News & Events

Last week, our Year 9 students and families came together for a moving ceremony as part of The Rite Journey program.

An emotional part of the evening was the heartfelt exchange between students and their families. Letters of gratitude, pride, love and hope were shared — a powerful and memorable moment of connection. 💌

We are so proud of our young people as they embrace the program with courage, purpose, and a deep sense of who they are becoming.
 

Our Lenten Season and Easter

Since Ash Wednesday, our Catholic church and our college community has journeyed through Lent, as a time for deep reflection and sacrifice, in preparation for the ultimate sacrifice on Good Friday when Jesus dies on the cross.

As we continue through Lent, we reflect on ourselves, our loved ones and our St Paul’s community. We pray for one another and that we may sacrifice parts of our world for the betterment of others.

The Sunday following Good Friday is Easter and for our Catholic community, Easter is most important. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, offering hope and eternal life. New life is often celebrated with the symbol of easter eggs, and we remember the great meaning of this symbol and gesture.

With new life comes rejuvenation and joy, and St Paul’s College wishes all members of our community a truly Happy Easter during the upcoming School Holidays.

As we end our prayers at St Paul’s…

Live Jesus in Our Hearts: Forever

World Autism Understanding Day 2025

The 2nd of April was World Autism Understanding Day, a welcome opportunity to learn more about Autism and with that greater understanding, to then celebrate people who live with Autism, ultimately leading to action. “If you learn I am Autistic”, is the theme for 2025”.

Quoting from Autism SA, “Autism is a neurological developmental difference that affects the way an individual relates to the environment and people in it. The effects differ from individual to individual, which is why the term ‘spectrum’ is used. It reflects the fact that everyone’s lived experience of autism is different.  Individuals on the spectrum may have skills in particular areas, while finding other aspects of life particularly challenging.”

St Paul’s College proudly supports many students living with Autism, understanding the many strengths that these students bring to our community and assisting these students to overcome their unique challenges. This further motivates our support for WAUD.

The infographic below from AutismSA, provides some great facts as a starting point, and I encourage you to CLICK HERE for more information about World Autism Awareness Day and Autism more generally.

Celebrating Diversity and Belonging at St Paul’s

Archbishop Leonard Faulkner once said that, “There is unity in diversity,” and here at St Paul’s, we are incredibly proud of our diversity. We truly believe that each young person is unique in their own special way!

Throughout this week, we have been recognising and celebrating both Harmony Week and Neurodiversity Celebration Week. As a community, we are proud to have 40% of students who speak English as an additional or second language or dialect, and to have 45 different languages spoken in the homes of our students. Furthermore, we are a community that values neurodiversity and strives for inclusion in every aspect of our College life.

You might see your child attending school with some very ‘odd’ socks tomorrow to celebrate this as we recognise World Down Syndrome Day. This is just one small but significant way we show our support for the individuals who make up our vibrant, diverse community. We encourage everyone to embrace these moments of celebration, to learn from each other, and to continue building an environment where all students feel accepted, valued, and understood.

Together, we make St Paul’s a place where differences are not just accepted, but celebrated, and where the strength of our diversity truly shines. By embracing these values, we are fostering a stronger sense of belonging within our school community.

It is our hope that this in turn will develop graduates who are part of a more inclusive and compassionate society, and can do their bit to make the world a better place!

At last week’s academic assembly, we had the privilege of celebrating the outstanding achievements of the class of 2024. I posed two key questions to the students: Why do you learn what you learn? and What is the purpose of a school?

I explained that it begins with the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration for Education, which focuses on developing active, informed citizens and confident, creative individuals. This framework underpins the Australian Curriculum and the South Australian Certificate of Education, outlining the key capabilities that students should develop.

Our skilled teachers then take these curriculum outlines and shape learning experiences through expert pedagogies, tailored to their individual teaching styles and the needs of their students.

I also unpacked what it means to be an active and informed citizen, emphasising that critical thinking involves understanding right from wrong and being able to assess information thoughtfully. I reminded students that, given the recent media attention our school has received, it’s crucial to think critically and understand that the media often presents only one side of the story.

What matters most, I emphasised, is our internal knowledge of who we are. We are a strong, supportive, and inclusive community that not only delivers excellent academic outcomes but also teaches morals and values and supports personal growth. The class of 2024 exemplifies this, and they are ready to make a positive impact in their local community and beyond.

In closing, I encouraged students to take pride in their history, in who we are, and in wearing the St Paul’s crest. Be proud of our legacy and excited for the one you will create.

Certa Bonum Certamen – Let’s continue to fight the good fight, together.

Patrick Harmer - Principal

What aspects of St Paul’s drew you to the role of Principal?

The St Paul’s community is rich in history and has achieved so much over its first 65 years. I am drawn to this opportunity because I see great potential in St Paul’s current context and what lies ahead. I look forward to working in partnership with students, staff, and families to shape an exciting future for the College.
The opportunity to work in a community grounded in the Edmund Rice charism, and to witness this every day, also drew me to St Paul’s. The way the community cares for and includes people from all backgrounds, offering them a liberating education, is truly inspiring. I am reminded of the quote from Archbishop Leonard Faulkner: “There is unity in diversity!” I am eager to contribute to and continue this legacy, ensuring that St Paul’s remains a place where every student can belong and thrive.

Where have you most recently been employed?

I have previously been the Deputy Principal at Cardijn College, a Reception to Year 12 Catholic school in the Marist tradition, located in the Southern Vales of Adelaide. Cardijn is a school comprising three campuses and an RTO (Registered Training Organisation), with nearly 2,200 students and over 300 staff. I have held this role since 2019 and had the privilege of acting as Principal on two separate occasions, including a six-month term in 2022. During this time, I worked closely with the incoming Principal to lead the school into its next chapter, fostering continued school improvement and community engagement. Prior to my time at Cardijn, I held leadership roles at Nazareth Catholic College, where I developed a strong understanding of leadership in a growing, diverse, and multicultural community.

What excites you most about joining the St Paul’s community?

I am particularly excited to be part of St Paul’s as it grows into a co-educational school from Reception to Year 12. Having led a similar transition in my previous role, I know firsthand the importance of nurturing both academic excellence and a strong, inclusive school culture during times of significant change. What excites me most about St Paul’s is the opportunity to contribute to this next chapter, where every student can be both challenged and supported to fulfil their potential.

What are your immediate priorities for the College in 2025?

I am committed to authentically acknowledging St Paul’s rich history, understanding the present, and working in partnership to enable an exciting future. I look forward to learning more about the St Paul’s story and listening to the experiences and hopes of those within our community.
A few immediate priorities include the ongoing transition to a Reception to Year 12 co-educational setting, updating the College Master Plan to ensure it meets the needs of our community, and progressing Stage 3 of the College’s building project—the technologies precinct.
Finally, I will work closely with staff and leadership teams to ensure that excellent learning outcomes remain at the heart of everything we do. These priorities will lay the foundation for a vibrant and successful future for St Paul’s.

Outside of work, what are your hobbies and interests?

I am the proud father of two beautiful children: my daughter Tully, who is almost three, and my son Finn, who is just eight weeks old. My wife, Kahli, is incredible, and I’m grateful for her support. Being ‘Dad’ keeps me busy enough outside of school, but I also enjoy being active and spending time with family and friends.

What message would you like to share with the students, staff, and families of St Paul’s College?

I feel truly privileged and excited to be joining the St Paul’s community. Please come and introduce yourself; I look forward to getting to know you and working in partnership to fight the good fight and ensure that the young people in our community are supported to thrive!

The conclusion of the 2024 school year comes with great celebration for our Year 12 students. We acknowledge the collective work that has been undertaken by students, families, and our entire staff throughout their academic, spiritual and personal journey during their time at St Paul’s College. It is with great pride that I detail the excellent SACE, ATAR, and apprenticeship achievements of the Year 12 graduates for 2024. For the sixth consecutive year, 100% of eligible students achieved their SACE. Our students have demonstrated the skills and capabilities to flourish and contribute productively to the world beyond school and will continue to hold a special place in our community as Old Scholars of our College. In doing this (for the last time!), I sincerely thank all staff for your dedication and commitment to the students and families of the College. It is truly appreciated. This gratitude includes Year 12 teachers in 2024, and especially extends to all staff across every year level, teaching and non-teaching.

The Year 12 students of 2024 have performed at an excellent level. 

Congratulations to the DUX OF THE COLLEGE for 2024: 

William McCulloch, 99.80 ATAR

High Distinctions (HDs) in Mathematics 1 and Mathematics 2, as part of the Headstart Scholarship program at the University of Adelaide, A+ in Physics, A in Integrated Learning: Religion, A- in English Literary Studies.

A+ grades in Specialist Mathematics, Mathematical Methods, and an A+ with Merit in the Research Project, undertaken and achieved as a Year 11 student 2023. 

High Distinctions are the highest possible grade that can be achieved at the University level. William McCulloch, undertook two First Year University courses as part of the Headstart Scholarship Program at the University of Adelaide in Mathematics 1 and Mathematics 2, while studying Year 12. We congratulate William for achieving the top grades in both University classes studied this year, as these contributed as full marks for a full year towards his ATAR score.

Congratulations to the PROXIME ACCESSIT for 2024:

Martin Trieu, 97.15 ATAR

A+ with Merit in Visual Arts – Art, A in Chemistry and Integrated Learning: Religion, A- in Mathematical Methods and English Literary Studies and an A+ in the Research Project, undertaken and achieved as a Year 11 student in 2023.  

Congratulations to the following students who achieved an ATAR greater than 90:

Congratulations to the following students who achieved an ATAR greater than 80:

The following students achieved A+ grades for one or more subjects studied, with 8 A+ grades in total:

Equally as important, we celebrate and congratulate the following students, who have successfully gained apprenticeships this year, noting that this is a growing list to be added to:

Dear Friends and Families of St Paul’s,

With the completion of Week 6 we finished another summer season of co-curricular activities. As with all aspects of St Paul’s over the last few years this area has grown significantly. Not only do we have more activities and more sports teams competing against other schools, but we have more and more students involved in multiple activities. This is a wonderful scenario, clearly demonstrating the significant pride our students have in the College. It is also a very accurate reflection of the commitment of our staff and the co-ordination and energy brought to this by our two coordinators, Mr Nick Gillard and Mr Marcus Deluca. I am sure our students and families are appreciative of their efforts.

Art and Tech Show

On Tuesday evening we also hosted the Art and Tech Show in Callan Hall. The standard of all work presented by the students was exceptional and a very accurate and rewarding reflection for all the wonderful work done by the dedicated staff. The parents and families were amazed at the quality.

On behalf of our whole community, I sincerely congratulate Ms Sarah Fedele, Mr Jonathon Prenzler and Mr Michael White for their leadership of these departments, and to Mr Grant Howarth, Ms Sophie Chapman, Mr Patrick Leadbeater, Ms Marie La Dru and Mr Wes Jones for their tremendous efforts in supporting the students.

As always at St Paul’s there was so much to be proud of and even more to be grateful for.

Graduation Dinner and Year 10 and 11 Awards Assembly

In what is another extremely busy week we also held our Year 10 and 11 Awards Assembly and our Year 12 Graduation Dinner. The Graduation Dinner represents the very final time our Class of 2024 gather together in the one room. Together with parents and families we reminisce and celebrate what has been a seven-year journey for many of the boys since starting in Year 5. The pride shown by the students and parents allows the staff to feel a great sense of satisfaction and gratitude for the opportunity of helping these students reach their full potential and help prepare them for the next stage of their lives.

The Awards Assembly not only acknowledges academic achievements but also social justice, Christian Service Learning and co-curricular achievements. This was extremely well attended by parents, grandparents and families, and yet again was a tremendous celebration of the very vibrant life of the College. St Paul’s certainly provides a myriad of opportunities for students to excel, and it is especially rewarding to see so many accept that invitation and strive to achieve their personal best.

Transition Day

While during this week we say farewell to many students and families, we also say a very heartfelt welcome to many more. On Friday we conduct our Transition Day for all new incoming students for 2025. This is a very important day when the students not only learn more about St Paul’s, but have a great opportunity to navigate around the College grounds and meet many new faces, both staff and fellow students from different schools.

St Paul’s does this very well, highlighted by the fact that several additional days are offered to families if students have any particular needs. It signifies the start of our partnership and the significant levels of support that are offered from the very beginning of a family’s introduction to the College.

We wish the incoming students and their families every happiness and success as this journey begins.

God Bless

Paul Belton

This term we have been busy engaging with our Adelaide 36ers partnership through a range of opportunities for our students.

Last week, our Years 4-6 students had the chance to meet Adelaide 36ers players and participate in a coaching clinic. A lucky group even played a game against the players in front of their peers!

Next week, it will be our Reception to Year 3 students' turn to enjoy a clinic experience.

20 of our year 7s had an exclusive coaching session with facilitator Corey, as well as, attending a game day experience where they cheered on the 36ers as they defeated the Illawarra Hawks.

Our high-performance students in years 8-11 were lucky enough to attend a closed Adelaide 36ers training session, gaining insights into the intensity and structure of elite-level practice. They then took part in their own session coached by Adelaide 36ers coaching staff.

Later this term another group of students will enjoy their gameday experience to round out what has been a great first year with our Adelaide 36ers partnership.

