FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

It’s hard to reflect on 2021 without seeing another year of stress and loss. In 2020, we had pinned our hopes, absurdly, on the COVID-19 pandemic respecting the calendar. Of course, it didn’t and, for many in our community, another year of hardship has been real, educationally, emotionally and financially.

There is no minimising that or its impact on our collective culture. As a consequence, we have only a single edition of Outlook this time with which to celebrate a year in which our campus stood dormant for months, its locker rooms empty, its classrooms dark, and its gardens beautiful but silent. Yet, I resist the notion that we were diminished. Our grounds were deserted, but our School was humming alive with learning, online and in a thousand different kinds of personal growth spread across the city and beyond.

We remained a community vitally connected in the care of online tutor groups, house meetings, chapel services, assemblies and daily check-ins; a school networked for video lessons, self-study modules, research projects, online exams and oral assessments. All were virtually unimaginable as recently as 2019 and are a triumph of dedication and ingenuity, for which everyone involved in education the world over should be immensely proud.

With the practice of 2020 behind us, the transition to remote learning this year was remarkable. Courses were ready, and systems were tested. Students, staff and parents knew what to do and made it good. Content was covered, but more important was the sudden impetus to inquiry, organised study schedules, self-motivation, resilience and independent learning: the Holy Grail of education in normal times!

Too easily, we look for the deficit, the supposed lost progress that remote learning must entail for a society determined to measure education only in NAPLAN numbers. However, not all education is what’s on the curriculum, nor what’s examinable. In every household, there was learning in the kitchen, in the garden, around the table, in playing games, building castles and Rube Goldberg machines (look it up; I didn’t know either), in conversation and music and the quiet occupation of reading, drawing and thinking. I don’t for an instant dismiss the potential impact of lockdown on the crucial Kindergarten stage of early reading, just as in the final months of preparation for Year 12 exams; but, if lifelong learning is more than a slogan, we should keep these months in perspective and look for what we gained from them. If we seek for learning, there was plenty in 2021, both in lockdown and before it.

The first half of the year was bursting with it, proof of just how rapidly and vibrantly our School bounced back from the gruelling year before it, as we will again. This edition of Outlook is a testament to remarkable accomplishments in academic Olympiads across the sciences, linguistics and humanities; to the power of intelligent young minds in addressing national and global issues; to victories in debating and significant achievements in art and service.

The momentum of our return to sport this year was palpable, with fabulous summer season victories and our prospects in winter finals looking stronger in some sports than in many years. Our creative and performing arts burst back onto the stage with the fun and flair of Grease and with countless concerts, soirees and recitals large and small across the Primary and Senior Schools. Outdoor education was back; excursions were running, chess, coding, and a thousand other activities were fuelling the richness of our daily lives. House Music this year was more spectacular than ever for the joy of its return.

The same and more is yet to come next year. 2021 has only proven our resilience, the dedication of all in our community, and the strength in our diversity that will see our many passions thrive again in 2022.

I look forward to enjoying it with you.

– Justin Garrick, Head of School