From the principal's desk

From the Principal’s Desk September 2025

A lot can happened in a term:

While our students enjoyed a long weekend of work and study, the staff delved into another Campus Development Day. It was held at the Bibra Lake Wildlife rescue and wetland centre. It was opportunity to get away from the campus and experience a venue conducive to the focus, which was on Cultural Awareness, both Indigenous and Multicultural. Local Noongar man, Dylan Collard introduced the day with Noongar language and connection through wildlife to Country. This was followed by a multicultural perspective through the eyes of our resident Multicultural Futures placement officer Ayesha and our visiting social work student, Kristy. Both talked of the challenges of being a migrant student in a West Australian public school. Enlightening and highly relevant, these informative presentations allowed the staff to break into groups to discuss action planning and where to next initiatives that reflect our care and responsiveness to all of our cultural diverse students.
Sustainability Week 2025 was again full of projects and educative opportunities. Our annual planting day was quite ambitious in the creation of a new garden in the northwest corner of the campus complete with an extensive pathway, flexible metal borders and signposts to feature botanical information. Brooke our new Public Relations and Communication Officer launched a social media blitz featuring videos and posts. At the forefront were our students, predominantly from the IEC. Kirsten Dahl along with Louisa Barnacle, our Campus Council member and resident “Garden Guru”, both were instrumental in driving the success of the day. Our thanks to them both.

The following day was our annual Market Day featuring a significant number of staff and student stalls along with sustainability focused educational presentations from external organisations. Anna Watters along with the Sustainability Leadership Group were instrumental in guiding this most successful event. Again, our thanks to all concerned.

Planning 2026 update

At this point a lot of preparation has occurred:

Recruitment advertisements have been lodged for positions that may become available in 2026.
Counselling is occurring for Year 11 and IEC transitioning students is well underway and is an exciting time for all as critical decisions are made toward post campus destinations.

As there are still unknowns, such as the pending return or not of staff on leave or in fixed term positions in other schools, some late shuffling will have to occur. We are well placed with this contingency planning as we are used to this uncertainty from year to year.

Activities to finish Term 3

R U OK? Day is scheduled for week 9 and always promises to deliver a range of activities to build resilience and mental health in our students. Our demographic is intensely reflective of our society. The focus on support and strategies via several external providers and in house expertise is available always but greater awareness is raised on this important day in our calendar.
Final events for our Year 12 will include their last assembly and lunch in the last week along with informal awards. Of course, preparation for the Valedictory Ceremony that will be held on Tuesday, October 21 at the Baptist Centre in Booragoon is all but complete, this is always a highlight of the year’s calendar.

Invitation to Director General and Corporate Executive members

Whilst I will continue until my last day in this organisation to draw attention to our infrastructure investment needs, specifically the upgrade of the canteen, student services facility and external physical activity facilities, I can say that the internal department avenues to gain attention have dwindled significantly. So, one last effort will be to invite the Director General and Corporate Executive members to the campus to witness first-hand the context of what we do and how we do it with what we don’t have. The Director General has previously indicated his interest in attending the campus in this way and I hope to have him here sooner rather than later.

Gary Anderson

Principal