Dear Friends and Families of St Paul’s,

Our Year 12s are currently undertaking their end of year SACE exams or finalising their last major externally assessed assignments. We take immense pride in our Year 12 students, their dedication and hard work not only reflects their preparation, but also the strong foundation they have built over their years at St Paul’s College. We are confident that their results will showcase their efforts and the high standard of education they have received.

While this is in many ways the culmination of thirteen years of education, it is in no way the be all and end all of education. Personally, it is my belief that far too much pressure is placed on students to attain an exceptionally high ATAR. While some students certainly wish to gain direct entry into the University course of their choice (or their number one preference as it is called), it should never be considered a failure if not attained now.

In today’s educational world and society in general there are multiple pathways into whatever career a young person may dream of undertaking. To finish secondary schooling with a solid values base and strong set of beliefs is far more important. Psychologists and other experts suggest that today’s students will have multiple different careers during their lifetime. If this is true, why does society, families and individuals put themselves under so much pressure? Surely every student and every individual working hard to become the best they can be is enough.

EREA Touchstones

Everyone in our community would have heard, read or seen information regarding the four Edmund Rice Education Australia Touchstones. These are Gospel Spirituality, Inclusive Community, Justice and Solidarity and Liberating Education.

Liberation means to be set free. We could suggest that a Liberating Education is one that allows every person the “freedom” to become whatever it is they wish to become. EREA’s definition of a Liberating Education, however, is somewhat different.

As a Catholic College in the Edmund Rice Tradition, we believe that: “We open hearts and minds, through quality teaching and learning experiences, so that through critical reflection and engagement each person is hope-filled and free to build a better world for all.”

That definition does not speak of ATAR’s or SACE completion but rather our school’s hope that we, in partnership with families, produce graduates who have strong enough values to know that life is not all about them as an individual, but rather each one of us has an obligation to contribute to making the world a better place. I am sure you would all agree our world needs young people like this.

I believe this is what St Paul’s is excellent at embedding in all we do. Our pastoral care and wellbeing initiatives must encourage all students to become the absolute best version of themselves. The academics obviously support this but do not define who we are. Sometimes this is a hard pitch to convince young girls and boys or parents of this, but it is what we believe.

EREA will soon be finalising and distributing the latest iteration of our Charter. The content and emphases may be altered a little but the essence of what it means to us as a community will not alter. We are a community built around mutual respect and unconditional love for each other. This respect is the basis of our Common Ground document and binds us all to the Touchstones and the College values of Faith, Relationships, Excellence, and Diversity.

As the year draws very quickly to a close and we welcome many new families and students, we also say farewell and thank you to the families who are leaving us for the last time. We hope that the students and families will remain connected to our community and hold fond memories of their time at the College. We hope that they all take with them Certa Bonum Certamen or “Fight the Good Fight” of faith which will help us all make a positive contribution to the world around us.

Take care.

God Bless

Paul Belton.

St Paul’s College is excited to share some wonderful news regarding a new partnership between St Paul’s College and Adelaide United Football Club. This collaboration aims to foster a holistic school football program focused on High Performance, Academic Excellence and Student Engagement whilst enhancing the sporting experience for our students and promote a healthy, active lifestyle.

The mandate for the partnership is to not only strengthen football pathways for SPC students, but to focus on delivery of outcomes relevant to student leadership, character development and social well-being. Importantly, engagement would not be limited to football students, working closely with SPC we would look to deliver benefits to the broader student population and whole school community.

Because of this partnership, St Paul’s College students will have exclusive access to all things Adelaide United and be able to have interactive and personal experiences which cannot be replicated at any other professional club in the State.

SOME KEY DETAILS OF THE PARTNERSHIP
High Performance Engagement:

• Skilled sessions for students involving AUFC staff
• Invitations to observe AUFC training sessions (either male or female)
• Training session conducted by AUFC Men’s Coach @ Coopers Stadium
• Training session conducted by AUFC Women’s Coach @ Coopers Stadium
• Football development coaching sessions run by AUFC

Community & Student Engagement:

• AUFC player appearances per school term
• AUFC staff/players present at school games and SPC events throughout the year
• Coaching PD workshops with all SPC coaches
• Exclusive school holiday clinics for SPC
• Men’s GA ticket to ALL students involved with Football
• Women’s GA ticket to ALL students involved with Football
• Discount on matchday tickets and merchandise for all SPC Football students

We look forward to sharing more details about upcoming events and programs soon.

Dear Friends and Families of St Paul’s,

Week 2 of Term 4 and our attention as always during this time turns to the Class of 2024. Our Year 12 students and their families become the centre of our attention as we began the first of several farewell events. On Thursday we celebrated the outstanding achievements and contributions to our community over the last six years or more.

Thursday was the Celebration and Awards Assembly. Here we recognised all the academic, co-curricular, Christian Service and community contributions of the young men who have enjoyed the opportunity to embrace everything the College offers.

Friday morning’s Graduation Mass was the pinnacle of these events as we celebrated and thanked God for the time we have shared together. We are all blessed to live in Australia and to be part of such a supportive community as St Paul’s. For some parents who made the enormous decision to leave their home country to come to Australia in the hope of a better life for their children, this would never be taken for granted. Likewise, all of us should not take it for granted either.

Both occasions were wonderful, and we are always thrilled at the number of families, parents, caregivers, and grandparents who come along to partake in what is no doubt one of their proudest moments in their families. The smiles on the faces of the families are no doubt brought about by pride, but we would also suspect because they no longer will be paying school fees – or at least for this member of the family!

The College certainly acknowledges the sacrifices and unconditional love and support that these young men receive at home, and likewise the support and guidance that our staff provide. This support is not just about their final year, but right across their 13-year academic journey.

We hope and pray that the graduating class is well prepared for life after school. We hope that they have a solid values base and belief in themselves that will enable them to be both happy and successful.

2025 Prefects

As we say farewell to the Class of 2024 and thank them for their many great contributions to College life, we also congratulate those who have been chosen to continue the magnificent work of College Captain William McCulloch, and his Prefect team this year. As was announced at the Assembly on Thursday we acknowledge and congratulate the following students who will form the 2025 Prefects team.

• College Captain                         Jackson Rohrlach (Nagle)
• College Vice Captains               Bradley Middleton (Gleeson) and Kingston Hammond (Marlow)
• Dally House Captain                  Jamie Agius
• Gleeson House Captain             Sebastian Gladwich
• Marlow House Captain               Jean Tonna Hernandez
• Nagle House Captain                 Rocco Giugliano
• O’Loughlin House captain          Jay Faugno

This coming weekend these young men together with a number of our senior staff will venture to West Beach for a three-day Leadership Camp. We wish them well.

Farewell Assembly

Last Friday it was an immense pleasure to be able to share with Mr Peter Judd a Farewell Assembly to celebrate his retirement following 44 years of service as a teacher at St Paul’s. I do not believe that Mr Judd’s service and longevity will ever be repeated given the difficulty and complexity of modern-day teaching. We thank him sincerely and wish him, his wife Gayle, and their extended family the best for the future.

I am likewise extremely grateful for all the work done by Mr Foulis, Mrs Cook, Mr Martin and the Marketing Team for their efforts in providing such a lovely farewell for me and allowing me the opportunity to express my gratitude for the privilege of serving this wonderful community.

It is only week two and I look forward to completing the term and catching up with as many students and families as I can in the remaining weeks.

Take care, God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends and families of St Paul’s,

Yet another term has flown by and 2024 seems to be disappearing before our very eyes! At the conclusion of every term, it is so especially important for all of us, students, families, and staff to stop and contemplate the last ten weeks. I say this not only because we all need to honestly reflect on whether the terms work is an indication of our absolute best efforts. In addition to that however we should also look back with much enjoyment and pride in acknowledging all the wonderful things that have occurred at St. Paul’s.

Our students are provided with such an impressive array of opportunities that cover all aspects of college life, and we hope that is appreciated by all. These include but are not limited to: excursions, retreats, subject and learning expos, assemblies, cocurricular opportunities, career and subject selection and advice, photos, pastoral care and wellbeing initiatives, health initiatives such as medical injections, camps and leadership opportunities. All this occurs while thousands of great learning experiences take place in classrooms while in background the leadership and admin teams of St Paul’s are busily preparing for 2025! We have already employed several more outstanding educators to join our staff, and we will announce all of these in Term 4 once all our recruiting is completed.

Mr Joe Hicks and Mr Frank Ranaldo

While speaking of staffing, it is with a great deal of mixed feeling that we announce that our substantive APRIM (Assistant Principal Religious Identity and Mission) who has been acting as Deputy Principal in Darwin this year, has been announced as the new principal of St Joseph’s School in Clare in 2025. We wish Joe well and sincerely thank him for what he has brought to St Paul’s in the past. His enthusiasm, energy, and passion for all things Catholic and Spirituality greatly impacted the staff and students at the College.

We also say farewell and a huge thank you to Frank Ranaldo who has filled in for us in the role of Deputy Principal over the last two terms while Mr Foulis and I had some leave. Frank not only enjoyed his time with us, but he also made an immediate and huge impression on all the staff for his great enthusiasm, support, and work ethic. We will miss him also but wish him and his beautiful family all the best in the future. In our farewell Frank, we also welcome back Mr Foulis from his leave.

Year 12 Students

With three terms down we turn our attention to our Year 12 cohort who only have two weeks of their college life left with us. For most this represents the culmination of 13 years of schooling and while we are sure their parents and families may be close to breathing a sigh of relief, we know there is still much to do and achieve with the limited time remaining. The whole group have been lovely to work with throughout this year. I personally thoroughly enjoyed the Yr 12 Retreat with them and that opportunity to talk to so many about the incredible positive experience that has been their time at St Paul’s. We certainly hope they finish strongly and that their final grades are a true and accurate reflection of both their abilities and the effort they have put into their whole schooling here at the College.

Shannahan Cup

One of the highlights of the entire year is the final assembly of Term 3. On the Friday of week ten the whole college gathers to have a bit of fun involving students from across the College and to announce the winners of the Shanahan Cup. This cup is named in honor of Mr Peter Shannahan a former long serving Deputy and Principal of St Paul’s. Points toward this cup are earned by every student in the College across a wide range of events and experiences from Sports Day to Academic grades, to involvement in assisting the college in duties such as our Road Monitoring, or simply doing charitable deeds for each other. The awarding of this “House Shield” brings enormous pride to the winning House and is very much sought after. The year of accumulating points runs from Term 4 to the end of term three the following year so the Yr 12 students can be involved for the full 12 months – such is the pride in contributing to “The Cup!”

Achilles Cup

On Thursday of this week, we also had a substantial number of students represent the college at the annual Achilles Cup. This is an athletics event held at SANTOS Stadium for boys (7-12) across all the major College in SA. As always St Paul’s competes very well on this stage against much bigger schools. We finished a very creditable third in our division and finished in first place in the U13 and U14 age divisions and second in the U15’s and U16’s. This is quite outstanding, and our thanks go to the staff who have helped the boys train for the event and to Messer’s Gillard, Deluca, Austin, and Dorsi for accompanying the team at the carnival.

Have a great break everyone and enjoy spending time with your loved ones.

Take care, God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends and families of St Paul’s,

This fortnight is a particularly significant fortnight in the life of the College (as they all are) for several reasons.

Last week was ESO Appreciation Week. ESO stands for Education Support Officer and at St Paul’s this represents every member of staff who is not a teacher. Our college would simply not exist nor be capable of providing the holistic service we do without these staff members. They range from our Grounds and Maintenance team to our Finance and Admin staff, to our Academic Support staff. As we with all our staff we are absolutely blessed with the quality of staff who do this most important work for all of us. For many they work more weeks on site than our teachers and carry the loads of genuine carers for our families at important moments in their, and all our lives.

On behalf of the entire community, I thank all our ESO staff for their enormously enthusiastic work and support for us and hope they are both enjoying their role and understand how important they are to the life of the College.

Staff Professional Development Day

On Monday 7th September we had a student free day which to our staff is an important part of our Professional Development schedule for the year.

Throughout 2023 our Primary staff had a focus on trauma informed practice through the Berry Street organisation. Last Monday they continued their work with Anita Schneyder from Teams On Purpose further developing an understanding of the intricacies of what makes great organisations and great teams. Our Secondary staff undertook their Trauma Aware training through Connected Self Wellbeing Services. I am sure all families would agree these staff undertakings are crucial for the college to provide the absolute best educational service we can. We will continually strive for excellence in all we do and appreciate the support we receive from our families in supporting this endeavour.

Cocurricular Assembly

On Thursday morning we had the opportunity to celebrate our Yr 7-12 Winer Cocurricular assembly. These occasions are so especially important in the life of the College. As I explained to the staff and students the celebration is not simply an award ceremony for all those who perhaps have won an award, nor is it simply about saying thank you for all the staff and students who have participated in the myriad of opportunities that are provided within our community. The assembly and celebration are an opportunity to further develop a deep understanding of both WHO we are as St Paul’s but more importantly WHY we exist.

We are a catholic school in the Edmund Rice Tradition. Our four college values are Faith, Relationships, Excellence and Diversity. The assembly acknowledges the importance of the “R” word i.e. RELATIONSHIPS and the vital role we all play in each other’s lives. Cocurricular and sport activities all revolve around teams. They all reflect life itself with its successes and failures, difficulties and they help up build on the values we all need and value such as persistence, hard work, resilience, dignity, integrity, courage and most importantly humility. These values, as Sir Donald Bradman once said are totally compatible with pride, ambition, and competitiveness.

