From the Principal

 

Proudly inclusive

On Tuesday, with the painters and carpet layers gone, we finally completed the renovations of the upstairs rooms in Kalimna. To say this is transformative is an understatement. Kalimna will become the new home of the IB Diploma Programme from the start of 2019 and I am looking forward to sending out invitations for the official opening of this space which will, this year, coincide with the annual Years 11 and 12 Art Exhibition on 28 November.

From time to time situations arise which remind us how lucky we are at Preshil to be a genuinely independent school, secular and with an ongoing commitment to inclusive practices and respect for individual difference.

One of these moments arose this week when a Preshil student, Skye Guest, was announced as one of eight finalists in the Australia-wide Videos for Change awards. There is a link to his video further on in this newsletter, which I strongly encourage you to view. We are very proud of him.

As the media flurries to stir up division and outrage over the rights of religious organisations to discriminate against those who do not subscribe to their specific set of dogma, Preshil can rest in the confidence that, as a secular school, we embrace all children of all faiths. We acknowledge and respect the spiritual lives, needs and traditions of all families, without subscribing to any faith-based organisation.

As a community, we embrace and support gender diversity of all individuals and are blessed to have a long tradition of protecting the rights of students to be who they are and to express themselves as individuals.

We do not require our students to dress in a style unchanged since the 1940s; uniforms which fail even in the most basic rationale of school uniform - to make all the children look the same. It doesn’t and they are not.

More importantly, our students are not stuck with the binary choice of outdated gender stereotypes, for girls and boys, which in most schools isn’t even a choice. While we still see articles proudly proclaiming that girls are now allowed to wear trousers to school, I have never seen a uniformed school even touch the topic of boys being invited to wear the school dress. God forbid!

This brings us to the further joyful celebration of Preshil’s independence from having our School’s culture dominated or proscribed by church hierarchy, where, oddly enough, the men are allowed to wear a frock.

MYP/DP information sessions

Next Tuesday 23 October we are running another one of our well-attended Information Evenings explaining the International Baccalaureate Middle Years and Diploma Programmes at Preshil.

Our approach to the IB is strongly aligned to our whole educational philosophy, focused on conceptual learning, skills development and enquiry-based collaboration.

The Diploma Programme at Preshil is inclusive, flexible and accessible. This session will be run by DP Coordinator Lenny Robinson-McCarthy and Bronte Howell, our Careers and Course Counsellor. This will follow the MYP session and will start at 7.30pm.

John Collins will run the MYP session, starting at 6.30pm, and I would particularly encourage families of students in Years 8, 9 and 10 to attend the Diploma session and families of younger students in the (Primary) 10s and 11s and Year 7 to attend the MYP session; of course families are most welcome to stay for both.

Marilyn Smith

Principal

marilyn.smith@preshil.vic.edu.au