A School Awash in Opportunity - message from our Principal

There are weeks that remind me how much this school puts in front of our young people. This has been one of them.

I want to draw your attention to a few things in this newsletter: the write-up here, the feature coming up in the Chronicle in the coming week, and the travel blog on our website that followed our students through Peru (https://whs.vic.edu.au/peru2026/). Together they tell a story that is well out of the ordinary. Twenty-four students and four staff spent fifteen days travelling from Lima to Cusco, up to Machu Picchu, deep into the Amazon jungle and out to the coast. Along the way they kayaked an Andean lake and cycled across the top of the Andes. But this was never just a trip to see the sights. In the earthquake-affected town of Chincha, our students built two houses for local families. That is the part I keep coming back to.

None of it happened on its own. Behind the trip sat months of preparation and fundraising, and a team of staff willing to take on something this big. To every student who went, and to the staff who led them, thank you and well done. What you achieved in Peru, and in the long lead-up to getting there, matters, and I want our whole community to see it for what it is.

I am proud that Wangaratta High School is awash in opportunities like this. Sport, music, outdoor education, overseas adventure, theatre, and more besides.

While our students were in Peru, Angela Keenan in Year 11 was walking the Kokoda Track, having won a local scholarship supported by the RSL. Later this year a group will travel from the summit of Mount Kosciuszko to the coast on the Summit to Sea adventure. Others will spend time in the Kimberley working alongside local Indigenous communities, and another group is bound for Nepal.

None of these is a sightseeing tour. Each one is built around a purpose, whether that is building houses for families in Chincha, working alongside Indigenous communities in the Kimberley, or the challenge and commemoration that come with a walk like Kokoda. And none of it comes free. Many of these young people are putting away their own money, week by week, to help meet the cost, and their families are making real sacrifices to get them there. 

None of that is lost on me.

Watching our young people take these chances up, and take them seriously, is one of the real pleasures of this job.

Dave Armstrong

Executive Principal