Principal's Address

Year 12 Formal

The Year 12 cohort of 2025 officially finished school with their Year 12 Formal on Saturday 8 November. Each student received their portfolio of awards for the subjects they studied and enjoyed an evening of speeches and excellent food. Thank you to the Boorowa Ex-Services Club for the venue and to the new bistro staff who prepared the delicious food. Thank you also to Mrs Taylor and Mr Corcoran for their guidance and leadership of our Year 12 students. Finally to Year 12 of 2025, I wish you nothing but the very best for life after school. I hope you feel that our small school has given you the skills to succeed in our changing world.

Moving to Compass for Award

Recipients

Traditionally, award recipients for the annual presentation night are notified by mail. This year, for the first time, the school will be sending notifications via the Compass Parent Portal. Families who do not use Compass will be sent a hard copy letter.  Please note that our Presentation Night will be held on Thursday 11 December at 6pm in the Hall. There will also be a BBQ available from 5pm for all families.

Laptops Banned in 7-10 for rest of the year

Unfortunately, I had to make the decision to ban the use of the school issued laptops for Years 7-10 for the rest of 2025. This was due to the discovery of widespread breaches of the Laptop Charter. In response to these breaches and alongside the laptop ban, I am working with the Department of Education IT specialists to determine the viability of installing Lockdown Browsers on all laptops, disabling Wi-Fi access to alternate ‘hotspots’, blocking further gaming websites and sources. All students in secondary were informed of this decision at Tuesday’s assembly and the seriousness of some breaches were clearly explained by Senior Constable Chris Anderson. I hope that with the additional education and support, our students can engage in their learning on the laptops and ignore the temptation to do other things. 

Have you heard of Doxing? According to the eSafety Commissioner, Doxing (or doxxing) is the intentional online exposure of an individual’s identity, private information or personal details without their consent with the intent of causing harm. Sharing the information publicly undermines the target’s privacy, security, safety and/or reputation. Often those responsible for doxing urge others to use the information to harass the person targeted. Revealing private information about a person without their consent is not new. However, the increased use of internet connected technologies has made it far easier to collect, store, track and then share the information very publicly. The growth of online platforms has also expanded the network of people able to harass, humiliate or attack someone once their identifying details have been revealed. Doxing is an abbreviation for ‘dropping documents’. The information that is doxed may be sourced through publicly available information, research of public records or through unauthorised access to private databases and computer systems (hacking). Unlike defamation, doxing does not have to reveal something untrue or damaging about an individual — the information is usually accurate, whether or not it has been sourced lawfully.

If you’d like to know more, please click on the link below:

Doxing | What is doxing or doxxing? | eSafety Commissioner

Senior Constable Anderson was clear on assembly when explaining that Doxing can be classed as a criminal offence and can attract a jail sentence of 6 or more years.

Social Media Ban in Australia from 10 December

As many of you may be aware, in a world first, Australia will be banning access to social media for children under the age of 16  from 10 December. This change will be very challenging for many of our young teenagers who have been accessing social media for several years already. This ban extends to many of the most popular social media platforms used by our teens and is not a static list. When new platforms emerge, they will be included also. To find out more about the ban and which platforms are still ok to access, click on this link.

Which social media platforms will be forced to ban Australian users under the age of 16? - ABC News

To help teens and their parents, Kids Helpline has some suggested strategies for coping with this change. Access to these strategies can be accessed here.

Coping with the under 16's social media ban | A mental health guide for teens

If you feel you need additional support for your teenager in the lead up to and during the ban, please contact our Student Support Officer Taryn Riles.

Year 6 into 7 Transition

The final 2 days of Year 7 transition will be on Tuesday 2 December and Wednesday 3 December. Students are to wear normal school uniform on Tuesday and their sports uniform on Wednesday. Please remind your child to wear a hat as our ‘no hat, no play’ policy is in effect during Term 4. The canteen will be available on both days.

Preschool update

The current aim is to have the Boorowa Public Preschool built, staffing, equipped and operational from day 1 of Term 3, 2026. To support this, recruitment is underway for the 2 teachers. Miss Emily Friend, our Year 1/2 teacher who is currently on maternity leave, has chosen to transition her permanency at Boorowa Central School into the Boorowa Public Preschool. Miss Friend is very excited about this opportunity and cannot wait to be instrumental in the establishment and implementation of a public preschool program at Boorowa Central School. The Department of Education staffing team is conducting recruitment processes for the other teaching position currently available. Both preschool teachers will be introduced to the community at the beginning of next year.