R U OK? day

I was particularly pleased that our cocurricular celebration assembly also occurred on the national R U OK? day. At St Paul’s, given what I have just said about the importance of relationships, means that we should be living, experiencing, and having an R U OK? day everyday of our lives. We should not have to even talk about it - it should simply be the very fabric of who we are and why we exist.

To let every person on this college site achieve their full potential, to know that they are loved and worthwhile is at the core of our existence. Our leadership model is that of servant leadership, as modelled by Jesus and Edmund Rice, and our care of each other must ensure that as much as humanly possible, students know there are people here that they can turn to without fear or failure, knowing they will be supported.

I thank all our staff, students and families who share this endeavour and who full-heartedly live the R U OK? mantra daily.

God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends and families of St Paul’s,

It is great to be back! While it seems like it has been considerable time since I left for some leave, time passes very quickly and getting back into the pace of school life is immediate!

I would like to thank the staff and particular our Leadership Teams for their ongoing diligence, dedication and commitment to all things St Paul’s. To Mr Josh Foulis and Mr Frank Ranaldo can I offer a special vote of thanks for their enormous work in their acting roles of Principal and Deputy respectively. At St Paul’s we are particularly blessed with awesome staff across every area and the amount of work that gets achieved for us to provide our absolute best for the students and families, I believe is second to none.

There has been an enormous amount of work undertaken and a great deal achieved over the last few months. The Middle Years Review is one example, and I thank staff, students and families for their active participation in this. As a result of that there is a great deal happening in terms of staffing, curriculum mapping and review as well as an analysis of all the physical resources that may need to be revisited or purchased.

I hope Mr Foulis enjoys his much-deserved break and holiday with his family.

Fathers’ Day

To all the fathers, male mentors, guardians, grandfathers and wonderful men in the lives of our students can I, on behalf of all the staff of St Paul’s, wish you a very special day on Sunday. I know that significant days like this one can be difficult times for some and the most special to others. So, to all I hope the day brings joy in some shape and form.  I know I am so blessed to have my 95-year-old father still with us and I know how much I still turn to him for advice and inspiration. Our celebrations at St Paul’s are always extremely wonderful and this week will be no exception.

Preparation for 2025

We may still only be halfway through term 3 of 2024 but in the background the College staff are working assiduously on preparing for 2025! So much goes on behind the scenes that it appears to be a bit like a duck on a pond – everything looks calm and smooth on the surface, while the feet are going flat out below!

We will grow again in student numbers next year and this will bring with it the need to appoint additional staff across all areas of school operations. This is a very time-consuming and sensitive process the leadership teams of the College handle with the utmost care and respect to all. Our students in the more senior years have been, and continued to be, counselled in all things subject selection and career advice which in turn may and does affect the staffing scenario and the analysis of what subjects need to be planned for 2025. We appreciate everyone’s patience in this regard and encourage all families to contact our staff should you have any questions or concerns.

There is so much happening and still to occur over the last month of the term and we encourage all students and families to be as involved as is possible given everyone’s busy lives.

Take Care, God Bless

Paul Belton

Respect and Women in our Community

Thursday 15 August marks an important day (a Day of Obligation) in the global Catholic Church, as it is the Solemnity of the Assumption, and I am grateful to Acting Deputy Principal Mr Frank Ranaldo, for his reflection in this edition of our Newsletter.

I am grateful to Fr John, Parish Priest of our Dernancourt Parish, who continues to partner with our school, devoting so much of his time and energy for the benefit of our students and staff. Fr John joined us for our Feast of the Assumption Mass, where his Homily challenged us to consider how we celebrate birthdays and Mother’s Day, as known examples of celebrating women who are special to us, and for all that they have done for us. In our Church, we similarly celebrate Mary and especially on the Feast of the Assumption.

While concluding the gathering after Mass, I asked students and staff to consider the term’s focus on ‘respect’, especially considering women in our world, our lives and our college community. We know that so much gender injustice and inequality remain throughout our world, and our St Paul’s community must be a true representation of what a respectful environment should look like.

Importantly, we must not consider the likes of Mary to be only supporting Christ, nor the likes of Nano Nagle in only supporting our founder Blessed Edmund Rice. Instead, respect for these women and all women in our world, demands acknowledgement of women’s individual journey, strength, bravery, successes, and challenges. Only when our world recognises women in such a way, will our world realise the equality deserving of all people. 

Again, we respect what we value. In this way, our challenge is to ensure that on the Feast of the Assumption and always, our respect for women is a model to our society and world.

Congratulations again, Mr Paul Belton!

Understanding that Paul Belton has received significant accolades from Catholic Education SA (locally) and Catholic Secondary Principals Association (CaSPA, nationally), it is my pleasure to advise that Paul has been awarded the ACEL SA Educational Leadership Medal, as one of three recipients in the state for 2024. Once again well-deserved and worth celebrating!

Congratulations, Paul! We look forward to welcoming Mr Belton upon his return from leave to begin Week 6, from Monday 26 August.

A New Semester Begins – Respecting person, place and space

Primary Years and Secondary assemblies welcomed students to the new Semester this week, including celebrations of academic success in secondary during Semester One; there was certainly lots to celebrate.

As communicated to families in my opening letter for Term 3, a very basic and essential focus on ‘respect’ was the centerpiece of both assemblies. Our Common Ground guides all that we say and do at St Paul’s College; founded on respect, this essential document obviously lends itself to our requirement for respect, in all places and at all times.

Put plainly, students were urged to note that one is either respectful, or disrespectful…there is no middle ground. Urging a most respectful approach to Term 3, I outlined what respect ‘looks like and sounds like’, making no assumptions and to ensure all members of students and staff can reflect on the positive behaviours they wish to emphasise in the term ahead.

Respect demonstrates value in the person, place or space that we are engaged with. Disrespect demonstrates that we do not value that person, place or space.

We are urged to continue this deep conversation on a most basic concept (respect), throughout our Term 3, noting that we can always strive for improvement.

Update: Middle Years Review

As our community has been informed, the college is undertaking a rigorous review of the Middle Years Learning Program, which is undertaken in Years 7, 8 and 9.

I am grateful to the significant number of families who responded to the parent-survey as part of this review, and likewise I thank the students in years 7-12 who all submitted feedback. The information from students, families and staff has been pivotal in reviewing the current model. Our Secondary Learning Council has been particularly important in analysing information and considering options that respond to the wants and needs of our community, as well as the ever-changing educational landscape and best practices for learning.

In coming weeks, I will share the outcome of the review with our community, as the college finalises the implementation process ahead of any changes beginning in 2025.

Communication with Staff

Communication between staff and families is a cornerstone of the care for students at the centre of St Paul’s College. For this reason, we always encourage families to liaise with staff to celebrate success, name challenges, or provide updates related to their young person(s) at the college.

It is therefore essential to clarify communication expectations to ensure families know when and how they can gain responses from staff, and so that staff can appropriately work within reasonable expectations, while supporting students.

Phone calls are always preferable and encouraged, noting our office ours are 8am – 4:30pm weekdays, during usual school days. A staff member will endeavor to phone back within 2 school days, if unavailable at the time a family phones the college.

Given that technology is at the centre of our world, we understand that communication via email or SEQTA may be preferred. Again, two school days for acknowledgement of receipt is our aim.

Importantly, families cannot expect communication with staff outside of 8am - 4:30pm. For this reason, families are asked to consider emergency responses if ever the need arises outside of those hours, rather than relying on the school after hours.

We thank all families for their ongoing partnership and communication. 

Blessing our Br Ambrose Treacy Building

Since the opening of our school year, we have been blessed to enjoy our remarkable Primary Years Building, nature play areas and open spaces surrounding the building. We have witnessed the creativity of learning maker-spaces and our STEAM room, the independence of breakout spaces and sensory areas, the collaboration centered on shared learning spaces, as well as opportunities to host our own Primary Years office spaces to welcome our youngest students and their families.

For that reason, it was especially welcome that last Friday 28 June, we held an Official Blessing of the Br Ambrose Treacy Building (our Primary Years Building).

Officially blessed and opened by Archbishop Patrick O’Regan, a blessing ceremony was held upstairs in our Year 6 classroom, vacated to welcome many dignitaries and invited guests, as well as students, staff, parents, members of our Parents and Friends Committee, and members of our School Advisory Council.

A great point of recognition, is that the blessing ceremony coincided with the Feast of St Peter and St Paul, our school’s namesake. A reading from St Paul echoed throughout those gathered, as perfectly befitting for the occasion.

Importantly, the blessing was filmed and live streamed into classrooms so that our primary years students could partake in this important aspect of their journey into a new space, which they have made their own.

Mr Dale Clarke and Ms Miranda McGlaughlin are to be congratulated for a relevant, meaningful liturgy to bless our Treacy Building, which involved students throughout. Led by Archbishop O’Regan, the blessing ceremony included students who were reading, dancing, and singing, indicative of St Paul’s placing students at the centre of all that we do.

Organisation by Mrs Kerrie Cook, Mrs Bec Woodcock, and Mr Tim Martin, as well as grounds and maintenance, likewise our ICT team, made it a most enjoyable celebration and recognition of achievement for what the college has achieved in recent years.

Amongst many Principals from Catholic Schools across the state, and Most Reverend Archbishop Patrick O’Regan, other guests mentioned included:

Mr Chris Woolley, Chief Executive Officer, Edmund Rice Education Australia Colleges Ltd, 
Mr Chris Leadbetter, EREA Regional Director of Education for WA and SA,  
Mr Vin Thomas, member of the EREA Colleges Ltd. Board 
Ms Catherine Greenley, Chair of our School Advisory Council, as well as many other past and present members of our School Advisory Council joining us today, 
Mr John Neate, Chair of the South Australian Commission for Catholic Schools,  
Dr Neil McGoran, Executive Director of Catholic Education South Australia,  
Mr Paul Belton, Principal of St Paul’s College,  
Mr James Stevens, Federal Member for Sturt 
Mrs Dana Wortley, State Member for Torrens

Our Treacy Building was blessed in the name of Br Ambrose Treacy, who successfully brought the Christian Brothers’ mission to Australia and New Zealand, and for whom we give thanks for his courage and passion; it is because he carried Edmund Rice’s mission, that we are a proud Catholic College in the Edmund Rice Tradition.

Mr Peter Judd – Final classes conclude after 44 years!

This week, and specifically Thursday 4 July, marks the final lessons for our college’s longest-serving teacher. Mr Peter Judd goes on leave for the remainder of the year; while we understand the opportunities we have to celebrate Mr Judd at year’s end (as students and then as staff), I can only imagine there is something special about concluding your final day of classes after 44 years of service.

Congratulations Peter, enjoy your leave, thank you, and we look forward to showing our gratitude most appropriately at year’s end.

Ending Term 2 with Gratitude

As we prepare for the upcoming school holidays, it is with thanks that I congratulate our community for the successes and the overcome of challenges, of Term 2.

To our families, I plead with you to discuss the term with your child(ren), beginning with highlights and working through areas for improvement. Formal Semester One Reports will assist these conversations somewhat, but the conversation itself will be the most important investment in the young person we cherish together.

May the school holidays be a point of connection, love and safety, as we look forward to the joy that Term 3 brings.

It is with great excitement that I share with the St Paul’s College community that our Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) has been approved and published via the Narragunawali website. This is a significant achievement and milestone for the College highlighting our ongoing commitment to reconciliation. Our college website has been updated with a link to our Reconciliation Action Plan that details the 14 actions we are committed to as a college community. It is truly wonderful to be able to share this with the community especially during NAIDOC week and in acknowledging the theme of ‘Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud.

I have outlined below a list of some of the actions taken so far by the College in working towards our commitment to reconciliation:

• Accurate identification of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and their country
• Regular sessions for our students to connect and participate in activities together
• Mentoring Workshops run by Naomi from Deadly Mentorz
• Art workshops run by parent Stephanie Singh
• Participation in the Thriving People CESA events – both primary and secondary students
• Weaving workshops run by Naomi from Deadly Mentorz
• Artist in Residence project - A mural painted with workshop ideas/story generated by students and led by artist Scott Rathman in 2023
• Student led assemblies acknowledging Reconciliation Week
• PC Programs/activities designed to explore reconciliation and NAIDOC week in depth with our students
• Performances by Craig Atkins both with our school band and as a concert for our students during NAIDOC week in 2024
• Presentation led by former First Nations student Nicholas Emili on The Voice and Constitutional change to our senior students in 2023
• Workshop design process with our students to create our first Indigenous Round Guernsey worn this term during Indigenous Round games and knockout matches in 2024
• Engagement of Uncle Moogy who delivered a smoking ceremony, welcome to country and speech during NAIDOC week in 2023
• Development of our College acknowledgment of country led by Naomi from Deadly Mentorz with our First Nations students
• Creation of the acknowledgment of country video
• Regular RAP meetings (twice per term)

The above list is not exhaustive; however, it indicates some of the ways we have engaged those within our community and those outside of our community to ensure we continue to work towards reconciliation.

I would also like to extend my heartfelt thanks to those staff and community members involved in the process to develop the RAP, but most specifically, to the RAP committee team; Christabella Iuliano, Claudia Lamberto, Brandon Jackson-Martin, Campbell Burton, Nicholas Gillard, Stephanie Singh, Paul Belton and Frank Ranaldo. We are looking forward to continuing to work towards our RAP deliverables and ensuring that reconciliation actions are embedded in our ongoing and everyday practices here at St Paul’s.

