This week we had our first Senior School Assembly without our Year 12 students who are now studying for their final exams. Our two Co-Captains for 2025 Rachel Carton and Vinuki Ranatunga led their first assembly. The baton has now been passed and the Class of 2025 are now the student leaders of the School. It is now our turn to support the Class of 2025 Student Executive led by Rachel and Vinuki. I think we are going to have a fantastic 12 months ahead. 

With the departure of our Year 12 students, I have found myself looking towards 2025. To say next year will be one filled with change will be an understatement. Earlier this week I sent a communication regarding senior appointments in the Junior School for next year.  We are very much looking forward to Dr Brendan Kean taking up the reins as Head of Barbreck. Also, Ms Kate Banks as Deputy Head of Junior School and Ms Taleah Pecchiar’s appointment as Head of Professional Practice will ensure we have a dynamic and highly talented Leadership Team in Barbreck. Our current Head of Barbreck Ms Karen McArdle and myself, have been holding many conversations about the transition process to enable a seamless start to 2025. 

In the Senior School there will be some changes to the Heads of Year roles in the School. For 2025 the Heads of Year will be:  

• Year 7 Ms Skye Stansfield 
• Year 8 Ms Samantha Basford 
• Year 9 Ms Kathryn Lucas 
• Year 10 Mrs Kelly Brady 
• Year 11 Clint Blennerhassett 
• Year 12 Ms Vasiliki Spanos 

All of our girls will be well supported by these excellent staff members. 

The most important change for next year will of course be the arrival of Ms Natalie Charles as Principal. Ms Charles and I are holding regular conversations, and she is extremely excited about joining the School in the new year. There is much to look forward to. 

With the arrival of Ms Charles next year, we can expect things to be different. While there are characteristics of our School that must not change – such as the wonderful community feel epitomised by kindness and a caring culture, and a deep focus on teaching excellence and outstanding academic achievements, there will be opportunities to improve what we do and investigate initiatives to best support the students. 

One change already in the pipeline will be the use of mobile devices at School. The School’s Educational Leadership Team has been examining the challenges with students’ usage of mobile devices at School. Ms Freda Armstrong, Director of Middle Years has been leading our discussions in this space. A leading thinker about this topic is Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation. Haidt is a strong proponent of creating phone-free schools. He provides a compelling argument where he reflects on the international epidemic of mental illness and some of the purported underlying causes (the emerging prevalence of smartphones and social media around the year 2012), making a sweeping case for in-school phone restrictions. 

• Since 2012, the smartphone has dramatically emerged in prevalence, creating conditions for students to be “permanently distracted and congenitally distractible.” 
• School culture has changed as a result of the smartphone, resulting in a global increase in loneliness at school since 2012. 
• Now is the time to make the school day phone-free in order to improve educational outcomes and reduce rates of depression, anxiety, and self-harm. 
• The most common measures taken to restrict phones in school are inadequate; school leaders should consider locked pouches or phone lockers as the only presently viable solutions to this problem.

The Educational Leadership Team is currently considering a range of options for 2025. We will be providing more details soon. 

Next week the Senior School moves into exam mode with a week of revision classes and the formal exams for Years 9 to 11. From there on, the rest of the term is very busy culminating in our wonderful House Arts to end the year.  

2025 is going to arrive before we know it and we will have wonderful new leaders from our Principal to Rachel, Vinuki, and the rest of the Student Executive. Until then we have lots of work to do.