Melbourne Girls' College

Principal's Report

Celebration at MGC!

The past two weeks have been cause for much celebration at Melbourne Girls’ College.

  • Our Year 12 girls celebrated their last day of school on 21st October and Graduation at Leonda on Friday night. We were all so proud of them as they received their certificates, awards and celebrated with their families. I wish them every success both for exams and the future.
  • Many thanks to our ever generous Parents’ Association who held a highly successful raffle with prizes drawn at the whole school assembly. The P.A. Grants committee have also worked tirelessly over past weeks to allocate funds to extraordinary projects for the girls’ learning and wellbeing.
  • The 21st Birthday of MGC Celebration Day on 24th October was a moving and joyous event with many past and current students, staff and families in attendance. Our former Principals, Cavell Zangalis, Jan Parkes and Judy Crowe, spoke eloquently of the foundation, early and consolidation years of MGC. A glimpse of the day is shared in the speech below:

“I am honoured to celebrate with you our 21st Birthday Celebration. I am also honoured to be following in the footsteps of the wonderful school leaders you have already heard from. Cavell, Jan and Judy. Their legacy is both an inspiration and a responsibility.

 

I want to begin by thanking Linda Brown, who has worked tirelessly to bring today to fruition. Her nurturing of the Alumni and all the work entailed is inspirational. Linda showed true distributed leadership working alongside Emily Healey, Suzie Rule, Trevor Howlett and all of our excellent staff who have made the success of today possible. In preparing for today Linda archived and compiled the history, photographs, news reports and memorabilia. They reflect Cavell’s courage in brokering the turbulent foundation year, Jan’s entrepreneurship and lateral thinking and Judy’s innovation in programs and community connection.

 

 

During our short twenty-one year history the school has grown to over 1300 students, representing 60 nationalities and diverse backgrounds. This is a key strength of the Melbourne Girls' College experience.

 

When looking back to 1994 what a year!

 

  • Wonderful times such as Nelson Mandela sworn in as South Africa’s President, Saddest of times in Serbia and Rwanda.
  • The Sony Play Station was launched, VHS video tapes were used, mobile phones were bricks
  • You could still run onto the MCG after the footy, Hey Hey Its Saturday was in its prime, Frontline aired for the first time
  • Schindler’s List won the Oscar but The Shawshank Redemption, The Lion King and Forest Gump were 1994 movies too - where are the women?
  • The Australian PM was Paul Keating and the US President Bill Clinton- again where are the women? We still need to work on this! I know Hilary certainly is!
  • The purpose of MGC in girls’ leadership, gender equality and learning is still clear in 2015!

 

The world our girls are growing into now is in many ways the same and in so many exponentially different.

 

What is the same? The character strengths referred to in 1994 MGC literature are central to our current Student Wellbeing today- leadership, creativity, curiosity, problem solving, resilience, collaboration and respect.

 

What is exponentially different? as Jennifer Westacott the Chief Executive of the Business Council of Australia, said in February.

 

 

'We are moving to a world where the capacity of individuals to create and innovate will be the difference between success and failure – for companies, for governments and for the individuals themselves. How we educate, train and retrain is going to be the absolute game changer in keeping countries, and the people within them productive, competitive and prosperous.’

 

If only some of these points eventuate in 2028 as predicted by economists and futurists they exemplify the very different world our girls are growing into…

 

The global population will be pushing 8.3 billion people, the average person will be a 34 year old Indian man, wearable technology will be controlled by thought, 50% of today’s jobs will be replaced by artificial intelligence, 3D printing means that many products will be made on location therefore the transport industries will reduce in size, most cars will be driverless, the most valuable and fought over resource will be water, 33% of people will live to be over 100

 

Our STEAM leaders are exploring coding and a cute little robot called Neo with our girls now to start to their learning in coding

 

Our Wellbeing Leaders are working on Positive Psychology approaches to character strengths to equip our girls for change

 

We at MGC have always known and acknowledge for the future that we will know true success as we see our students lead and achieve on the world stage, practicing the values leadership, achievement, of teamwork and conscious of the unique lessons attending Melbourne Girls' College has delivered over the last 21 years and will bring to generations to come.

 

Enjoy today, welcome and thank you."

 

Karen Money

Principal