Click to read the Reconciliation Action Plan

Alex Harrison - Head of Learning Diversity

EREA Charter Forum: Renewing the EREA Charter and EREA Touchstones

Alongside Senior Leaders from across Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA), Mr Frank Ranaldo (Acting Deputy Principal, St Paul’s College) and myself had the pleasure to attend the EREA National Charter Forum in Wollongong last week.

The EREA Charter, available HERE, guides all schools in the quest towards greater authenticity as Catholic schools in the Edmund Rice tradition, challenging each community to be faithful to the four touchstones of EREA: Liberating Education, Gospel Spirituality, Inclusive Community, Justice and Solidarity. 

The Forum offered Senior Leaders (from EREA Colleges and EREA Flexible Learning Centres) the opportunity to meaningfully contribute to the renewal of the EREA Charter.

Informed by feedback already gained from many students, staff and leaders across the country, the purpose of this Charter Forum was to consolidate feedback and refine the Charter, which drives the mission of our College.

Practically, you will see the touchstone symbols throughout our college, they drive appraisals and reviews for senior leaders at our college, inform our Strategic Plan, focus formation for our School Advisory Council, and provide the basis of EREA’s School Renewal Process every 5 years. While these are only some examples of how our Charter and Touchstones come to life at St Paul’s, they demonstrate the significance of the Charter and therefore the current Charter renewal, in the life of our community.

Contemporary and refreshed Touchstones and EREA Charter were key hopes from the Forum in Wollongong and our community will remain connected to any developments relating to the mission of EREA that so proudly informs the mission of St Paul’s College as a Catholic school in the Edmund Rice Tradition.

Welcome Mr Patrick Harmer, College Principal

Already communicated to community this week, it is a pleasure to add my welcome to Mr Patrick Harmer, St Paul’s College Principal from 2025. While Mr Chris Woolley, CEO of EREA Colleges Ltd, has provided the most representative summary of Patrick’s appointment in his letter to our community (available here) I add the excitement shared by College leadership and staff for Patrick’s appointment.

Upon his return from Long Service Leave in August, Mr Paul Belton will undertake a thorough handover with Mr Harmer who will have opportunities to be onsite on occasions this year, as he familiarises himself with our community.

Congratulations and welcome to Mr Patrick Harmer. Welcome to St Paul’s College!

Josh Foulis - Acting Principal

Leadership Charter of St Paul’s College

Synonymous with our community, Our Common Ground (click HERE to open) is a document driving personal responsibility to our college values and naming the expectations shared by all members of our community.

Adding depth to our Common Ground, all staff with a position of leadership (teaching and non-teaching) have collaborated and created the St Paul’s College Leadership Charter. This Charter identifies what our community can expect from leaders and leadership teams alike, providing clarity and accountability via this public-facing document.

In January of this year, all leaders on college staff engaged with a Leadership Day at the Grange Surf Life Saving Club, Outlining requirements and goals for the year was followed by professional learning around effective teams. The final component of the day started a six month journey in collaboratively developing this Leadership Charter, which is proudly launched to our staff and community this week.

Leadership development and efficacy is a pivotal component of the college’s strategic plan and this Leadership Charter provides clarity and accountability for the benefit of our leaders and community.

St Paul’s College is proud to launch our inaugural Indigenous round cocurricular uniforms. These unique guernseys, designed by our First Nations students, will be proudly worn over the next two rounds in AFL, Soccer, Basketball, and Netball.

Our First Nations students have been dedicated to developing these designs throughout the past semester. Students from both Primary and Secondary schools gathered to explore examples of guernseys and Aboriginal Art symbols, which were sourced by Brandon Jackson-Martin, our First Nations Education Support Officer. They carefully selected symbols that resonated with their personal experiences and the spirit of the College, incorporating these elements into their designs.

The resulting artwork tells the story:

“Our community sits under the stars that shine over Kaurna land. As a tight-knit community, we bond together at the meeting place. Each of us is unique, bringing our own shining light, having come a long way to be here. The river represents Dry Creek, with each student represented by their own unique symbol, showcasing their belonging and connection to the St Paul’s community.”

This incredible design, which truly reflects the voices of our students, would not have been possible without the contributions of Nick Gillard, Brandon Jackson-Martin, Claudia Lamberto, Alexandra Harrison, Stephanie Singh, the St Paul’s RAP committee, and, of course, our talented students.

“This initiative displays our commitment to promoting reconciliation at St Paul’s College, fostering a deeper understanding and respect for First Nations cultures among our entire school community,” said Campbell Burton, First Nations Key Teacher. “I look forward to seeing the guernseys being worn with pride during future co-curricular rounds.”

Families and School – on the same journey for success

A highlight of the past fortnight has been Learning Conversations that involved families and young people discussing learning, school experience and wellbeing.

While perhaps obvious, wherever families positively engage school community and staff, their child(ren) is more likely to experience connection to the school community, trust and relationship with teachers, and success (whatever that looks like for each student). For this reason, St Paul’s College expresses heartfelt thanks to families who booked and attended Learning Conversations to begin Term 2.

As a staff of St Paul’s College, we pride ourselves on proactive communication with families, especially wherever there have been successes or challenges. Of course, these conversations are centered on the child and student, meaning they are deeply important and often emotional conversations.

As we all know and appreciate, healthy conversations remain respectful and focused on the care that family and school have for the young person. There are opportunities to respectfully raise concerns and it is important that families and staff can talk freely with one another; however, the college continues to seek the trust and confidence of families that we always act in the best interest of all young people.

Above all, St Paul’s continues to prioritise partnership with families and seeks families to continue trusting that all decisions are made in the best interest of you and your child(ren).

Catholic School Parents Australia (CSPA) offer an array of information and resources for families around supporting their young people and the school, noting that families can and must support both parties, not one or the other.

As one body of work completed by CSPA, you may also find interest in the information at Gearing Up for Parent Engagement in Student Learning. Here, you can find resources for connecting with schools and teachers, as well as young people, as they navigate Primary or Secondary education.

From the perspective of St Paul’s College, there are some crucial point we encourage for all families:

Do not hesitate to communicate: sometimes a ‘wait and see’ approach to your child’s concern may seem appropriate – it isn’t! Please communicate early so that any concerns do not compound.
Phone and in-person is most effective: while it is sometimes appropriate to use email or SEQTA, emotion can often be confused in these modes of communication, making phone calls and in-person conversations most effective.
School staff are asked to communicate proactively and often: A college directive to staff is for them to communicate with families often, especially where there are challenges or concerns. Understanding that families are busy, we commit to this communication.
Staff don’t make things up: great work and effort goes into supporting students through moments of challenge, perhaps poor decisions, and moments of success. Like anybody, we make mistakes; however, we do ask for implicit trust from families in the first instance, whereby staff and families are the adults best equipped to support young people through challenge.

Thanks again for the ongoing connection of families with our college and its staff; may this continue as we strive to support our young people.

We are thrilled to share that Mr Paul Belton (College Principal) has received 2024 ‘Leadership Excellence’ Award, presented by Catholic Education South Australia. Mr Belton's dedication to Catholic education spans an impressive 45 years, including 10 years of exceptional leadership as Principal of St Paul's College!

Mr Belton is known for his unwavering commitment, humility, student-centred approach and strong Catholic ethos. His commitment to fostering an environment where every student can thrive spiritually, academically, and personally is exemplary.

Under Mr Belton's leadership, St Paul’s College has seen remarkable growth and transformation, from significantly increasing enrolments to fostering a co-educational environment. His dedication has ensured improved student outcomes and state-of-the-art facilities, while maintaining our proud mission as a Catholic College in the Edmund Rice Tradition.

Beyond this, Mr Belton's influence is evident in the stories of students whose lives he has impacted, the staff he has inspired, and the community he has strengthened.

We congratulate Paul on receiving this well-deserved recognition for his outstanding leadership and devoted career.

Mr Belton’s successful nomination is available HERE and provides a summary of his extraordinary leadership.

Mr Paul Belton, Principal is proud to announce St Paul's College is an official partner of the Adelaide 36ers and is an official High Performance Academy school.

“Basketball is an extremely popular sport at St Paul’s College.  Through access to the 36ers club’s resources and knowledge throughout the year, this partnership will deliver outstanding opportunities to our students to develop in the sport.” Mr Belton said

The College will benefit from exclusive access to coaches, training sessions, coach education, leadership engagements, match day experiences and clinics.

Adelaide 36ers GM of Social Impact & Community Ross Wait said “the High-Performance Program is a fantastic resource for schools to improve their skills both on and off the court and is thrilled St Paul’s has joined for 2024.”

“The High-Performance Program is a great tool for the schools involved to connect with the club and use our skills and connections to improve their basketball and education programs,” Mr Wait said.

Nicholas Gillard, Sport & Co-Curricular Development Coordinator said, “Our community is so excited about the opportunity to be a part of this High-performance program with the 36ers. Our students and families will get to experience high level coaching and leadership opportunities. We are thrilled to be a part of the 36ers family and are so excited to see where the program will take us.” 

Dear Families and Friends of St Paul’s

Week 10 and our last newsletter for Term 1 2024. As time flies so quickly, we should constantly remind ourselves to make the most of every moment, take some time to slow down and enjoy the beauty of everything around us.

Easter time is certainly a wonderful reminder of all that. The joy and hope of the Easter season encourages us all to become more aware of the good in our lives and encourages us to be more positive than what the world around us shows.

Easter Liturgies

Last Thursday and this Tuesday we were blessed as a community to share in several wonderful school liturgies. As a catholic school in the Edmund Rice tradition, we know that this season is the most important and the most relevant in our liturgical calendar. The journey from the cross of Calvary on Good Friday, where Jesus gave us the greatest ever example of sacrifice and love through to the Resurrection story of hope on Easter Sunday enables us to reflect on what is important in our lives and to keep our lives very much “in perspective.”

The College Stations of the Cross liturgy on Holy Thursday was a beautiful and poignant reflection and the Resurrection liturgy in the gym on Tuesday another faith-filled experience for all our staff and students. In addition to these the two lovely Primary liturgies again highlight what a beautifully reflective and celebratory community we have here at St Paul’s.

Multi-Cultural and Multi-Faith Community

All families and friends of St Paul’s know and understand we are very much a multi-cultural and multi-faith community. In fact, it is our absolute strength. We often speak of the forty-seven different languages spoken in our family homes, but we do not often speak of the many and varied faith backgrounds our families have. The beauty of this is in the fact that every single major world religion such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Sikhism all have one major belief in common. This belief revolves around the way we treat each other and quite simply is “To treat others exactly the same way you wish to be treated.” Surely this is the core ingredient to a successful and loving community.

From a multi-faith point of view, our aim at St Paul’s is quite simple. We hope that every student that comes through our gates and joins our Catholic community grows in a deeper understanding and commitment to their own faith and grows in a deeper respect for our Catholic faith. The journey of a student at St Paul’s should allow each student and their family the opportunity to express who they are and participate in our community celebrations to the point where this spiritual growth occurs.

Term 2 Leadership

As has been communicated to all our families, I will be taking some Long Service Leave across Term 2 and part of term 3. During this time Mr Josh Foulis (our current Deputy Principal) will become Principal and we are fortunate and pleased to have Mr Frank Ranaldo (currently Deputy Principal at Rostrevor) join our community as Deputy Principal for Terms 2 and 3. We look forward to welcoming Frank and I know our community will offer both Josh and frank the continued support that we all experience.

On behalf of our staff can I offer everyone an incredibly happy and restful break, if you are having one and our most sincere thanks for the wonderful relationships we have across each dimension of the College.

Take care, God bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends and families of St Paul’s,

Term One is marching on, and our community life remains as busy and energetic as always. Since our last newsletter, we have had a much-needed long weekend, students have sat for their NAPLAN tests across the College, we have celebrated Neuro Diversity Week, World Down Syndrome Day, the beginning of Ramadan for our Muslim students and today, Harmony Day.

This is all in addition, of course, to the in-class activities, excursions and co-curricular events that take place every week. It also does not take into consideration all the work that is going on “behind the scenes.”

EREA Principal’s National Charter Strategy Forum

On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, I had the privilege of attending a national gathering of my fellow EREA Principals in the Barossa Valley. We gathered together with the senior leaders of the EREA governing bodies to review and discuss our Charter. The Charter is the document that contains the four EREA Touchstones (Gospel Spirituality, Inclusive Community, Liberating Education and Justice and Solidarity,) that together with our own St Paul’s four core values (Faith, Relationships, Excellence and Diversity), form the very foundation of who we are as a Catholic College in the Edmund Rice tradition and the education we are committed to for all our students and families.

These experiences are not only inspirational but also transformational in that as a collective the entire Australian Edmund Rice family recommits itself to the type of education we want for all our students regardless of their race, culture, religion, socio-economic status, intelligence, sporting ability etc. In other words, all families who want to embrace this type of ethos and charism are not only welcome but also valued and included. We are indeed blessed to be a part of this national family, and in fact, a worldwide family whose aim is to educate students in such a way that they know their responsibility is to assist in making the world a better place for all.

Harmony Day

Given we are part of an international family it is most appropriate that we acknowledge and celebrate Harmony Day together. At St Paul’s our sincere hope is that we live in harmony with all our students and families. We believe that our diversity should not only be welcomed but very much included in all we do. This week, with Ramadan beginning for our Muslim families, we hope that they all feel included, valued, and appreciated for who they are and what their faith brings to our community. We hope that through the celebrations and spiritual liturgies we hold not only help all our students appreciate our Catholic faith but also reinforce their commitment to their own faith and spiritual journey.

