Introduction

CONTENTS

Introduction .................................................................. 2

About the School........................................................... 4

Spiritual Life of the School ............................................. 6

Primary School Report ................................................... 8

Senior School Report................................................... 16

Community Development Report .................................. 36

CGS Foundation .......................................................... 38

Strategic Operations Report ......................................... 42

Business & Finance Report.......................................... 48

Student Outcomes ....................................................... 50

Year 12 Results .......................................................... 50

Senior Secondary Outcomes ........................................ 52

Post-school Destinations ............................................ 53

School Policies............................................................ 54

Student Attendance..................................................... 55

Student Retention ....................................................... 55

Admissions Policy........................................................ 56

Characteristics of the Student Body.............................. 57

How the School Manages Non-attendance..................... 58

Summary of Financial Information ................................ 60

INTRODUCTION

It is a pleasure to present this Annual Report for 2020, the year that few of us expected and even fewer will want to remember. Yet, despite the fires, smoke, hail, and pandemic that will undoubtedly prevail in our memories, 2020 was also a year of discoveries and triumphs that reflect the dauntless spirit of our community and our School.

It was a year in which we had more reason than ever to be proud of our students’ optimism, the dedication of our staff, and the warm commitment of our families. In truth, compared to many in the world, we were very fortunate. Our remote learning period lasted barely two months, and while the anxiety and myriad daily adjustments lingered for months longer, this report is a testament to how readily our community adapted and how swiftly our School life returned to abundance.

True, large gatherings became impossible under COVID-19 restrictions. For much of the year, assemblies, carnivals, camps, concerts, and plays were quashed, and sport was largely curtailed. Nonetheless, we found ways to communicate online with video messages, live-streamed open days, recorded performances, remote lectures, and parent-teacher nights beamed direct to living rooms. We kept in touch with our partner schools overseas via Connected Classrooms, and we held staff meetings and professional development sessions in online chat rooms.

We became adept at talking to the camera in our One Button Studio, and we appreciated more than ever the extraordinary skill of our dedicated student Code Cadets, for whom live-streaming became a fine art, making everything shareable with families and friends, from the Year 12 Valedictory ceremonies, through Primary choral concerts and House Dinners to Presentation Day itself. As the title of our first post-lockdown theatre production put it, The Show Must Go On!

Few events were the same as usual, of course, but all were still special and impressive in their own way for their innovation. Indeed, some features will remain now that the technology is in place, the whole experience having become part of our collective education.

If our mission at Canberra Grammar School is to educate students who are curious, creative, confident, and compassionate citizens of the world, then 2020 served us an ample real-time curriculum. It gave us the opportunity to see all at once together, in one year, the raging front of climate change; to feel the global interdependence of our urban intensity; to wonder where the world’s new centres of gravity will fall; to recognise the fragility and preciousness of social justice, personal freedom and democracy; and to see the value of science and respect for truth reflected in the mortal cost of their denial. There’s no coincidence, in my mind, between that and the emergence of a new impetus in student leadership focused on the four key initiatives that our School Captains have set for the year ahead: (1) to focus on health and wellbeing in these anxious times; (2) to nurture inclusion in a time of social tension; (3) to seize the challenge of sustainability in the face of climate change; and (4) to empower the young through student voice.

Perhaps the Year 12 of 2020 were the greatest champions of that optimism. Few had cause to be more disappointed: they lost opportunities for leadership; they missed many chances to represent the School at the highest levels in sport and the arts; their final year studies were disrupted, and their rites of passage changed by necessity. Yet, they never allowed themselves despondency. They led by the example of their determination and they finished in triumph; their celebrations all the sweeter for the strains, and their extraordinary success in early university placements reflecting not just their ATARs but the richness of their characters and whole education.

We congratulate them, as we do everyone in our community, on the spirit amidst the strains and, ultimately, the many successes of 2020.

Dr Justin Garrick Head of School Stephen Byron Chair of the School Board