Principal's Report

If no mistake you have made, losing you are. A different game you should play.

Yoda, Jedi Master  896BBY-4ABY

Welcome to the last newsletter for Term One, 2018. It is always interesting to see how quickly we all adapt to the circumstances and conditions around us. As a student I recall the three term years and the 13 or 14 week terms - I don't especially recall them being overly long but it seems everyone starts to feel it when we have an 11 week term. It has felt over the last fortnight that we are somewhat staggering to the end of term but here we are.

It is equally true that the things that we are prepared to turn a blind eye towards or ignore will often become the new standard. It has been famously stated that the 'standard you are prepared to walk by is the standard that you are prepared to accept.' In real terms this is not good enough, it is why we speak so frequently of having the expectation that Uralla men and women must 'Stand tall, Walk proud!' This is our standard and our expectation of our students in all of their endeavours; it is the fervent belief that each and every one of us needs a moral and ethical compass of behaviour and personal integrity. It is about treating oneself, others and our environment with respect and common decency. It is the understanding that resorting to name calling, threatening behaviour and even physical violence is the first refuge of those who have run out of other ideas. We should not tolerate such behaviour in our classrooms, schools or wider community - we must always strive to be true to higher ideals. 

Last Friday was officially the last day of service with the Department of Mr Platts who has been on leave pending retirement. Mr Platts has been spending time down on the South Coast and we hope to see him back at some point to officially farewell him but it would be remiss not to publicly acknowledge his dedication and commitment to the Uralla Central School and its students over many years. We trust that he enjoys a long and happy retirement. Yesterday I received notification of another impending retirement - that of Mrs Jillian Courtney, our Lab Assistant. Jillian's last day of service will be early next term so I will address her actual retirement at the time. It is also incumbent upon me to announce that Term 2 will be Mr Higginbottom's last term at our school after 35 years - I know that many in our community have memories of being taught by Stephen so you may, if the opportunity presents itself, wish him well in a well-earned retirement.

Dan Williams and I attended the Inspire Innovate Conference on the 11 and 12 April where we gave a presentation of school change. Once again it was very heartening to receive an enormous amount of excited feedback about what is happening at Uralla Central School. We were very interested to hear that Eddie Woo, who some may have heard of, believes strongly that every school should incorporate a Middle School model.

A lot of very thought-provoking material was presented at the conference that speaks to the rapid change that is taking place in our society precipitated by advances in technology. I provide some of these below;

There will be nearly 4 million people aged over 100 in the world by 2050.

There is strong evidence that the first human to live to 200 has already been born.

44% of workers with low levels of education are at risk of their jobs being automated by the mid 2030s.

The big industries of the future will be Robotics, Genomics, Code-ification of new arenas e.g. money, Cybersecurity and Big Data.

We are on the cusp of real genetic engineering, human enhancement technologies and the convergence of human bodies with artificial intelligence.

There's always more but I'll leave it there for the time being.

Have a great fortnight and enjoy the Autumn break.

The capacity to learn is a gift;

The ability to learn is a skill;

The willingness to learn is a choice.

Frank Herbert (1920-1986) Author of Dune