From the Leadership Team

Extraordinary performances

There will be more to come in the next edition of our newsletter when we can celebrate the full process, but I just wanted to get in early and praise our extraordinary student performers and the staff production team for this year's performance of Peter Pan. At this stage, we have enjoyed 2 of the 3 evenings and, as well as being an excellent piece of entertainment, the students have been overwhelmed with joy as they come off stage. Many have overcome significant personal hurdles to put themselves up on stage and I couldn't be more proud of them. I have no doubt that parents and families are seeing the hugely positive return of the students' involvement in the production; (and maybe a bit of over-tiredness!)

I know that tonight's closing night performance will be just as bright, fun and cheerful as the previous two and look forward to wrapping up an extraordinary 6 months of commitment and creativity on the part of so many.

Visit from our Federal MP, Matt Gregg

We were grateful to receive a visit from our federal representative, Matt Gregg, last Friday, who presented us with some new flags, spoke to the students about leadership and discussed the areas of need for our school with myself. 

It's always good to have MPs engage with schools and get to know the pockets of pride and improvement in each neighbourhood. We look forward to ongoing positive relations with Matt. 

I was so proud of our students on the day, a number of whom reached out briefly to Matt to congratulate him on his speech. They were a wonderful example of the authentic supportive nature of our students. 

A response to recent media articles

I have been very concerned at a recent series of articles running in the NewsCorp media about Private schools. Despite decades of educators decrying the nature of the media coverage of education in Australia, this sycophantic obsession with pockets of privilege and exclusivity is wearing and disappointing. 

To be clear, I don't have an objection to the existence nor function of Private schooling in Australia. However, I am protective of the need for a strong and robust public sector that ensures every child has the right and opportunity to reach the pinnacle of their potential. 

Engaging in explorations of high paid executives in these schools while ignoring the enormous disparity with the public sector, highlighting the profiles of school captains of these schools, promoting the private schooling pasts of current executives in companies - it is a lavish attempt to assign status and superiority on an entire sector without any need for performance comparisons. The series has no doubt been a joint, paid advertorial with the independent sector (it's embarrassing if they have been this obliging without having been paid handsomely for it)  but the manner of its implementation is such that it only further embeds the impression that the 'right' thing to do is to attend an independent school. 

Let's be clear, the performance in our local area between public and independent schools is not vast. And in terms of growth, RNPS has growth rates almost double the average of all our local independent schools in the area. 

We know and respect that many of our families combine public and private schooling for their children, and that's great. Sometimes the deciding factor can be the school values, facilities, the extra-curricular opportunities, the resources available for particular needs or a family convenience or preference. But the median VCE results on a billboard, the salary lists, and the glossy double-page spreads are marketing, not proof. 

I hope that every family in our area understands that you have excellent public schooling options, many of which can help your child grow and develop to work towards achieving their absolute best. 

It is galling that this is a story that will never receive a 7-day series of puff pieces, but the more our communities believe in the critical requirement for equitable access to education and the need for a fully-funded, respected public sector in which all parents participate in promoting their child to learn, the stronger our whole education system will be, benefiting all students. 

Please, when confronted with media of this type, I just ask that you treat it as the paid marketing and lobbying efforts that they represent and not a presentation of fair or truthful picture of our education sector in Australia.      

Strong NAPLAN results in 2025

Congratulations to our Year 3 and Year 5 students on their achievements in NAPLAN this year. It is never a complete profile of a school's achievement, but we are proud of our strong results across all areas of the curriculum. These images show our performance in comparison to the State.