FROM THE PRINCIPAL
We have reached the end of a very busy Term One, our first as St George’s Anglican Grammar School. It has been a vibrant and exciting start to the year, with many camps, events and excursions as detailed in the newsletter pages that follow. The highlight has once again been our Fun Aquatics Day, culminating in the fiercely contested Sync Swim event. Congratulations to Mandela who won both the Fun Aquatics day and the Sync Swim competition! Well done to all students who participated. Once again, we enjoyed a fun-filled day celebrating the House spirit that is so strong at our school.

Term Two is a winter term and, as such, students are required to wear their formal winter uniform. Blazers are to be worn every day, with the only exception being for Year 12 students who may wear their Leavers Jackets when these arrive. Until such time as the Leavers jackets are delivered, Year 12 and WAUFP students must wear their blazers every day as well.  Blazers will be delivered to the School during the holidays and an email will be sent out to parents advising when they can be collected from Main Reception. Most students have already been fitted for their blazers, but payment will need to be made on collection if not already paid for.

The building fitout is progressing very well indeed and we are all on track to relocate during the Term Two holidays. The new School is looking fantastic and the staff are all very excited about the move. I had a very fruitful meeting with the staff at the City of Perth Library last week and am very excited about the possibilities that the Library will offer to our students. We are in the process of developing further partnerships and will advise the School community of these during next term.

Invoices for school fees will be mailed out during the holidays. These will include all events and excursions charges for Term One.

I listened to a very interesting programme on ABC radio last week in which the Director General for Education in WA, Sharyn O’Neil, was discussing the effect of absence on student learning outcomes, particularly for  the purpose of ‘out of season’ holidays. Clearly, this is an issue of concern for all schools and it appears to be an increasing problem.

I am a great advocate for quality family time; however, I would encourage parents to limit time out of school for holiday purposes. Regular attendance at school is fundamental to student learning and irregular attendance comes at a cost to students’ education, jeopardising their future opportunities. Parents who make regular attendance a priority are teaching their children the important life lessons of valuing learning and accepting responsibility.

The Principals Australia ‘Dare to Lead’  website has the following data which shows the effect of absentee days over the course of a child’s school education. When viewed in this way, it highlights how much school is missed when students regularly have time off. 

I wish all of our families a restful and relaxing holiday period. May the promise of this joyous time of year bring peace and blessing to you and your family.

Rensché Diggeden
Principal

HAVE SUM FUN MATHS COMPETITION
The “Have SUM Fun – Face to Face” competition is an exciting Mathematics initiative that uses a quiz night format where teams of six compete with the best Mathematicians across Perth. Students are required to answer questions of a problem solving nature that end up having a very high degree of difficulty.

We had two teams in the Senior Division ably coached by Mr Dwyer, three teams in the Intermediate Division coached by Mr Freer, one of which came 7th out of 52 teams and one team in the Junior Division coached by Mr Dennis. Mr Murray was overall coach and the students of St George's participated extremely enthusiastically and with some great successes. We wish to thank those teachers for the hours put in to help our students.

Well done to all students who participated! 

LINCOLN CHARITY DAY
This term Lincoln House students, ably led by our student leaders John and Kerin Simpson, hosted the first St George’s Charity Day. Some say this is an ‘age of entitlement’, however our students showed that they were able to consider those less fortunate and support a worthy charity. In their teacher adviser groups students planned activities to engage their fellow students and to raise funds. The project chosen was a small project in Myanmar that will bring fresh water and improved sanitation to a number of villages. The raffle tickets for the Easter Baskets and the lucky numbers to estimate the number of lollies in the jar will be available to purchase for a few more days yet. Donations to the project will continue to be accepted and If you would like to find out more, please see the website or chat with Father David Lord.

http://www.abmission.org/pages/myanmarwater-and-sanitation.html

Congratulations to all the Lincoln house community, students, teachers and families(who did much of the lovely baking) for your enthusiasm and help and thank you  to the rest of our wonderful community for supporting all the activities and continuing our tradition of student involvement. 

Rosemary Tweedie
Head of Lincoln House