News & Events

Dear families and friends of St Paul’s,

Welcome back to Term 3. I hope all those who were able to had a great break and have returned full of energy for another exciting term at the College. It is certainly great for me personally to be back after having term 2 on leave. In saying that I’d very much like to thank all the staff and in particular Mr Josh Foulis and Mr Joe Hicks for stepping up into the senior leadership positions of Principal and Deputy. They and all the staff continue to do a wonderful job in serving and caring deeply for our community.

In terms of my leave, I was very blessed with the opportunity to travel to Dublin, Ireland to meet with leaders of Edmund Rice schools from around the world. EREBB (Edmund Rice Education Beyond Borders) is a very significant organization comprising 280 schools and over 200,000 students in over 20 countries around the world. It was an amazing experience and certainly reaffirmed both my personal commitment to the vision of Blessed Edmund and my understanding of the importance of the work we do here at St Paul’s and what the network does around the world.

My time away gave me lots of opportunities to reflect on both the what and the how of all we do here at St Paul’s. As the words of our four EREA Touchstones tell us we aim to “Provide a liberating education in an inclusive community based on justice and solidarity in the context of a Gospel spirituality.” This drives more than the what and the how as it is more importantly based on the “why?”

We are a Catholic school in the Edmund Rice Tradition which means we must, in order to live this out and be authentic to our vocation, reach out to those around us who need us the most. There are many forms of “poverty” in our world, and it is not just about finances. Many suffer from poverty in the spiritual, emotional, and psychological sense as well as financially. Our world is not a particularly fair or just place. Our aim is to educate our students so that they are liberated to see, acknowledge and act to improve these injustices.

Our Edmund Rice network across the world works in areas such as the slums of Africa, with the very poor in India, the troubled in South Africa through to the wealthiest in Australia and other places. We are both big enough and motivated enough to make a significant difference in the world. We hope to develop links and relationships with other schools around the world to help and share our stories of support.

Term 3

As with each and every term in a school’s life, this term will be another busy and challenging one. While we have only just passed “halfway” in 2023, we are working tirelessly in preparing for 2024. We will grow in size again and this will mean we will need more staff at all levels from Leadership to teachers to ESO’s in different areas. We will be advertising new positions in various media and searching out the very best staff to assist in our mission. In addition to this, there will be a myriad of educational opportunities for the students as well as co-curricular ones.

This week we held our Academic Assembly and congratulated over 200 students who had achieved academic awards from semester one. This is a wonderful achievement, growing in size each year and a credit to both students and the academic leaders amongst our staff.

Term 3 is also the last full term for our Year 12 cohort. They will be extremely busy finalising all major assignments and other work. Their time with us comes to an end very quickly and we know they are acutely aware of this. It can be a stressful time for them, but it is a time when we see the very best in our care of them by the staff and the great respect that exists between us all.

Finally, I must apologise for being “missing in action” again over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I need to have some surgery but hope to be back online in a few days and back at school in a bit over a week (please God!)

Take Care, God Bless

Paul Belton