News & Events

Dear Families and Friends of St Paul’s,

I am not sure how you feel but often I really struggle with watching the evening news on TV or reading the local newspaper. Everything seems to be so negative, so full of grief, so pessimistic, so reflective of a world full of mistrust and dislike for different cultures that we probably all turn off, even before the sport or weather comes on.

Our St Paul’s community is an enormously diverse one and we are constantly acknowledging this and celebrating it. Diversity comes in so many ways, culture, religion, academic or sporting ability, gender, age, and it goes on. We are enormously proud of this, and we acknowledge that our role in promoting all things inclusive, just, and equitable is particularly important and in the educating of our students to believe they are the ones who can change the world!

We cannot allow ourselves to be daunted by the enormity of the negativity and grief we so constantly see around us. We have an obligation and a belief that we must be a people of faith, a people of love and above all a people of hope.

In life there are so many things that are a mystery. Science has a habit and a desire to explain everything so we can understand why everything happens. Unfortunately, in the human world, we will never fully understand why people behave the way they do and in the natural world why some disasters happen the way they do.

What we do know is that our life is a journey. A journey that involves ups and downs, happy and sad times, successes and failures, and positive and negative interactions with other people. Life itself is a mystery. Our role, as members of this amazing St Paul’s community is to work together in partnership, to walk side-by-side in practising kindness, love of all and above all hopefulness, so that when our students graduate, they can continue this same path and positively influence those around them. This takes much courage, resilience, and faith. Let us all practice those!

Holistic Education

The term “Holistic Education” is one that is used often and probably too much as it can be taken for granted. In its authentic application, it refers to a school like St. Paul’s providing a myriad of events, experiences, courses, and activities that are dedicated to helping students gain the best and broadest education possible. In the Catholic school setting it is also about helping the students develop spiritually and our retreat program is a great example of that. We often refer to these in our newsletter articles and our Facebook posts etc so that families are aware – in case students forget to discuss them!

Over the last few weeks our Year 8 cohort has enjoyed learning about the art of self-defence, in this case, boxing and we were fortunate to have the services of Sifu Pete Pitrakkos, who is a 3rd Generation instructor of Bruce Lees Jeet Kune Do and a former National/International Taekwondo champion. Pete is the Master Coach at The Train Station Fitness Studio.

The students thoroughly enjoyed the experience and so did Pete! In fact, he wrote a lovely email to the staff that in part said the following:

“A sincere and heartfelt thank you to you all for the wonderful opportunity to be a part of your educational curriculum and present my boxing sessions to the Year 8s.

It was such an amazing environment to be a part of and to have the chance to hopefully enrich their lives with some knowledge they may take with them on their journey and be a positive influence.

It has been a beautiful learning experience for myself and a highlight of my year to be amongst you all!"

It is really pleasing to receive such a positive endorsement from a visitor to the College. While we know our community is wonderful and our students terrific, we know also that it is always a work in progress, that we constantly strive to improve all aspects of our College life and we respect the three-way partnership that we constantly strive to build upon.

Term 4 and the 2023 school year is flying by very quickly. It is important that as the year 12’s then the Year 11’s finish the rest of the College continues and we must maintain our very high standards of effort, uniform, attendance etc. We are grateful for the support of all families in this regard.

God Bless

Paul Belton