Construction of the roof over our outdoor netball and basketball courts commences on Saturday and should be completed by the end of January. This will give us an all-weather area for PE classes and lunchtime play as well as sports practices. We have also ensured that it is set up to enable us to use it for drama performances and events such as Christmas carols evenings etc.

This is exciting and a step forward for GPCC facilities, but it comes at a cost. Of course there is the significant financial cost of a project like this which we have to budget for. Schools like ours get very little Government support for capital works projects. We must fund them almost exclusively out of our annual surplus and through borrowings. For a major project like our new administration building, we have applied for and achieved a few hundred thousand dollars of Federal and State government funding, but the total project is likely to exceed seven million dollars. The courts roof attracts no funding like this at all. But we pay the price for a future benefit.

There is the cost of losing the short-term use of this facility for class time and for break time. Our courts are heavily used by students for break times, by PDHPE teachers for class activities and by some sports teams for practices. We will seek to make other arrangements over this short-term period but there will be a cost to all users.

The same applies to anything we do in our school to make progress. To train teachers it costs money for professional courses they may undertake, it costs time as they often need to be off class to do workshops and we have to engage a casual teacher, it costs the teachers time otherwise spent on marking and preparation. We run training sessions for our teachers most Wednesday afternoons, time they would otherwise spend on lesson preparation or marking. But to improve the service we deliver to students; we have to pay this kind of price.

Students need to understand this as well. In order to achieve an excellent result in a course, they must invest time and effort that would otherwise be spent on other things. Too often I hear students complain about school assessments and homework getting in the way of their part-time job or their leisure time. Neither of these things is wrong, but I believe their priority should be their schoolwork. They have a lifetime to earn money and relax – they have only limited time at school to lay a sound foundation for future opportunities.

I encourage you as parents, no matter the age of your child, to think about this and to speak with your child about it. If they are still very young, then tuck this away for the future. If they are teenagers, then now is the right time to be having these conversations. I hope over time that GPCC students can learn to dedicate their time to their study and pay the sacrifice of that time now for much greater returns in the future.

Phillip Nash

Principal