Our God is a God of love, of inclusion, of oneness, of truth and is not only good but beautiful too. These are universal values and beliefs that belong to all the great religions of the world. They are the very deepest things we share, and we have every right to hold each other accountable for those beliefs.

We are who we are at St Paul’s because of that, and it is what we genuinely hope we are a shining light in our broader society.

As our Christian celebration of Easter approaches, we will hold several different liturgical celebrations from Palm Sunday to the Stations of the Cross and to the resurrection of Jesus following Easter. These will not only enhance the knowledge of our faith community but will also celebrate how fortunate we all are to be a part of such an inclusive family of cultures and faith backgrounds. It is a blessing to be a part of this great community.

God Bless

Paul Belton

It is with great excitement that we announce and congratulate 2023 Stage 2 Visual Art-Art student Ali Najafi on his work being displayed in the 2024 SACE Art Show. Ali was one of 129 Year 12 students in the state to have their work selected for the exhibition. His artwork entitled ‘Flying Free’ depicts the life cycle of an eagle sketched in graphite on paper.  Ali is a talented and skilled artist and his attention to detail is remarkable. 

The exhibition will be open to the public at Light Square Gallery - Adelaide College of Arts 39 Light Square Adelaide. 19 March to 12 April Mon - Fri 9am - 4pm Saturdays 10am - 3pm.

Congratulations to Ali on this enormous achievement!

Sarah Fedele - Leader of Learning the Arts

Dear Families and Friends of St Paul’s,

We are currently in the Catholic Church’s season of Lent. This began last Wednesday when we celebrated Ash Wednesday. The Primary Years were wonderfully led by the Year 4 students in Callan Hall and the Middle and Senior Years students all attended a moving liturgy in our main courtyard. The liturgies reminded us all of the importance of this season in both turning away from the things we do that do not help anyone and turn towards a more positive, helpful and better version of ourselves. In one way it allows us to try to be perfect! When our friends ask why we are doing something positively unusual we can say it because it is lent! Everyone will accept that!

In preparation for Ash Wednesday the College Executive cooked pancakes for breakfast for all the primary students on Shrove Tuesday. This was great fun, and we are sure very much appreciated by all the students. The idea was that of the Primary Religious Identity Leader Ms Miranda McGlaughlin.

College Tour

Our first College Tours for 2024 took place last Thursday (for potential 2026 Yr 7 students) and on Friday (for potential 2026 Reception students.) Both occasions were extremely well attended and for the first time we had the opportunity to hold the Primary Tour in the new primary building. That was more than enough to have parents sign up without delay! It is so pleasing to see so many parents keen to enroll their sons and daughters with us and become a part of this special community.

Teaching and Learning

This week has seen several significant teaching and learning experiences take place right across the College. One of these is the PAT M and PAT R testing regime. These tests, while not the be all and end all of assessment, provide us with an excellent base line to which we can compare improvement in literacy and numeracy across several years. Tracking student improvement is our core business, essential to us knowing that our programs and curricula delivery are the best they can be. Our aim, as always, is to enable every student to reach their full potential and move on to whatever postschool pathway they desire. Baseline testing like these and others like NAPLAN assists greatly with this.

Students have also been on Year 8 geography excursions and the Year 12 Outdoor Education class has been on a surfing camp. Our summer season co-curricula program is also in full swing with hundreds of students and families enjoying the competitiveness of several sports. These activities provide our staff and students with the opportunity to further develop positive relationships outside normal classroom situations.

The 2024 year has begun extremely well, and we look forward to building on these experiences throughout the year.

Take care, God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Families and friends of St Paul’s,

On behalf of the entire, and growing, St Paul’s staff can I extend our most sincere welcome to the 2024 academic year. We have had a tremendous start to the year, and we hope everyone, particularly the new students and their families, have settled in well. From what we see and what we have heard this is certainly the case.

Our numbers: staff, students, and buildings (!!) have increased but the most pleasant part and our most sacred part is that the sense of community and the sense of family that permeates throughout the College hasn’t diminished in any way at all. It only gets better! The Primary Family picnic at the end of week one is a classic example of this. Thanks to our Head of Primary, Mrs Marianne Loftus and all the Primary staff for their work preparing for that great welcome.

While speaking of the Primary, Day One of the year will go down in our history as one of our proudest moments with the opening of the new primary building. This wonderful facility will be the home of our whole primary school for decades to come and it is an amazing centre of learning. As is discussed more fully in Marianne Loftus’ article (Head of Primary) the families, staff and students are so grateful for the opportunity of being the first ones to have access to it. We look forward to sharing this with you all and to an official opening later in the term or year.

New Staff: With our continued growth we have had the opportunity to welcome another 30 new staff! A full list is provided in this newsletter and as you will see they represent all areas of the College and indicate our commitment to supporting our students through the significant increases in areas including Inclusive Ed., Counselling Services, Co-curricular, ICT Services, Grounds, and Maintenance in addition to the additional teachers. We are blessed by the exceptional quality and amazing skill sets that the new staff have, and we look forward to helping them enjoy their professional and personal journeys with us.

Walking Our Common Ground: Each year we adopt a theme that provides additional focus on areas of significance and allows us to share with our students and families the strategic aims of the College. Over the last few years, each classroom has had a copy of “Our Common Ground” prominently displayed. The purpose of this document, in one way, sets out to replace a plethora of rules and regulations with a basic set of values that both staff and students undertake to commit to each other. As an example, we all hold each other accountable for showing and living “respect” for every member of the community. We will explain this in more detail at all our parent and family information sessions, inviting families to come on this journey with us.

Walking Our Common Ground is extended to our entire community and will enable all of us to not only talk the talk but to walk the walk more significantly. In addition to this, we know and constantly acknowledge that our beautiful College is built on the sacred lands of the Kaurna people, and we are so grateful for their great commitment to the land over many centuries. The development and implementation of our RAP (Reconciliation Action Plan) this year will provide additional focus on this area also.

Significant Events: Already this year we have held several significant events. Appropriately the most significant has been our Opening Year Mass, celebrated by Fr Joshua Nash and which was attended by all students R-12 and all staff. It was a beautiful celebration of our faith and for our community.

This week we had the first of our Rites of Passage Ceremonies for the year with the Rite of Welcome for the Reception students and families. During this we not only offer our blessing for the beginning of a thirteen-year journey with us, but we also present a special plant (this year a Blueberry plant) to signify the growth that we will share with these very special children and their families.

2023 Yr. 12 Results: Our Year 12 results at the end of last year were particularly pleasing and a very just reward and reflection of all the dedicated and committed efforts of both the staff and the students. There is another detailed report within this newsletter outlining the results, but I would certainly like to congratulate the student and their families on those successes. It is also most important that I congratulate and thank our staff – right across the College from Primary to Senior Secondary for their outstanding efforts. In particular, I would like to thank Mr Matthew Muscat (Head of Teaching and Learning in the Secondary School,) the Secondary Learning Council, all the Leaders of Learning and all subject teachers for their tireless efforts in ensuring all the students reach their full potential. 100% SACE completion for the fifth consecutive year is one of many measures of this wonderful success story.

We hope that all students, families, and staff have a wonderful 2024. St Paul’s is a very special place. It is a wonderful community a wonderfully diverse and accepting community. A community that will work together as one big family allowing us to Walk Our Common Ground for the good of all.

God Bless

Paul Belton

We acknowledge the collective work that has been undertaken by students, families, and our entire staff throughout their academic, spiritual and personal journey during their time at St Paul’s College  We wish them every success for the future. 

Paul Belton

Principal

Dear friends and families of St Paul’s

Well, we have made it through yet another year. That is not meant to sound like a struggle but rather an expression of gratitude for everyone in our St Paul’s community for their continued love and support of the great college. As in all schools and walks of life we have had our share of tough times this year but overwhelmingly we have had an awesome year, full of amazing celebrations and stories that we will share forever.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have held some beautiful liturgies and celebrations. The year 12 graduation, the year 10-11 senior presentation and celebration evening, year 9 Rite of Passage, Reception-year 2 final liturgy and presentations, year 3-6 liturgy and presentation together with the year 6 graduation dinner and finally our year 7-9 community celebration evening. Every single one of these was beautiful, representing so much of the St Paul’s we can all be proud of. We must thank the Catholic Identity Team (Mr Joe Hicks, Mrs Maria Girolamo-Corbo and Ms Miranda McGlaughlin) for all the preparatory work for the liturgical aspects and Mrs Bonie Phillips, Mrs Marianne Loftus, and the primary leadership team, as well as Messer’s Josh Foulis, Matthew Muscat, John Grave and all staff who significantly contributed to the ceremonies. Thank you so much.

At this time of the year, we also say farewell and welcome to several staff. Several farewells include staff who have been here for many years, some just this year and the welcoming extends to staff from all occupations and into all different areas of the College. We still have not finished yet either.

A summary of both groups is as follows.

Staff who are leaving:

• Craig Coomblas - Teacher for 24 years
• Rose Sgro - Resource Centre Coordinator for 17½ years
• Libby Verrall - Teaching & Learning Coordinator for 8 years
• Kristynn Ross - Teacher/Religious Identity Leader Primary Years for 7 years
• Grazia Lustri - Teacher for 2½ years
• Joe Hicks - APRIM for 2 years
• Emily White - Teacher for 2 years
• David Knight - Teacher for 2 years
• Anastasia Stavropoulos - Teacher for 1½ years
• Daniel Shepley - Teacher for 1 year
• Loren Harrison-Garton - Teacher for 1 year
• Tara Marshall - Teacher for 1 year
• Anh Nguyen - Teacher for 1 year
• Amelia Honner - Teacher for 1 year
• Deanna Benetti - Teacher for 1 year
• Hamish Morelli - Teacher and college counsellor for 5 months

Details of new staff to the College in 2024:

Primary Years Teaching Positions

• Eleni Vassiliou – St David’s Parish School
• Tessa Baron - Elizabeth Vale Primary School

Middle and Senior Years Teaching Positions

• Emily Cooymans – Sacred Heart College
• Samuel Martin – St Michael’s College
• Daniel Torode – Rostrevor College
• Maria-Grazia Vicario – new Graduate
• Marie La Dru – St Columba College
• Trisha Harding – Our Lady of Hope
• Cristina Maiese – St Ignatius College

Middle and Senior Years Leadership Positions

• Anthony Farina, Head of Secondary - CBC
• Carlo Librino, Leader of Wellbeing (Middle School) – Gleeson College
• James Keating, Leader of Wellbeing (Senior School) – Nazareth Catholic College
• Leanne Savill, Music & Performance Coordinator - Xavier College
• Dale Clarke, Acting APRIM – Sacred Heart – Sacred Heart College

Secondary Years Inclusive Education ESO Positions

• Deanna Dimasi
• Abbey Hodgson

While the departure of many of our staff is a sad occurrence, most are moving on to new challenges and some promotional positions in other schools. As a community, we offer them our most heartfelt thanks for their contribution to our community and wish them and their loved ones all the best for the next chapter of their lives.

Likewise, we welcome all those new staff into the St Paul’s family and sincerely hope their time with us is both rewarding both personally and professionally.

Merry Christmas

On behalf of the whole staff, I wish every family the absolute best for the upcoming Christmas season. May the real meaning of Christmas, i.e., the birth of our Savior Jesus, warm your hearts and bring you the joy and hope that this beautiful time is meant to do.

We very much look forward to a well-earned break and even more to welcoming you all back for the 2024 year.

Take care and God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends and families of St Paul’s,

Over the course of the last two weeks the College has held several events that truly reflect who we are and that indicate how diligent the College approaches our Professional Development and preparation for 2024.

Monday 24 November was a PD Day for the staff and our Primary team completed their fourth and final day of BESM (Berry Street Education Model) training. This has been a huge success and so very beneficial in helping all the staff develop an understanding of the theory and formulate implementation strategies that will assist all students. While the program is centered around trauma and its impact on children the skills and strategies developed will be beneficial to all.

The Middle and Senior Years staff were provided with a Resource center update and the transfer to a the new “Oliver” system. We would like to thank Ms Kate Haskey and Ms Yolanda Rogers for this terrific presentation and their fantastic efforts throughout the year. This presentation was then linked to a discussion about the connection between Inquiry Based Learning and resources which the staff all found extremely valuable. After this time our staff (who have been given a draft timetable for 2024 – much earlier than normal) were given the opportunity to commence preparation for their relevant learning areas. 

Transition Day

Friday of last week was our 2024 Transition Day for all the new and continuing Yr 6 into Yr 7 students. It is a tremendous opportunity for new students to meet and mingle with our current Yr 6 students and to find out much needed information regarding our facilities, courses and also to complete a couple of learning tasks for us so that we can adequately prepare for all the needs of all the students. We are extremely well served on this day by our newly elected College leaders for 2024, who gave up their Yr 11 exam study day, and all the staff.

As I explained to the students, even when we were a College of about 600 students, they came to St Paul’s from nearly 90 different schools. Not only does this highlight, yet again, the diversity of St Paul’s, but also explains the significance of days such as this one. To see all the smiling faces leave the College at the end of the day clearly indicated it was a huge success.

