Principal Message

At the start of 2022 I’d like to welcome all students and families back for the new school year. Thank you for the patience and forbearance you have shown around all the restrictions and requirements with Covid that we have to deal with as part of the NSW Health Order. 

Our students have been most cooperative. At this point we have cases across Year 7-12 so we need to stay the course with all the RATs we are using twice a week. Our advice from government agencies and Catholic Schools NSW through CEDWW is that the first four weeks of school with all students on site would see a significant spike in cases which we are seeing. 

Hopefully as we approach Week 5 these will begin to reduce. As advised, the staff have continuity of learning through Google classroom well in hand if students need to isolate. Please advise through the Service NSW app and ring the College if your child has a positive Covid test and needs to isolate.

Please see this link for further advice Link

Thank you to all for your continued support about lifting standards across the College including a lift in uniform and grooming standards. We have certainly seen these over the past couple of weeks and we look forward to it continuing. It is making a difference.

Such things are important in producing an overall focus on what we are here for which is the formation of young people in the image of God to meet the needs of the world outside school. Ensuring real world expectations are met are important life skills we all have to learn at some point.

Whilst thinking on this I was reminded whilst taking part in a Future Schools Alliance webinar with the amazing Jan Owen of The Foundations for Young Australians fame who spoke of Sir David Brailsford. In researching him, this from the Harvard Business Review illustrates his success and why;

“When Sir Dave Brailsford became head of British Cycling in 2002, the team had almost no record of success: British cycling had only won a single gold medal in its 76-year history. That quickly changed under Sir Dave’s leadership. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, his squad won seven out of 10 gold medals available in track cycling, and they matched the achievement at the London Olympics four years later. Sir Dave now leads Britain’s first ever professional cycling team, which has won three of the last four Tour de France events…..He applied a theory of marginal gains to cycling — he gambled that if the team broke down everything they could think of that goes into competing on a bike, and then improved each element by 1%, they would achieve a significant aggregated increase in performance.”

The things we may view as small matter and are all part of a larger picture of success. Working on all of them to bring about small improvements brings individual success whatever that looks like for each young person at Kildare. We are focusing on respectful behaviour, uniform and grooming, attendance at school, punctuality to lessons, having all they need for class, a charged chromebook each day etc. as all important parts of an overall success. They aren't optional and we need everyone’s support both here and at home. We aren't going to apologise for high expectations and in saying that I need to emphasise they should be in all we do.

In 2021 we launched our Vision, Mission and Values statements noted below. I’d encourage you to speak about these and what they mean as being part of the Kildare Catholic College Community. These will be our reference point and our common language going forward. As a Catholic College we are blessed to have close connections with our founder charisms of Nano Nagle and Blessed Edmund Rice. We are part of two broader families of schools as well as our Diocesan family

This week we have had our opening College Liturgy emphasising our theme of Hope for 2022 as we emerge from the blanket of Covid in our lives. As Christians we are people of hope through our faith in the resurrection and eternal life. Thank you to all involved with our Opening Liturgy, in particular Fr Paddy, who introduced Fr Jomer Calmer to us. They are now both sharing the pastoral leadership of Our Lady of Fatima South Wagga and Sacred Heart Parish Kooringal. We look forward to our ongoing involvement.

We also had the joy of recognising our Dux and High Achievers at a special assembly yesterday. Congratulations to our Dux, Lauren McAlister (ATAR 96.25), and the rest of our 28 distinguished achievers, as well as those who achieved significant learning growth.

The 2021 HSC produced some great results and we now have analysis indicating we have strong learning growth as well. As I said to Year 12  and the High Achievers yesterday; “The statistics on this are impressive with some students achieving as much as an average of 19 marks above expected across all subjects. That Kildare adds such value to its students is such a wonderful good news story about all involved.”

Thank you for your ongoing support of the College.