From the Principal
Hello, and welcome to your final edition of The Jacaranda Post for 2024. As families embark on Christmas celebrations and holidays, locally and around the world, my hope is that you and your loved ones are safe and well.
It’s been another action-packed year at Pymble, which was designated by our Prefect body as the year of ‘2024 Hear Us Roar’, inspired by the Lion King movie. Our students certainly brought their roar to ’24 to achieve outstanding success across academics, sport, robotics, dance, drama, music, and language arts, and to demonstrate the values of our Pymble ‘pride’.
It was wonderful to see our community working together to raise an incredible $74,900 for communities in need this year, of which $41,650 was gifted to The Barbara May Foundation to provide critical maternal health services for young girls and women in East Africa. As this Newsletter went into production, the College was hosting 26 children with a disability on our annual three-day SONY Camp held in partnership with the Shore School, and staff have just returned from our Pymble Gives Back Day of service with a range of organisations all over Sydney.
Service has been an integral part of a Pymble education for many, many years and we are incredibly proud of the life-changing opportunities we have established and supported.
New to Pymble in 2025
In 2025, we look forward to launching our official Service Framework to formalise the College’s approach to service, make it more meaningful, and open the door for all in our community to work together for practical, respectful and lasting change in the world, especially in relation to outcomes for girls and women.
Next year will also see a community-wide focus on the College value of Respect. This follows work conducted throughout 2024 to define Behaviour Statements for each of our five values:
Care – I am kind to myself and others.
Courage – I am open to new experiences to learn and grow.
Integrity – I do the right thing even when no one is watching.
Respect – I value diversity, my worth and the worth of others.
Responsibility – I take ownership of my actions.
These statements will provide the framework for all interactions between members of our community and ultimately become a component of accepting a place at Pymble. This is a positive move forward for the College, recognising that each member of our Pymble family deserves to feel valued for who they are, and that we all share a collective responsibility to make that happen.
In terms of academics, in 2025 we will be working on implementing several new courses under our new Framework for Teaching and Learning, which encompasses skills, knowledge, character, and metacognition. In addition to becoming a Cambridge School and offering IGCSE Mathematics for selected students in Year 10, we are working in partnership with the Centre for Curriculum Redesign in Boston to develop a new elective, Biotechnology, for students in Years 9 and 10.
As for sport, our playing field is about to get even bigger. Building on our recognition this year as an official Olympic Pathway School – the first Independent School in Australia to achieve this status – we have forged partnerships with Tottenham Hotspur Football Club in England and the Rafa Nadal Tennis Academy in Spain to give our students opportunities to train and learn with the best in field, internationally.
And last but by no means least, next year at Pymble will mark a significant world-first, with two-thirds of students in Years 4 and 5 and all students in Years 6 and 7 choosing to join our Pymble Wise Phone Initiative. In case you missed the news, the College has offered all students in Years 4 to 8 a ‘Wise Phone’, which will give them access to age-appropriate features, including camera, tap payments, SMS, geo-tracking and other tools, while disabling social media apps and internet browser until students reach 16 years of age. This is in response to research and extensive consultation with students and parents confirming the negative impact of social media and endless scrolling.
It’s a bold step, we know, but one our community is taking together to reclaim childhood for our girls. Our hope is that by going down this pathway, other communities will follow suit and help us create a better world for all our young people.
We have much to look forward to, and much to be grateful for. So, as we head into the holiday break, I wish you all Hakuna Matata (“no worries”) and a very Merry Christmas until we connect again next year. Take care.
Signing off with all best wishes, until we meet again.
Dr Kate Hadwen