Year 9 Rite of Passage Celebration

On Monday evening of this week, we held our Year 9 Rite of Passage ceremony and dinner. Again, this was a tremendous evening, so very well attended by families and so valuable for continuing to build on our terrific relationship with our students, staff and families. There were three parts to the evening. Firstly, and as always, most importantly we had a shorty liturgy presented by our Senior religious identity Leaders in Mr Joe Hicks and Mrs Maria Girolamo-Corbo. Secondly was a presentation in regard to what a Rite of Passage is, (a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another, involving a significant change of status in society,) and the significance of this in relation to the history of St Paul’s, who we are as individuals and how the school, families and students need to work together to assist these wonderful young children across “The Bridge of Adolescence” which can be very tricky and challenging at different times.

Exams and Learning Expo

Our year 12s have finished their exams last week, our Year 11s are finishing theirs this week and next Wednesday we will have our end of Semester 2 Middle Years Learning Expo. This will round out and highlight the major achievements and learnings of our Middle Years students and we encourage every family to be present to celebrate that.

We are in Week 6 of term 4, so much is happening and there is still so much to achieve, celebrate and accomplish. The Year 12 Graduation this Thursday being one of those.

Take care, God Bless

Paul Belton

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

Dear Families and Friends of St Pauls.

Welcome back to Term Four!

How quickly is our year disappearing? Term four is a whirlwind of activity as we start a series of events that mark significant milestones in the lives of many of our students and their families. For our Year 12 students it is the last week of formal lessons, the last ones after thirteen years of education. For some families, having travelled halfway around the world to provide an opportunity for these students to have a better life, it is a remarkable story of sacrifice and success. We could not imagine what this journey could have been like, but we are certainly very proud and privileged to have been a part of their story.

Education is the most powerful key to unlocking a future that is full of hope and potential. This week we have held our Senior Years Community Celebration event and have acknowledged the Class of 2023 and the outstanding efforts of so many students across a wide range of areas. These include academic endeavour, co-curricular excellence, Christian Service Learning, vocational learning, and community involvement. We share these significant achievements with our families, and we congratulate the parents for all their long-lasting commitment to their children.

Today we held our Year 12 family breakfast, prepared by the staff for the students and their families and we celebrated this finale in the best way possible with our Graduation Mass. Again, this celebration is extremely emotional for the families and as a staff, we provide a guard of honour for our students as a sign of their importance and our love for them. So we offer them the very best of luck with the upcoming exams and in their very bright futures.

Despite the first of these “endpoints” for the term, we remain enormously busy with the myriad of activities and learning experiences that take place daily. We have Primary swimming, Parent/teacher interviews and an upcoming Year 7 camp. Enough to keep us on our toes.

Old Scholars Reunions

Last Friday evening we welcomed back many old scholars from the graduating years ending in a “3”. It was extremely well attended, and it was an absolute pleasure to welcome back some former students who graduated 40 years ago and had not previously returned to their old stomping ground! So many felt a great sense of pride in how the College was looking and many stories of their school days abounded. That time period was also represented by some St Paul’s ladies, who had come to the College for their Year 12 studies. We express our thanks to the Marketing, Enrolments and Communications Department, Mrs Rachel Elgar, Mrs Tania Stone, and Mrs Kirsty Casey for all their work in preparing for this celebration.

2024 Student Leadership

In the first two weeks of this term, we have also elected and announced the incoming senior student leadership team for 2024.

We congratulate William M who will become the 2024 College Captain and Julian S who will be the College Vice-Captain. We are sure that these two fine young people will lead the student body with much distinction in 2024.

Joining them in the Prefect team will be:

• Dally House Captain – Kye R
• Gleeson House Captain – Dante B
• Marlow House Captain – Jack D
• Nagle House Captain – Ryan S
• O’Loughlin House Captain – Christian K

Congratulations to the team and we all look forward to them providing outstanding leadership to and for the College.

God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends and Families of St Paul’s,

As Term 3 ends we once again reflect on the myriad of activities and learning opportunities that the College has undertaken to assist students over the last few months. The education world is constantly evolving, and like the world of information technology we need to constantly keep up with the latest initiatives that present themselves to us. One such example is the evolving world of artificial intelligence (A.I.) While it all seems scary, it is, and can be, a technology that assists students with their learning if used correctly. Like all aspects of the modern educational world our staff will engage with it and use its capabilities when and where we should.

While our education world is constantly changing, some things about life here at St Paul’s must never change. Who we are as a Catholic school in the Edmund Rice tradition with our core values of Faith, Relationships, Excellence and Diversity will always remain. We will continue to build our beautiful community on the strength of our quality relationships, across all dimensions of college life. This was reinforced recently when the college, once again, employed the services of Greg Mitchell, an expert in human behaviour, to address our students and staff about all things working together and understanding each other, regardless of diversity or difference.

Subject Selection and Staffing for 2024

Term 3 is hectic as we both continue our normal educational activities while we also plan and develop all the necessary infrastructure for 2024. A major part of this is to review all of our subject offerings, develop new curriculum areas, and work with students and families through an extensive counselling process. This enables students to select and study the subjects they really would like to and what they need for future study and employment.

This then requires us to make sure we have the right staffing structures and physical resources to deliver on this, and the right timetable to fit everything in. Our Learning Teams and Leadership Teams work extremely hard to make sure this all falls into place and Mr Michael White does an enormous amount of work preparing out timetable for next year.

We have yet to complete all of our necessary staffing for 2024, with some areas of expertise becoming harder to fill, for the first time in my experience. There is no doubt that teaching is becoming more difficult, and many teachers are leaving the profession. We are fortunate here at St Paul’s that high quality staff are still applying to work in our community. This is not the case everywhere, so we are grateful for that. We will inform the community of all the staffing changes during the course of Term 4.

New Primary Building

The new primary precinct is coming along quite well. Our builders Sarah Constructions are working very diligently to make sure it is complete and available for us to move to prior to the end of the academic year. This has been and continues to be a significant challenge, but with better weather now we all hope that things can speed up a little to allow the completion date to be achieved. It is an extremely exciting development, and we look forward to showing this off to the community early in the new year.

2024 College Prefects

Another extremely important part of our preparation for 2024 is the process of selecting our College Captain, Vice-Captain, and Prefect Team. It is particularly pleasing to again have many students apply for these positions, knowing full well they can and will make a significant contribution to our college life next year. We are currently interviewing these students, and also allowing staff and students to have a vote. We will then take the successful team away on a camp for a few days for some intensive leadership training.

On behalf of all the staff I would like to express our thanks to all our families for their continued support throughout the term and, for those who can, we hope you have a great break.

Take Care

God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends and families of St Paul’s

School Board – School Advisory Council – Council Chair

Over recent years with a number of changes occurring within Edmund Rice Education Australia and its governance of schools across the country our School Board changed its name and structure to a School Advisory Council (SAC.)

In a specific sense this meant that our school is not a legal identity in itself but rather governed by EREA. This changes the nature and purpose of the Council to that of an advisory nature. This does not demean the Council’s purpose and effectiveness as opposed to removing liability for the College.

Over the last two years the EREA governance structure has changed also and while the Trustees of Edmund Rice Australia (TEREA) have the ultimate responsibility for all EREA entities we as St Paul’s are immediately governed by Edmund Rice Colleges Ltd. This entity includes all the Colleges in SA, Qld, WA, and Tas. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is Mr Christopher Wooley who is based in Queensland.

Recently our school Advisory Council has changed Chairs. Previously we had an old scholar, Mr Chris Edge, as our Chair. The Edge family (4 boys attended St Paul’s) have made an exceptional contribution to the College and Chris himself was an amazing support to both me personally and the College during some difficult and challenging times. I cannot thank Chris enough for his guidance and support over his time as Chair. He stayed on much longer than he was supposed to and saw us through the completion of the MacKillop building and into our new era as a co-educational College.

The new Chair of the SAC is Mrs. Catherine Greenley. Catherine is a former National Director of Governance in EREA and has always been a huge supporter and advocate for St Paul’s. We are delighted she has taken on this responsibility. The official letter of appointment from our CEO Mr Chris Wooley can be found here.

National Referendum

As everyone would be aware Australia is in the middle of a national debate regarding the upcoming Referendum. As a College, we would not normally get involved in politics and represent any particular side of a debate. This referendum is no different in that it is generating much debate and controversy given the extremely sensitive nature of the debate. Our EREA CEO has forwarded a letter to all EREA College Ltd schools and that can be found here.

R U OK Day

This week is the national R U OK Day. This is a tremendous initiative and so especially important not only at St Paul’s but also in the broader community. We pride ourselves here at St Paul’s on our pastoral care for our students, but occasionally we feel that even so, it is never enough. Life becomes more challenging for all of us, staff, students, and families. We do our absolute best work when our three-way partnership (student, family, and school) is not only on the same page but are incredibly open and honest in sharing all relevant information that can help us all support students.

Hence, we do hope that everyone is ok, and that students and families have confidence in the College in its total commitment to supporting each other through any difficulties. Please talk to us.

Take Care, God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends and families of St Paul’s,

Another fortnight, another endlessly busy schedule of events and wonderful experiences for our students and our staff.

End of Winter Co-curricular

We have now completed our winter co-curricular sport season. This year our numbers of teams and activities have grown, providing even more opportunities for student to both compete against other schools and become involved in activities of personal interest.

On behalf of the whole College community, I cannot thank enough the absolutely formidable work done by Mr Nick Gillard (Sports and Cocurricular Development Co-Ordinator) for his tireless efforts to keep this important domain of our college life operating. Nick steps into coaching mode what we need staff at trainings or games on short notice, the co-ordinates parents and old scholars with their involvement and works relentlessly to build the capacity of the College in making sure we cater for the enormous diversity of interests in this area. Likewise, I would like to thank enormously all the staff, old scholars and family members who coach teams or who help supervise activities for the benefit of the students. It all helps contribute to the wonderful family life we experience here at St Paul’s.

There are many teams and achievements we could name now but that is important to do more wholistically at assemblies and award ceremonies later in the year.

College Activities

In the last fortnight we have held an extremely exciting primary book week parade and fair. These are so energetic and so exciting to be a part of. To see the faces and costumes of the students and staff is enjoyable. The fun and laughter, the singing and dancing and the great learning that takes place adds to the beauty of being an R-12 College.

We have also had a further series of activities, such as Outdoor Education Bushwalk activities, Year 10 and 11 Subject Selection meetings, Year 8 Retreat, Year 11 student meeting to explain the Prefect selection process, Year 9 Assembly to inform student of leadership opportunities, MY Graduation and Rites of passage celebration, Year 10 Camp, a Fathers’ day staff and a College Parents and Friends Quiz Night (tomorrow – Friday night!)

There is still an opportunity to purchase tickets for the quiz night so pleased support our Parents and Friends’ group who have done an amazing job in preparing for this.

That all looks, and is hectic, but that is school life and in particular term three. We are very busily preparing for next Year and the subject selection process, together with our growth in student numbers also requires us to be interviewing for several staff positions. Some of these are new positions, such as Head of Secondary and 2 Leaders of Wellbeing (MY’s and SY’s) and some are for extra teaching requirements that we need. We are pleased to say that the quality of staff that we continue to attract to St Paul’s is exceptional and we will approach the new 2024 year with much energy and excitement.

Fathers’ Day

To all the fathers and male father-figures in our community we wish you an incredibly happy, healthy, and love-filled day for Sunday. There is a beautiful African saying that states, “It takes a whole village to raise a child” and while this is absolutely true, we know just how key role models are for all children, both male and female. We need our young people to grow into beautiful young adults who know life is not about them and that they have an obligation to contribute to making our society a better place. We know this must come from home and the fathers in our community play an enormous role in bringing that to fruition.

I hope all the dads and father-figures get spoiled and have a wonderful day. Thank you so much for the sacrifices you make so that the children of St Paul’s can get the wonderful Edmund Rice education they do here St Paul’s.

Take Care and God Bless

Paul Belton 

Dear families and friends of St Paul’s,

As Week 4 of Term 3 draws to a close we can already stop and reflect on the myriad of events and experiences that have taken place so far this term.

This week as a whole College community we celebrated the Feast of the Assumption in the gymnasium. This feast has for centuries been known in the Catholic Church as a Holy Day of Obligation. This meant that it was one of several days in the Church’s year (outside all Sundays) whereby all Catholics were expected to attend Mass. Times change in regards to many aspects of the Catholic Church, but one thing that hasn’t is the doctrine, the absolute belief, that Mary, the mother of Jesus was taken to Heaven body and soul.

Mary was an extraordinary person, the best example ever of a person saying yes to a calling from God. An impressive example of total commitment to God and a life dedicated to the nurturing of Jesus. This feast is one we always celebrate at St Paul’s for several reasons. Firstly, the fact of it being the special feast day for Mary. Secondly, the Christian Brothers all around the world and from the time of Blessed Edmund Rice have always had an incredibly special devotion to Mary, calling on her and praying to her to support them in their work of education. Thirdly, it provides us as a community a reason to celebrate and pray for all our mothers' none of us would be here without our mums, and to celebrate all the special women in our lives. We say an especially big thank you to all the wonderful female staff we have at St Paul’s and give thanks for the ongoing love, care, and compassion they bring to their roles.

Careers Night and Subject Expos

While still only early in term three we are working particularly diligently on preparing for next year, and beyond. At this point in the year, we hold both a Careers evening and also Subject Expos, both of which are aimed at helping our students think about their future pathways and what subjects, marks, grades etc. they need to chase their dreams. While some if not many may hope and dream to represent Australia in their chosen sport, we all know that they need to have a plan “B.”

