Message from the

Head of Senior School

Term 3 Week 1

I trust you have all had restful and positive times with your children over the three weeks of the holidays. No doubt many of you have also put them to good use around the house and/or property! There have been many activities taking place at the school over the break, beginning with the Cadet Promotions Camp. This was an extremely successful five days of teaching and learning, drills, leadership development and camaraderie. It culminated in the parade held on the first Wednesday of the holidays; we were blessed with brilliant sunshine and a mild morning and the cadets are to be congratulated on their bearing and presentation at that parade. It was also Mrs Vernon’s last parade as the Head of Cadets; we all owe her a great debt of gratitude for the manner in which she has led the unit over many years and fostered its growth and development.

 Other activities that have taken place include a week of dedicated Year 12 Visual Arts workshops, the snow sports trip, rehearsal week for the major musical production, High School Musical, and a Stage 6 study camp. All of these have taken great commitment from the students and a very generous willingness on the part of staff to give up significant amounts of their own time to assist your children and to provide opportunities for them that they otherwise might not have had. I have always valued the dedication of teachers at KWS – it’s extremely impressive!

The Year 12 Visual Arts and Textiles exhibition will take place in the DPA on 3 August, starting at 6:00pm. Please set aside this date in your diary. The weekend prior to this sees the performance of High School Musical at the Orange Civic Theatre. Please book quickly through Ticketek; Saturday night is almost fully booked but there are still some seats available for Friday night’s performance.

Parents of Year 12 should have received an email informing you about a satisfaction survey being run by MMG Education on the school’s behalf. The feedback you give is invaluable to us so please take the time to complete it. It will take about 45 minutes to complete and your responses are anonymous and confidential. Only aggregated data comes back to us so I urge you to be frank in your responses, especially in open-ended questions. You should receive the email from MMG on 27 July with a link to the survey; please contact me if you do not receive the email or have trouble completing the survey. I can then put you in touch with MMG if that is necessary. Year 12 students will also be completing a survey so we can have their input too.

The House Spectacular is being held on the 10th of August, immediately after school instead of in the evening. It will be a students-only event this year. We are trialling this new time for many reasons to do with supervision issues, reduction of conflict with evening sports matches, transport and meals for boarders, and general logistic feasibility. If you have any questions about this arrangement, please contact your child’s Head Tutor or Mrs Bylsma, Head of Student Wellbeing. There will be evening rehearsals in the week leading up to the Spec; you can expect information to come from the Head Tutor about when your child is to be at school for these.

I wish all of you a wonderful term; to those parents of Year 12 students, hang in there! Remember that it is your child’s HSC, not yours. Please don’t try to do it for them – you will cause grief for yourself and get no thanks from your child. We all look back at our own HSC and think about what we should/could have done better and the temptation is to try to get our child to make up for our own regrets in this area. My advice is to go out for dinner with your child instead – it will make you feel much better and be just as effective as nagging! And you can probably have a more relaxed conversation about their future hopes and plans than you would otherwise…

Bev West

Head of Senior School