Principal's Post 

From the Principal

This week is National Reconciliation Week and In keeping with this year’s theme – Don’t Keep History a Mystery, it has been a great opportunity to engage with the theme of historical acceptance and better understand how truth-telling can play a critical role on our path to becoming a reconciled nation.

Today, I had the pleasure of joining a broad range of representatives from our wider community at the local Mullum- Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place to Acknowledge our first Australians, participate in a Smoking Ceremony and enjoy performances by - Kutcha Edwards, Yeng-Gali Mullum Mullum and Ringwood Secondary College students. 

Kutcha Edwards has been working with the Mullum Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place community, students from Ringwood Secondary College, and Daen Sansbury-Smith to write new songs about reconciliation that were performed today. I was very proud of the work undertaken by our students and the learning that they have experienced by being part of this process

Australian student teams recently competed in the International Mathematical Modeling Challenge (IM2C) and demonstrated that Maths can help with real-life, everyday decision making. Coordinated in Australia by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), IM2C is a mathematical modelling competition that invites teams of up to four students from secondary schools to visualise, understand and apply mathematics in order to develop an original mathematical model that solves a common problem.

Australian teams entered for IM2C 2018 used their research, mathematical and creative abilities to develop a mathematical model to address a problem that students might face in their daily lives: deciding which hospital would be the best choice for non-emergency treatment. 

A student team from Ringwood was selected as one of the 12 National finalists from 163 competing teams. Congratulations to Emma van Dijk, Andras Krajko and Dean Stevens with team advisor Donna Mackinnon (Years 11 and 12) on such an outstanding achievement.

Last week was an ideal day for our College Athletics sports and the turnout and participation across the day by all students was terrific. Congratulations to Jackman House on their overall success on the day and we look forward to lots of further House activities throughout the year.

The PCTA provided a lovely morning tea for staff earlier this week, in which we also inducted Jennifer Ward into our Heritage Hall of Fame in recognition of her services as an educational leader, community contributor and volunteer over the past 44 years.

It was also fitting to recognise the 20 year service to Ringwood Secondary College of Alison Bailey and Virginia Martin and 40 year service of Rod Allison. Thank-you all for your contribution.

Michael Phillips

Principal