Our sincere thanks go to Ms Jo-Anne Williams (VET & Careers Co-ordinator) Mr Peter Staley (Trade Training Centre Manager) and to Mr Matthew Muscat (Head of Teaching & Learning 7-12) and the Leaders of Learning for the huge amount of work they put into these events. From my experience St Paul’s is as good, if not, better than any school I know of, in supporting students throughout these processes. As always, we ask both students and their families to contact us and seek any clarification and advice that they need throughout this term in relation to this.

College Musical

This week is also “College Musical Week.” Another musical extravaganza, “Gumshoe” has been produced by Mr Damian Antenucci, Mr Paul Elliott, Ms Donna Nguyen and their band of willing actors, musicians, and support staff. An enormous amount of work goes into one of these productions, and while it is very demanding, we know of the joy it brings to those involved and their families.

It gives us intense pleasure to see this joy and to see great confidence emerge in some students who otherwise may not experience that. We very much say thanks to everyone involved.

Science Week and Co-curricular

This week is also National Science Week. This is another opportunity for teachers and students to explore this great area of both nature and human-made scientific phenomena. We have a large number of budding scientists in our midst who will no doubt make a significant contribution to society like so many other St Paul’s old scholars before them.

We are getting close to the end of the winter co-curricular season and our senior volleyballers are the latest in experiencing much success at a state-wide knockout competition. We will write in more detail about all the winter successes but at this time our most sincere thanks go to Mr Nick Gillard for all his coordination of this and to all students, families, and staff for their support in making it all happen.

Take care.

God Bless

Paul Belton

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

As we conclude Term 2 for 2023, we also conclude Semester One and reflect on the rich learning experiences that have occurred within and beyond formal learning spaces. As much as improving personal capability, students have improved their own character through social interaction and the many opportunities afforded them at St Paul’s, largely thanks to the most exceptional staff who have facilitated these opportunities.

Semester 1 Academic Reports (released on the final day of this term) will offer opportunities to reflect on successes and set goals for the remainder of 2023. I plead with families to continually discuss academic progress and achievement, to refocus positive learning habits and centralise learning as essential (far more focused and effective than simply discussing ‘going to school’).

One personal celebration is the many examples of families being onsite as we continue to move past habits formed during COVID restrictions, and reengage families as essential members of a student’s learning experience and growth journey. Our Mother’s Day Liturgy, Middle Years Learning Expo and Primary Years Music Afternoon are examples of tremendous parent involvement.

Similarly, new leadership and many new members of our vibrant Parents and Friends Association has given life to reinstated family engagement since the restrictions of past years; new members are always encouraged, and the Term 3 P&F Quiz Night will showcase a tremendous example of what this Association (and families) does for our community.

Reconciliation Week and NAIDOC Week have been important parts of the past term and demonstrated our continually improved commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as associated traditions and expertise that offer so much to all Australians as a most significant part of our shared history. Student knowledge and engagement with these rich traditions will continue to be part of our St Paul’s story, while so much growth remains as an exciting opportunity for further growth, partnership, healing, and learning.

Knowing who we are as a community and having started Term 2 with our Founder’s feast day, Blessed Edmund Rice Day back in the first week of term, it is most appropriate that this frames our reflection on the term. Embodying the touchstones of Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA), Edmund calls us to a Liberating Education, based on Gospel Spirituality, within an Inclusive Community to Justice and Solidarity. Where have you witnessed this in the past Term and where has your child’s experience reflected this? What instances of learning, co-curricular, wellbeing, relationship and spirituality can you recall, as we collectively give thanks for a rich term of experience and growth? What of these questions can be a discussion point with your child(ren), knowing that these questions address who we are, well beyond what we do?

In thanking our staff for their exceptional commitment, expertise, and hard work throughout this Term, I also thank our students who are at the centre of our community, as well as our families who breathe life into the journey that our community provides for young people. May the upcoming school holiday period be a time for connection, reflection, and readiness for Term 3.

Josh Foulis
Acting Principal

There is no requirement to speak of one particular matter as we move well through the middle of Term 2, especially since there is so much to celebrate throughout the College, calling for gratitude from our community.

In a great celebration of students, the Primary Years assembly on Tuesday (19 June) witnessed many achievements across academic success, contributions exuding our College values (Faith, Relationships, Excellence, Diversity), and service evident in Jump Rope for Heart.

At the same time, our most senior students in Year 12 immersed themselves in their three-day Year 12 Retreat, where staff led a most formative experience on the theme ‘The End is a New Beginning’. To be so vulnerable with peers while considering the daunting next steps into life (without the daily support of St Paul’s College), is both brave and truly reflective, within a world that is decreasingly ‘present’.

These experiences are only two examples across our College and demonstrate the great breadth of celebration, within varying parts of life’s journey, that benefit our students.

In the coming weeks, our College also prepares for Semester One reports. This is one snapshot of learning over 6 months, knowing that individual feedback that has been given throughout the Semester is far more targeted, timely, and beneficial (since it is more regular). I request each family to use the Semester Report as an opportunity to positively and consecutively celebrate areas of strength and achievement while setting goals for the remainder of 2023.

Quite outrageously, families in Australia have traditionally asked questions such as, “Why didn’t you do better” and “What’s this grade for?”. This perhaps represents many experiences of parents that is now very outdated and unhelpful, since it has no direction on how to improve! Instead, let us seek means for improvement and remain positive, by way of helping our young people improve.

In the same way, I pleaded with our Year 12 students when I had the pleasure of presenting to their Retreat this week, let us ask our students “how they want to be” (positive, kind, fun, inspiring, honest) instead of only “what the want to be” (fireman, lawyer, engineer, teacher). What we are is hard to define and sometimes a long journey to achieve; how we are as people is a proposition each day.

Josh Foulis
Acting Principal

Congratulations to Mr Damian Antenucci on receiving the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for service to secondary education. A most enormous recognition and most appropriate.
Damian taught at Kilmara College from 1977 to 1987, where he was the Director and Producer of School Musicals.
Since 1988, he has taught here at St Paul’s College, fulfilling many roles including: Head of Senior School, Head of Pastoral Care, Director and Producer of School Musicals, Coach of Badminton and the First 18 Football team, and mathematics teacher. These are only some of the ways Damian has served our community!
Damian was also a founding member of St Paul’s Old Scholars Football Club in 1992. Since that time, he has been Treasurer, President, and Coach.
As we know, old scholars remember Damian fondly and he is greatly admired by his colleagues. He has been a wonderful contributor to Catholic Education since 1977, and this honour is very well deserved.

On-track for Online

Since our last College newsletter, a fortnight ago, we have lived the exceptional beauty of ‘diversity’, one of our four values at St Paul’s College.

National Reconciliation Week was most pivotal in our community’s ongoing commitment to genuine Reconciliation. Additionally, we have celebrated Carnevale as our Italian language program came to life. Only two weeks, and so much to show for.

While we live our commitment to relationship and respect for diversity each day, social media continues to challenge this commitment when we seek the worst of ourselves and others. For its many benefits, we also understand that criticism and negativity feed on social media, the standard communication for society, and yet a challenging medium to navigate for young people as the grow up, learn about themselves and establish their identity.

Often families and staff alike are supporting young people with challenging behavioral choices made online and on social media. Education about online safety and positive online behaviors, is something that the classroom and society must continue to prioritise.

In doing so, we must have forthright conversations with young people and ensure transparency if they are using online applications and social media.

Social Media Resource – Helping parents with an enormous task!

Recently, I have worked with Tasmin London, Executive Director of ySafe. Yasmin and ySafe are especially helpful in their diverse approach to this complex issue of online safety.

Their website is an ‘Online Safety Hub’ and unlike so many other websites that address online safety, it provides clear and concise information:

“Children today are growing up in an increasingly online world and it's essential that we are doing all that we can to support and guide their digital journey. The Online Safety Hub supports the school community by providing practical insights and advice directly from internationally-renowned Online Safety & Digital Wellness Experts.” – ySafe Website.

The website can be accessed HERE and I urge all member of our community to explore this amazing resource, particularly:

• The guides and practical suggestions for any parent wanting to help their child be safe online: Click here for ySafe parents' guide
• The review of online applications/programs, which clearly explains many popular programs that young people use and their risks, alongside helpful information about who and why they are used:  Click here for ySafe app-reviews

Knowing that families and schools can’t assist young people with online safety unless we know about what and how they are engaging online, here is one example of the ‘known risks’ for an applications/programs available on the ySafe website – this example is for TikTok.

As we work hard to support our young people, let’s also use the valuable resources available to us. I urge you to visit the ySafe Website and discuss it with your family/child. Above all, let’s keep working together for the safety of our young people, including online safety.

Please engage our staff wherever we may assist your young person (or your family) with resources or conversation that may help us navigate the online challenges we share. Above all, please speak openly and honestly with your young person(s) and share their online presence.

Josh Foulis
Acting Principal 

Next week, the College and our Nation celebrates National Reconciliation Week. ‘Be a Voice for Generations’ is the theme for national reconciliation Week in 2023 and that theme is echoed by our annual College them of ‘Empowering Voices’.

National Reconciliation Week runs from 27 May until 3 June and it is a time for all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements, and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia.

At St Paul’s College, we continually acknowledge and respect the Kaurna people whose land we share and who have a most exceptional and ongoing story that can educate our practices, policies, relationships and people. But first, we must commit to understanding and reconciliation.

Throughout National Reconciliation Week, our College will participate in several ways and students will be invited to partake in many activities, including a whole-school assembly that starts with a smoking ceremony and welcome to country on Monday morning to begin the week.

Just as students will be increasing their focus on understanding and reconciliation during NRW, I urge you to seek every opportunity to discuss the week and its theme with your young person(s).

Update on Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA)

As you will have noted in previous communications, EREA have undertaken significant change to governance structures. While this may not obviously impact the daily undertaking in our school community, the close work that we do with our governing body is exceptionally supportive and greatly assist our College as a Catholic College in the Edmund Rice Tradition.

Now governed by EREA Colleges Ltd, we extend a warm welcome from St Paul’s College to Mr Chris Woolley as the CEO of EREA Colleges Ltd. Following his appointment in February, Chris started in this position last week and his leadership will enormously benefit our College and likewise the many communities within EREA Colleges Ltd.

Chris is a senior executive with 25 years’ experience in management, education, law and policy in both the private and public sectors. He comes to EREA from Queensland Catholic Education Commission, where he was most recently the Acting Executive Director, and substantively the Chief Operating Officer and Company Secretary since 2016. Chris has broad experience in a faith-based setting, with work focused on mission and identity. Chris also brings significant leadership experience in complex strategy, governance, and assurance functions.

Chris is obviously excited for his journey that includes great support for our community:

 “I look forward to serving and leading in a system setting and working directly with a wonderful network of colleges, people and communities across Australia. This new role enables me to build on a special connection with EREA, with my father, uncles, brothers, myself, and my sons all having had the opportunity to attend Catholic schools founded in the Edmund Rice tradition. I am privileged and humbled to serve EREA as it renews its commitment to governance structures and processes which best support its school communities.”

Chris looks forward to visiting St Paul’s College for the first time in June.

High Expectations – attending always and on time

As outlined in the College’s Our Common Ground, respectful relationships set the foundation for our lives at St Paul’s College. For this reason, respect needs to be central for every student, staff member and family and there are very simple ways to show a commitment to respect that can easily improve outcomes.

Perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate respect and commit to success is by ensuring that students attend always, and on time. Attendance and punctuality may seem trivial or assumed, but we know that as winter creeps in and the year grows longer, there is a risk to be late to school/class and perhaps even a risk to attendance.

Simply reminding ourselves that the only we to be successful at school is to be at school, motivates us to prioritise attendance. By extension, being punctual leads to success because it shows others and ourselves that we are committed to learning and committed to the community – we care.

Students and families are reminded that attendance and punctuality are absolutely demanded of students (and likewise staff), with thanks for prioritising these as obvious signs of respect and commitment.

Josh Foulis
Acting Principal 

In my privileged opportunity to serve as Acting Principal this Term, I welcome you to Term 2 as we consolidate and deepen our learning, and progress our commitment to excellence, one of our four values at St Paul’s College.

Edmund Rice Day celebrations to begin our term were a fitting reminder of our global partnerships as one of hundreds of Edmund Rice Communities around the world. Our Principal Paul Belton celebrated Edmund Rice Day in the homeland of our Founder, Blessed Edmund Rice, alongside Principals and Leaders from each Edmund Rice community worldwide, as part of the Edmund Rice Education Beyond Borders (EREBB) Congress.

Celebrating Blessed Edmund Rice reminds us that we are called to support one another in an inclusive community, where everybody can achieve excellence. Irrespective of who you are or where you come from, you deserve the opportunity to achieve excellence.

During our staff’s Professional Learning on Day 1 of Term 2 (student-free day), I outlined and specified what excellence must look like for our staff, if our students are to achieve excellence.

As outlined in the framework below, the challenge is to achieve excellence from students by being accountable, reminding ourselves that as staff at St Paul’s, we are choosing to give ourselves to this community, committing to collaboration between staff, and knowing that excellence is owed to our students and families. Informing how we achieve this important work is Jesus’ Mission outlined in the Gospel, the work of our founder Blessed Edmund Rice, and essential educational documents from secular/regulatory bodies and our Church.

