From the Principal's Desk

Short, Fast, Loud

Welcome to the start of Term 3!

I'm sure that we are all aware of the fact that, in contrast to Term 2, Term 3 is a relatively short term. At only 9 weeks (or 45 school days) it is sure to be a busy time for all members of our school community.

For our Year 12 students it is a term that brings specific pressures and excitement. This is the final term in which our Year 12 students will be doing active learning in their classrooms, since for them Term 4 will be entirely devoted to revision and preparation for the VCAA examination period. They will be facing a large number of assessment tasks, and will also be dealing with the more complex elements in their courses - the ones that rely on them accessing the learning they did this year, and typically also the learning that they did in Year 11.

With this in mind, I'd like to take this opportunity to offer a reminder to our Year 11 students and their families that the learning happening in Unit 1 & 2 subjects during Terms 3 and 4 is important. Any Year 12 teacher will confirm that those students who have made a proper effort to learn their Unit 1 & 2 material well tend to find all of the Year 12 material easier to manage. It is also quite common for a question on Unit 1 & 2 material to appear on Unit 3 & 4 examinations in some subjects. The temptation for our Year 11 students to focus exclusively on their acceleration subjects at this time of year can be a strong one, but in the final analysis the costs of such an approach inevitably outweigh the perceived benefits.

Happy news for Nossal folk

In the last couple of weeks of Term 2, and the first couple of weeks of Term 3, we have been proud to congratulate a number of Nossal students and recent alumni who have achieved success in different fields. These students have embraced a number of different challenges, and it is a pleasure to see them thriving in their chosen fields of endeavour.

In the last week of Term 2 I was honoured to attend the annual Premier's VCE Awards in support of multiple Nossal students. I was of course proud and pleased to see our students on the stage. I was also struck, as I am from time to time, by the sheer diversity of the work being done by students around Victoria and the different ways in which they can and do embrace their own learning challenges as they prepare for adulthood. I shared this video with our students, in which a number of award winners reflected on their learning journey, and it may also be of interest here:

Congratulations to current and ex-students

Ruiqi Yao - All-Round High Achiever
Tashiya Seneviratne - English Language
Eric Wang - Philosophy
Arjun Girotra - Physical Education
Chang Xu - Systems Engineering

While the Premier's awards celebrated academic work completed in 2024, the school was also proud to hear the news that Kartikeya Kalva, a current Year 12 student, has been accepted into the John Locke Institute Summer School at Oxford and will be studying there throughout the start of August.

In non-academic news, and in addition to the other exciting news about our sporting folk which you will be reading later in the newsletter, it's a pleasure to congratulate two students for some particularly noteworthy outcomes. Well done to Yanqi (Neel) Liu, who won a silver medal in the 2025 Australia & Oceania Fencing Cadet and Youth Championships in Sydney over the break, and to Dinath Silva for his recent 12th placing in the State Cross Country competition.

Nossal is also represented by two students at this year's Victorian State Schools Spectacular. Congratulations to

Nadia Tan (Lighting)
Olivia Lettice (Orchestra - Percussion)

who will be working this term - along with their peers from other schools - towards what promises to be a very impressive show in September.

Looking to the future

It was a very great pleasure to be able to spend some time with many of our alumni last week at our annual Careers and Pathways Expo. You can read more about the event later in the newsletter, so here I will confine myself to remarking on the high levels of energy and interest displayed by our students this year. As is often the case at our most successful moments, if I was to thank everyone involved in making this event a success, I would be naming most of the staff. Having said that, I would like to thank our Careers Practitioner, Clarissa Jacques and the other members of the Pathways Team (Director of VCE & Pathways, Jessica Ball; Assistant Principals Ffion Bowles and Fiona de Zylva; support staff Suzanne Alley, Sharon Blyth, Joshua Blanchard, Michael Boileau, Kavi Wanigasinghe and a host of others) for their indefatigable focus and their attention to detail which made this one of our most successful Expos to date.

This week, we make use of the knowledge shared during the Expo during our Course Confirmation Day. I would like to thank our teaching staff for the work they have done in providing our students with targeted advice in the weeks leading up to the Course Confirmation process, and for their support of our students on the day as they make their decisions about their preferred subjects in 2026. Some of our students will have a clear plan in mind at this time, but it is quite reasonable for many of them to be still undecided about "what they want to be when they grow up." I remind them and their families that the best thing that they can do is choose subjects that they enjoy and are good at. These are the areas where they are most likely to experience success.

I would also remind them that trying something out for a semester is a good way to find out what you do (and do not!) enjoy, and that this learning is in itself valuable - they need not concern themselves with "wasting time" in this sort of exploration, since every subject will help them develop skills which they can use in the future.

Making a joyful noise

I have already noted above that the term ahead is a short one, and that the classroom learning (as marked by the frequency of the assessment tasks for our senior students) is likely to make it feel like a fast one. This means that finding opportunities for rest and relaxation, and for celebration and joy, are even more important as we negotiate the full days ahead.

Pleasingly, our students are already working towards joyful celebrations for later in the term, and these are filling the building with song and colour. Preparations are already underway for our annual House Performing Arts Festival, and our student leaders are hard at work to make this year's event an outstanding one. At the same time, our Student Representative Council is already looking forward to the end of the term, when they will run our now-annual Kindness Week. The work of our students to support and celebrate each other is one of the highlights of every day and week at Nossal, and I am excited to see the forms this will take this year.

Tracey Mackin

Principal