From the Headmaster

So, how best to characterise 2022 at College Street? Did we at last have the long-foretold ‘normal year’ each of us prophesised at some point across the preceding two years as we put behind us the pandemic privations which had for a time inevitably haunted our ambitions and narrowed our perspectives? In many senses, yes, we did, although it is worth remembering that somewhere in the now-secluded early months of the year we remained on high alert as COVID-19 numbers in many schools in Term I saw them closing for lack of available COVID-free staff. Serendipitously, such crises ultimately never rattled the College Street gate.

From an academic perspective, 2022 has been rich with achievement whilst happily being untroubled by periods of debilitating online learning and compromised examinations and assessments. The HSC results, which greeted the School at the commencement of the year from our 2021 Form VI boys, certainly set an optimistic tone for the year ahead. Whilst I shall not dwell on their results, perhaps one statistic might offer a sense of things: while forty-eight HSC pupils across the entirety of NSW achieved the maximum ATAR of 99.95, an unprecedented twelve of them were Grammar boys. It is not a shabby year when one school can account for a quarter of the maximum ATARs across the whole state.

Our sportsmen have continued to enjoy vibrant competition and much success in AAGPS sport which is such an important facet of each boy’s experience through the school. Our cross country boys have in particular continued their strong performance, with the Opens team and the U14s both securing top three placings overall this season.

I would like to acknowledge the dedication, the skill and the professionalism of our staff without whom such inspirational environments would not exist as they do. I know our boys in their various ways genuinely appreciate what the staff do with and for them on a daily basis. I know this because it is what the boys tell me every time I visit a Tutorial and ask them what they value about their School.

Inevitably at this time of the year, we have a handful of our Grammar family who are moving on to other adventures in 2023, and I would like to refer to a few staff members in particular. Our Bursar, Mr Brad Campbell, is retiring at the end of Term II, 2023. Brad’s time at Grammar has been particularly rewarding and he feels his work has built on the shoulders of the giants that came before him. As has been said to him, your association with Grammar will not end with your departure – you will always feel a part of the greater Grammar community.

As he moves to retirement, Brad will look forward to watching the development of the School and we thank and acknowledge the great asset he has been to staff and the Trustees. From our PDHPE department we farewell Mr Alan Campbell who has done much for our cricket programme for a number of years and now moves on to a senior role in cricket administration. From our Mathematics department Mr Justin Zeltzer moves on after two successful years at College Street, as does Old Sydneian Mr Matthew Kentmann from our Visual Arts department, and Ms Dominica Nicholls from the English department will be heading over to Trinity Grammar to teach HSC and IB, whilst Ms Maddison Jones leaves the Geography department to pursue her dream of teaching in regional NSW. We wish them all the very best.

I must take a moment to acknowledge our Prefects of 2022 who have once again been young men of such impressive dedication and integrity. Their work was more or less faultless throughout the year, and their role in reenergising the School through their community and charitable endeavours post-pandemic was pivotal, well led as they were by Senior Prefect Jack Story.

I’m grateful to Jack for his supportive energy, his charming positivity and limitless generosity of spirit. He and his Prefects have maintained a standard for the Prefect bodies of the future at Grammar, a standard that the current Prefects are already seeking to equal, or even surpass, under the leadership of 2023’s Senior Prefect, Jeffrey Chen.

Defining ‘school spirit’

Recently, our Chairman of Trustees, Emeritus Professor Richard Henry, asked me (during the course of one of our weekly conversations) to define what the notion of ‘school spirit’ particularly means here at Grammar. In essence, the question emerged in the context of how a Grammar education is founded on a fundamental fusion of academic dedication, musical and artistic passion, and a vibrantly healthy sporting life. Thus, answering slightly off the cuff, the definition I recall offering the Chairman was of a somewhat haphazard yet inevitably variegated one. Think of events like Grammarpalooza, I suggested, and its attendant intellectualism, respectful hilarity and lashings of French rap, or perhaps the spectacle of the Firsts basketballers living every minute as their compatriots in the Seconds basketball achieved a famous victory over King’s, the almost minute long applause for senior cellist John Wu for his solo performance in Assembly, the fevered enthusiasm of House Sports Day at Weigall where every placing from first to eighth is treated with a brand of near histrionic applause that never takes itself too seriously. Indeed, picture our St Ives Preparatory School Presentation Day as we witnessed the effusive admiration for the boys who were presented as NSW State Swimming Champions, who were immediately followed by the State Chess champions to equally enthusiastic applause.

These glimpses can offer unexpected windows into the spirit of the School. But that spirit emerges fundamentally from the enduring substance of a Grammar education and of course, Speech Day has, for our School, always been an opportunity to crystalise in hopefully well-wrought and intelligently calibrated words the essence of what a Grammar education is all about.

And it is on the subject of sport that I will close. I once heard a parent of a boy at one of our Preparatory Schools question another parent, whose son was a particularly successful sportsman at Grammar, why she would send her sporty son to such a demonstrably academic school. This question seems to me to miss the significance of sport at our School.

No, we are not an overtly ‘sporty’ school, but that is simply to state that a boy’s sport (at whatever level he chooses to play it), doesn’t dominate the educational landscape but rather is an essential participant in the aspirational triumvirate in which academia is supported and inspired by both a dedicated musical and arts culture as well as a genuine and dynamic engagement with sporting competition.