From the Headmaster

Girton Grammar’s 136th Foundation Day service on 10th May saw the Sacred Heart Cathedral in full splendour with magnificent music bringing the venue to life. It was my honour and my privilege to officially induct Dr Emma O’Rielly as the 9th Deputy Head of the school and our School Chaplain, Archdeacon Greg Harris, conducted his final Foundation Day service for Girton.

Archdeacon Harris started his work with Girton in 2010. Few School Chaplains that I have known have been able to capture and hold the imaginations of young people in the way that Archdeacon Harris has done at Girton for nearly ten years. The Christian messages in Archdeacon Harris’ stories, readings, songs and sermons are carefully considered for relevance to his audience and curated so that irrespective of religious beliefs, students gain an understanding of how to become a better person. We wish Archdeacon Harris and his family all the very best in his next posting in NSW, and we thank him deeply for all that he has done for our school.

Thank you to the families and friends who came to enjoy the Foundation Day service. It is wonderful and important to share all-school events with the broader school community. As expected, our students were impeccably behaved, reminding us that the young people in our care possess the maturity to recognise the importance of the occasion.

NAPLAN testing took place this week, and ten years after inception, is still a controversial scheme, lauded by some but disliked by many and receiving media attention every year. I thank all teachers and parents who supported our Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 students with the appropriate level of meaning and composure. Our students are well guided and supported in all forms of testing and are familiar with the various test formats. Children should be encouraged to do their best and trust in the fact that this is only one part of the school program.

One useful way to look at NAPLAN, especially for children who might feel anxious about testing, is to consider it a test for schools across the country, rather than a test for individual students. Standardised data that is comparative against schools across the country, and comparable year on year, is always of interest to us, and we hope that the individual student data is of interest to families.

The intention of NAPLAN testing is to gather data on national progress in the areas of reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy. The data does not tell policy makers, principals and teachers how to improve student performance, but it does show where strengths and weaknesses lie and adds to our knowledge of students in the NAPLAN years by giving us a comparison to the national cohort.

At the individual school level, it provides us with data that we can use to investigate classroom teaching strategies and the strength of school programs.  For example, if we see that few students gave correct answers to questions involving fractions, we know this area of teaching requires attention. Girton is agile enough to respond to this kind of data, and to overall trends, making NAPLAN useful at this aggregated level.

Today was a school Open Day, and we warmly welcomed visitors to enjoy a student-led tour. As our guests wandered around the school, they saw students in the Sports Excellence Program, attentive and engaged students in classrooms, students doing independent study in the VCE Study Rooms and they heard snippets of Matilda the Musical and various instruments floating through the hallways. My hope is that these things become normal to as many young people as possible and that many of today’s guests soon enjoy the same incredible opportunities as our current students and staff.

Matthew F. Maruff

Headmaster

Please click on the images above to view the Foundation Day Gallery