Principal Message
St Mary’s College is a community of faith and a place of learning. We are committed to Living Well Learning Well. Together in Mercy, we are building a hope filled future.
Thank you. What an amazing year of Living Well Learning Well. We have commended at least 300 students for Living Well Learning Well this year.
In 2022, we have seen exceptional examples of resilience, such as train journeys and 3 hour one way trips to get to exams because of floods. We have showcased our talented and highly skilled students through concerts, field days and exhibitions. We have extended our learning opportunities and experiences through excursions and collaborative classrooms. We have built teams, embraced our House Identities and raised funds for our Catholic charities.
At St Mary’s College, our school year is a celebration of accepting the challenges of learning and benefitting from the learning growth to face new challenges ahead. This year we did this not only in our curriculum but in our Pastoral and Academic Care and Coaching (PACC) teams. Our team leaders and students developed their understanding and skills of resilience through The Resilience Project. We deepened our spirituality and faith through the Together in Mercy program. Our school leaders have begun to lead our student briefings, bringing the student body together in weekly goals, challenges and celebrations.
2022 saw our enrolments increase and our classrooms become more diverse in our furnishings and pedagogy. The staff, through their Professional Learning Teams, explored pedagogy, differentiation and literacy for their students' learning growth. Our new Middle Leaders have explored what it means to lead from the middle; forming teams with colleagues to make positive changes through impact cycles of promising practices.
2023 will bring a deeper commitment to our Mercy Tradition and to The Resilience Project, new building projects and further growth in our pedagogy and literacy throughout the school. We are working toward a stronger Catholic Identity and improved learning outcomes for students through:
● Improved capacity to lead from the middle: Leading Living Well Learning Well
● Increased wellbeing
● High quality guaranteed and viable curriculum
This term I submitted to CSO Armidale our Education Brief. This outlined the future directed learning and teaching strategies, along with the assessment of our facilities against the needs from our learning environment. The document highlighted the challenges we face from our facilities, and the needs we have from our learning environment. This has been a team effort from members of the leadership team and the administration team, informed by feedback from staff and students, and, most importantly, the direction of education and the needs of our students in the context of St Mary’s College Gunnedah. The outcome of this document will be a Master Plan for improved facilities.
In 2023 we will also be addressing the toilet amenities in our school. We have been informed by our students that these spaces for our boys and girls are unsafe, misused and antiquated. I wholeheartedly agree. We have had initial sketches drawn up by the architect through CSO with the aim of refreshing and modernising the toilet facilities. While I would love this to be done asap, our timeline is unknown at this stage.
Our Uniform Policy is currently being updated to reflect the addition of our girls shorts and long pants options. Please refer to the policy in the New Year.
We are blessed to have you all in our community, contributing to what it means to be safe, respected and great learners. May you have a blessed Christmas and we look forward to working with you all again in 2023.
May the Holy Spirit be with you as we celebrate the birth of Christ.
God Bless