our commitment to them grounding their work with us in strong and supportive relationships with both their peers and the staff who work with them. 

The program, whose fruits you will be able to see in the next edition, is the result of a lot of very hard work by a large number of people. The program for Year 9 has been managed and led by Mr Rian LaBrooy and his team (especially Ms Jane Denman and Ms Suzanne Alley), and that for Year 12 has been overseen by Ms Kyleigh Wilson and Ms Joanna Soltys, with support from Mr Stuart Fankhauser. The Year 10 and 11 programs have been curated and, in some cases, created by Mr Josh Pritchard with the support of Ms Ffion Bowles and the assistance of his team including Mr Daniel Tommasini, Mr Kevin Leong, Ms Fiona de Zylva and Ms Lori Benis. 

These individuals have been working behind the scenes for weeks to get everything organised, but in fact (as with all of our whole school events) the ultimate success of a complex program like this also rests heavily on the willingness of the rest of the teaching and educational support staff to pitch in and participate in a very diverse range of tasks. Our camps are staffed by both teachers and ES folk, as are the activities being run "at home" for our Year 10 and 11 students, and of course many of our ES staff have been instrumental in keeping the mechanics of these events (such as ensuring that consent has been given, or coordinating with the bus drivers so that the students going on camp can be loaded on to buses safely). 

One of the major topics being discussed in the world of the pundits in recent times is social cohesion. As many readers will know, for me the cohesion of our school environment is one of the things of which I am most proud, and I am grateful and impressed by all the members of our community - including the students who will be actively engaged in these activities throughout the week - who demonstrate that cohesion in such concrete ways at times like this. Cohesion, like all social phenomena, rests on an open-ness to considering the needs and aspirations of others, and to actually taking part in group activities that involve people different to you. It is in the shared experiences, and the shared memories which are built during those experiences, that our sense of belonging is generated and reinforced. 

Items of note

In the last few weeks, the school has been accumulating a number of new experiences for and with its students and families. As you will see on later pages, we have announced both our 2026 School Council and the 2026 Executive Committee for the Nossal PFA. I was impressed by the number of students who nominated for the elected student representative positions this year, and had the pleasure of quite a large group watching while the votes were counted. This evidence of our students' commitment to getting involved in the school's governance was most impressive, and I commend all of our nominees.

I would also like to thank our parent and community representatives; their willingness to make time each month and ensure that there is appropriate oversight of our processes and thinking is very much valued, as is their thoughtful response to the various issues facing the school.

The first meeting for the new council will be held on Tuesday 24 March. The first part of the meeting will be the annual Public Reporting Meeting (previously called the Annual General Meeting) and non-council members are welcome to attend this should they wish to do so. Details of the meeting are as below:

Nossal High School Council

Public Reporting Meeting (AGM)

Tuesday 24 March 2026

Jean Russel Centre

6:30pm - 6:45pm

After the Public Reporting Meeting, Council will undertake its first formal meeting for the year.

This month we have also seen some very impressive achievements by some of our students in their learning, in their contribution to our communal thinking about justice and equity, and in their contributions to the school system more broadly.  We have also seen some individual students recognised for outstanding achievements in more than one field. I have provided some links to more detailed descriptions in this paragraph, but I strongly encourage you to read on and take note of the many ways in which Nossal's students demonstrate their capacity to be good citizens and engaged scholars across a range of disciplines.

Resilience and Perspective

In addition to our more formal news items, I would like to take a moment to comment on the recent NAPLAN tests and the impact of the technical issues which affected the first day of that event. One of the advantages of doing NAPLAN online is that schools can, in general, receive the data which these tests generate earlier in the year, and make better use of that data to help their students to learn. Of course, every use of technology comes with an associated risk of technological failure and this is something which our staff and students (in common with those in other schools) were reminded of this year. 

The ability to regulate one's emotions and moderate one's responses in the face of difficulty is an important skill for our students to learn, and while this is not the type of learning that the NAPLAN tests are designed to facilitate, the experience will nevertheless have had its benefits for our students in terms of their social and emotional learning. 

I would like to commend our Year 9 students for the resilience and persistence they demonstrated this year and offer my particular thanks to Mr Rian LaBrooy & Ms Ffion Bowles (as well as to our IT department, especially Mr Tony Keen & Ms Kavi Wanigasinghe) for their management of this event.

An eye to the immediate future

Finally, a note on Term 1 Week 9. At the time of writing, it seems likely that there will be a 24 hour stop-work for members of the Australian Education Union on Tuesday 24 March. Current families should be aware that programs at the school on that day are likely to be disrupted. More specific information will be shared through Compass as it becomes available.

Tracey Mackin

Principal