News & Events

Dear Friends of St Paul’s,
Last Wednesday we began the important Christian season of Lent with an Ash Wednesday liturgy (by Zoom!) It was a particularly powerful liturgy and with the involvement of our students for the first time, became significant. As a very multi-cultural and multi faith College we welcome and celebrate inclusivity regularly. At the same time, we will always remain faithful to our Catholic and Edmund Rice charism and history. The way all our students embrace this spiritual setting is one of the most wonderful aspects of this great school. We are sure the students, from reception to year 12 will now understand the significance of this Lenten season and make every attempt to put that understanding into practice (hopefully around the home!!)

Year 8 Camps & Tours

With the distinctly various times we are living in, the staff of St Paul’s need to be even more adaptive and flexible than ever. This has been clearly demonstrated by Mr Campbell, Mr Stewart and our marketing department in recent times. We have been scheduled to run several camps and College tours throughout the early part of the year and COVID has made it exceedingly difficult. Our staff have negotiated different structures, times, and scenario so that the students and prospective families can experience the full vitality of the College. We thank the staff for making sure these events happen in some way shape or form!

In terms of tours and enrolments can I encourage all families who may know of others who are considering enrolling children at St Paul’s to tell them to do so as soon as they can. With pressure on now for positions we are having to close our books and stop accepting enrolments over 18 months to two years out from commencement. While this is positive for the College it is an awful situation where we have to say no to families. It is by far one of the worst parts of our roles here. 

Life Education

As a part of our holistic education philosophy, we welcome the “Life Education” people into the College to work with our primary students this week. Today’s education must include so much more than the old “3 R’s” scenario and the need to extend this to the pastoral areas of life are so important. It was great to see the students so engaged and learning so much. I hope they discussed all this at home around the dinner table too!

Stage 1 Business Innovation

While speaking of an integrated and comprehensive approach to education, this week I had the pleasure of being invited into Mr John Grave’s Stage 1 Business Innovation Class. The boys have been working on “Identifying Customer Problems and Generating Possible Solutions". What was so good about these presentations was that the students needed to understand their Value Propositions and Business Development had to demonstrate an understanding of empathy. This clearly made the project fully “ERICA – focused.” ERICA is our pedagogical framework (Engaging, Relevant, Innovative, Creative and Authentic.) I learnt a great feal about how creative and innovative our students are, but always knew how thoughtful they were – simply great to see it in action!

Sports Days

It is with absolute pleasure that we can finally welcome families back on to the property and we are looking forward to having bigger than ever Primary and Secondary Sports Days. These are great fun and so well prepared by Mr Nick Gillard that I am sure many of you will take the opportunity to venture back into the community. You will be able to see the new Sports and Learning centre getting close to completion too – now that will be exciting!!

Take Care
God Bless
Paul Belton