School Vision: At St Columba we will transform the lives of our students by offering the educational opportunities that will allow them to have lives of purpose, service and engagement.
Another year of new uniforms, tight shoes and the joy of catching up with peers, friends and staff begins at St Columba.
As with each year, there will be differences that stand out – new faces, new buildings, new opportunities and new ideas.
What has not changed is our determination to make the educational experience of our students this year even more relevant, engaging and effective than ever before.
With the model of last year’s academic, cultural and sporting successes behind us, we are looking forward to another great year, where we show the world that St Columba is the school that can and will always seek to offer its students the very best in education.
“Change is doing something different. Improvement is getting better at doing the same thing.”
In order for us to provide our students with the tools to be successful in the future, we acknowledge that the old ways of education will not necessarily meet our goal to provide an Excellent, Effective and Enterprising education for our students.
While we must maintain the “traditional” focus on literacy and numeracy and acknowledge the educational effectiveness of a level of direct instruction, we need to ensure that our ongoing educational strategies and structures are best suited to serve the needs of our students.
We will do this.
As the school year opens, we remain aware of the smoke in the air, the burnt landscape around us and the ecological damage that has been visited on our scorched earth and its inhabitants.
It is in this context that we are grateful for resilience in the face of disaster that our populace has shown, the willingness of members of our community to work together in the face of danger, and even personal loss, to protect their communities.
We are also aware of the role that schools such as ours must play in developing in our students the qualities of resilience, community mindedness and the capacity to plan for an ever evolving and even perilous future.
Schools like ours can support students by helping them to develop a sense of themselves as competent and capable beings in our unpredictable world by helping them develop:
- a “can-do” attitude,
- a sense of self capability,
- resourcefulness,
- resilience,
- strategies to deal with challenges,
- independence,
- skills relating to others such as listening actively, being tolerant and cooperation and
- a sense of contribution to School and community.
We recognise the opportunity and privilege we have in joining our School parents in helping create a brighter future for their children and our students and community.
In a volatile and uncertain world, we can guarantee that 2020 at St Columba will never be dull!
 | Mr Terry Muldoon Principal, St Columba Anglican School |