Thank you to those parents who have responded to last weeks’ notice about the Principal Advisory Group and submitted expressions of interest. I will wait until the end of this week to see if anyone else is interested before we select the first group.

Term 3 is slipping away and reflecting with Year 12 teachers on the Trial examinations students have just had, there is still some work to do for many of them if they are to finish with a positive result. The Trials are an opportunity to highlight areas of focus for them in the lead up to the HSC exams themselves. The trap with exam preparation is to find comfort in focusing on what you already know rather than wrestling with what you do not yet know.

As a rowing coach, my head coach was fond of saying, “A race is not won at the start but at the end.” To start well is important but finishing well gets you the medal. Our past student Nicola Olyslagers (McDermott) won a bronze medal in the World Athletics Championships high jump competition recently with a jump of 1.99m. Nicola knows how to compete at the highest level and understands the importance of preparation and finishing well.

As I move into a full time role with the Melos Foundation, I too am challenged to finish my time as a school Principal well. How often do we hear of people getting to the end of their working life and fading away rather than finishing strongly. I am committed to finishing strongly and want my students to learn this lesson early in life. As parents you can help them, not by piling on the pressure or haranguing them when you think they should be studying but by being encouraging and supportive. Help them take appropriate breaks, prepare good food for them, let them have some friends time and help them set a good study program.

A good lesson to learn is that occasions like this do not last forever but are only for a short time. We set aside some things for a time in order to achieve a good goal. In the grand scheme of life the HSC lead up is a blip on the horizon of a student’s life expectancy so giving up some things now is not that big a sacrifice. 

I have been speaking with Mr Steve Lobsey, our Head of Secondary who is an accredited Highly Accomplished teacher. His view is that at the senior level it is more about helping students learn how to learn than simply giving them content. As a school we are adopting this approach so your child will have been given instruction to help them learn the content required to know their subjects well. Remind them to think about this and not just think of learning as cramming content into your head for a short space of time to pass an exam.

One of our graduate profile elements is to be a life-long learner. Too often we think of the HSC or our bachelors degree, or trade certificate as the end of learning for us. Those are just signposts along the way to continuous learning especially in the fast changing world of today. We can help our students understand that school simply lays a platform for this continuous learning, it is not the end of learning.

Phillip Nash