In an opening assembly to Secondary students, I instead discussed excellence from their perspective, where trying for excellence offers an unacceptable excuse. Instead, it is our responsibility to find ways of achieving excellence for ourselves; this might be asking more/different questions, spending more time with the right people, undertaking additional study, appreciating the value of learning especially when we find it challenging.

The framework below summarises the need for students to prioritise excellence in Term 2 by ensuring their achievement, being accountable to themselves and their decisions (what they say and do, and knowing we can’t be accountable for what others say or do), being respectful to self and others and our environment, while also taking and making opportunities throughout the term ahead.

Throughout the remaining weeks of Semester 1, let us all consider what excellence needs to mean for ourselves and be challenged to achieve excellence (not merely try for excellence). Through this, we strengthen our sense of self and answer Blessed Edmund Rice’s call to realise our best for ourselves and our community.

Finally, I add welcome to the following staff who join our welcoming community in Term 2:

Bobby Vincent, ESO supporting Inclusive Education in Years 7-12
Anthea McCallum, ESO supporting Inclusive Education in Years 7-12
Brandon Jackson-Martin, First Nations Mentor and ESO
Hamish Morelli, Teacher in Years 7-12 and Counsellor
Stanislaw Domiszewski, Teacher R-12 supporting via Temporary Relief work each day

I wish you every achievement in the Term ahead and as always, please contact the College wherever we may be able to assist you, your child, or your family. 

Josh Foulis
Acting Principal

Dear Families and friends of St Paul’s,

We are in week 10 of Term 1 and the most holy and significant of our Catholic calendar – Holy Week.

Holy Week starts with Palm Sunday, the celebration of Jesus triumphant return to Jerusalem. How magnificent that must have been to see and hear crowds of people not only welcome this very special person but for them to believe Him to be their long awaited saviour. All of us need a saviour at various times in our lives, someone we have absolute trust and confidence in, someone we can share our most personal and vulnerable traits with. There is no doubt that we need a living colleague for that, but as a people of faith we have also the utmost confidence that we always have our God to rely on for the same reason.

From the immense joy and celebration of Palm Sunday we move into the wonderful celebration of the Last Supper on Thursday. Here Jesus makes the eternal promise to be with us whenever we need him – “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” We also remember the breaking of the bread, the sharing of the meal, another powerful symbol of friendship, love, and family. Who do you invite to your table? People we share meals with are special to us and it bonds families and friends alike together. We have this opportunity every Sunday, in community with those who are like-minded and share this great belief.

Good Friday, while horrible in its actions of the crucifixion is the acknowledgement of the ultimate sacrifice Jesus made for us all and when we combine that with the celebration of the resurrection on Easter Sunday, we have the most perfect celebration and recognition of hope. As Catholics we must be people of hope. As a Catholic school we must not only preach but practice hope, on a daily basis. Our world is too full of scenarios of hopelessness and we have an obligation to try to turn that around.

On behalf of our committed staff I would like to offer all our families a most happy, hope-filled, and holy Easter. May the joys of the resurrection fill you all with great hope and love for God and each other.

The fact that our Catholic celebrations coincide with the very significant Muslim season of Ramadan adds even more beauty to the multi-faith and multicultural community we share here at St Paul’s.

Term 2 Staffing

After the easter break we only have a short four-day week before concluding Term 1. There are a number of staffing arrangements I need to let you know about.

Firstly, and most importantly I need to let you know that after 36 years of extremely dedicated service to the St Paul’s community Mr Mark Ryan has decided to move on into the next chapter of his life. Mark has held many different positions at the College and has been a beacon of care and compassion for the students. We wish Mark and his family every happiness and success in the future and we thank him most sincerely for his service to the St Paul’s community.

In the first few weeks of the term the international Edmund Rice family will be holding a congress in Dublin, Ireland. Most of the 220+ principals from our schools around the world, will gather to both celebrate what we do in Edmund’s name but also plan as to how we can continue to make a positive difference to our world. I will be going to this and then having some extended time away from the College to recharge my batteries!

In my place Mr Josh Foulis will be Principal and Mr Joe Hicks will be Deputy Principal. I’m sure both the staff, and the whole community will support Josh and Joe in these important roles. With Joe stepping up into the Deputy role, Mrs Maria Girolamo-Corbo will become our APRIM and Mr Matthew Stramare will take on Maria’s role as Religious Identity Leader in the Middle Years.

Our Music and Performance Coordinator, Ms Libby Verrall, will also be taking long service leave in Term 2. Her music classes will be taken by Mr Drew Akin, while her other responsibilities will be shared by Drew and Mr Victor Oria.

We will also welcome back, Messer Walter Chatindiara, Paul Kemp and Grant Howarth from long service leave.

It has been a very fast-moving and activity-filled term. So many wonderful experiences occur every day here at St Paul’s and we have so much to be grateful for. I hope all students, staff and families have a very restful holiday break and a great Term 2.

God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Families and friends of St Paul’s,

Week 8 of the term has been a significant mixture of events and celebrations at St Paul’s. Then again, as you all know, that is very much what it is like every week!

You would have all heard, seen, or read about Harmony Week in the news. This is a wonderful opportunity for the whole of society to celebrate Australia’s great diversity of cultures and to acknowledge the positive impact each and everyone has had on who our country has become.

St Paul’s College has, at its heart and one of our core values, Diversity, and Edmund Rice education have Inclusive Community as one of its Touchstones. This means we live harmony week and harmony day regularly, hopefully, every week and day. What this week does allow us to do however is to more formally celebrate the beautiful diversity that exists within our community. These celebrations are many and varied and certainly very well accepted by both students and staff alike.

This week also contained the International Day of Happiness and on Tuesday World Down Syndrome Day. Our primary years in particular were keen to raise awareness of Down Syndrome, so everyone was invited to wear their most eye-catching socks. They were mismatched socks and peoples’ craziest and most colourful socks, but ‘Lots of Socks’ is a celebration that makes all of us different, and yet the same! 

NAPLAN Week

The very much talked about, discussed, debated and argued about NAPLAN tests were conducted this week. We acknowledge several things in this regard. Firstly, we acknowledge that any form of test or exam can bring with it some forms of anxiety for students, and even parents and staff! Secondly, we believe as a college that these tests are exactly that, just a test, just one measure of what any of our students are capable of. We know that these tests are not the be-all and end-all of all achievements and measurements. We look at them as providing us with some information that can assist us in helping students by knowing which areas require additional support. 

Given there are over 40 different languages spoken in our family homes we know that English is not the first, not second or third in some cases, language our families know and understand so we use this data to make sure we provide the very best support we can. Thirdly, however, we do expect that the students, with the support of families, take the tests seriously, give their best and allow other students to do the same. We all need to continually try to be the very best we can be, our most excellent selves and NAPLAN is another opportunity for that to be put into practice.

RAMADAN

Adding to our diversity and harmony-focused activities this week, we would also like to acknowledge the beginning of RAMADAN for our Muslim families. Like LENT for all Catholics RAMADAN is enormously important to them as a time of prayer and fasting. We offer our support and join with them in prayer throughout this time. I know Mr. Hicks is working with some of our senior Muslim students to make they have some time, space and opportunity to practice the prayerful components of their faith.

Take Care and God Bless
Mr Paul Belton

Dear Families,

The development of life-long leadership skills is one of the learning opportunities offered to all students at St Paul’s College. Having effective student leaders supports the development of our College’s core values outlined in Our Common Ground. The leadership journey for our Year 6 students started last week where they were acknowledged at our Primary Years assembly and received their Student Leaders Badge. This week, I have great pleasure in announcing our Year 6 Student Leadership Team for 2023:

Community and Faith Ambassadors

• Luke F, Nimit L, Sophia P and Logan P

Academic Ambassadors

• Ridhi K and Tyler N

Wellbeing Ambassadors

• Saxon D and Summer Z

House Captains

• Dally – Ansh S
• Gleeson – Venesa P
• Marlow – Angong Y
• Nagle – Mihan B
• O’Loughlin – Sienna G

Ms Samantha Stokes (Head of Wellbeing) and Ms Miranda McGlaughlin (Leader of Catholic Identity) were involved in leading the Student Leadership interview process. Our Student Leaders have committed to uphold the core values of the College – Faith, Relationships, Excellence and Diversity, through modelling respectful and responsible behaviour to the best of their ability. Ms Stokes will meet with the Student Leaders regularly to guide them in activities that will benefit the whole Primary Years community.

We also acknowledge and congratulate our Reception-Year 5 Student Voice Representatives (SVR) from each class.  Ms Stokes will be working closely with these students with their important role in identifying issues, and building skills and knowledge that lead to action in the areas our students care most about.

Our Reception to Year 5 SVR are:

• Reception Barone – Hartaj S
• Reception Romeo – Larrah A
• Year 1 McGlaughlin/Benneti – Esther R
• Year 1 Burton – Chloe L
• Year 2 Theodoulou/Benetti – Gurfateh S
• Year 2 Stavropoulos – Lucas V
• Year 3 Hayward – Georgina B
• Year 3 Bennett – Thiago D
• Year 4 Jones/Barone – Briella V
• Year 4 Thoday – Divit S
• Year 5 Anthony – Collin P
• Year 5 Costanzo – Manreet K

Wednesday was International Women’s Day.  Our Year 9 girls led a beautiful Whole School Liturgy acknowledging and celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women globally, with the theme #EmbraceEquity. It was also a beautiful example of these young women modelling, to the students in our Primary Years, just how courageous they are in taking on this Leadership role within our College community. I am proud each and every day to be an educator and leader at St Paul’s. Let’s continue to champion equity, respect and inclusion for all of us, regardless of gender.

Take care.

Marianne Loftus
Head of Primary Years
2023 - Empowering Voices

Dear Families and friends of St Paul’s,

Week 6 term 1 already, how can we possibly slow all this time down? Week 6, like all weeks of a school year is full of activity, learning, and adventures. Our year 8 cohort has been away on camp and although the weather has not been perfect we are sure that they are all having a great time. From the stories of the first half returners on Wednesday it was a memorable experience.

I believe one of the greatest challenges schools have always faced, and what is even more important now in such an ever-changing world, is to try to prepare students for their life beyond school. While academic achievement is important the necessity to be good people, resilient characters and emerging adults who understand life is not always about themselves, but rather great love and happiness comes from within when we give of ourselves to others.

This week I was extremely fortunate to hear from an outside external provider of St Paul’s one of the best compliments we have ever received. We were discussing the many and varied options students have as they progress through the secondary years – University, TAFE, VET courses, Apprenticeships etc. The compliment came after we were discussing the notion of what is “cutting edge” in terms of education right now. In her opinion, enabling every student to be encouraged to follow their dreams, their own specific pathway, and to be supported in that is actually “cutting edge". The best part was she said, she knew this is what St Paul’s is already doing and what we are really good at. How nice is that? Combine this with another recent compliment at our School, Advisory Council “word on the street is that we are awesome at caring for the students through our pastoral care structures". These comments are so wonderful and to be honest, I could not have wished for better. It is such a credit to all our staff, teaching and non-teaching who are so friendly and welcoming, always showing genuine care for the students and families. I am sure Edmund Rice, Br Dally, and all our predecessors would agree. We have a great deal to be proud of here at St Paul’s but we also remain committed to continuous improvement and the pursuit of excellence in all we do.

Parents and Friends – Inclusive Community

This week we held another Parents and Friends meeting. It was very much a “changing of the guard” meeting where Ms Felicity Bylhouwer handed in her final letter of resignation after six or seven years of formidable service to the community. Both Felicity and Ms Bec Verrall have been the stalwarts of this group for several years and have been absolutely wonderful in their support of the College. We thank them sincerely for their great passion for the college. As we are now growing and more able to fund many of the projects we have not been able to before, the nature of the parents and friends provide can change from a group that raised much needed funds for the College to one that has more of a community building focus. One of our EREA Touchstones is Inclusive Community and we believe that through an active Parents and Friends structure we can reach out even more to our families, especially those who may struggle to communicate with us and us with them.

Please if any parents are wanting or are willing to join this group please let us know, via the front office, our DP Josh Foulis, or email to kcasey@stpauls.sa.edu.au

International Women’s Day

This week we also celebrated International Women’s Day and not only had a beautiful liturgy in our Pastoral Care lesson but also celebrated the amazing work done by our wonderful and very committed female staff members. We are who we are at St Paul’s because of the great sense of community we have and our female staff add enormously to that great sense of family we have.

Cocurricular Recognition

It must be the week of good news, but you can never get enough of that. After Saturday’s round of cocurricular events, we were delighted to receive an email from a teacher of Rostrevor who took the time to write about how terrific our year 8/9 cricket team was. It said:

“I just wanted to let you know how impressed I was with the St Paul's boys. They were friendly, well-mannered and played with a really positive and encouraging team spirit. They represented themselves and the school in an exemplary manner and it was noticed by both myself and the parents from Rostrevor.”

Our thanks must go to our coach Mr Michael Szczpanik (Oliver’s dad) and Mrs Maria Gibson our staff member and manager for their encouragement of the boys and for upholding such terrific values.

It has been a terrific week or so for the College.

Take care, God Bless

Mr Paul Belton 

Dear Families and friends of St Paul’s,

Welcome back to the 2023 academic year at St Paul’s. As you may have seen or heard already our theme for the year is “Empowering Voices.” In a Catholic College in the Edmund Rice tradition, this is not only important but an intrinsic characteristic we hold dear.

Our current College Strategic Plan (available on the College website HERE) has five strategic directions and one of these is Empowering Voices. The meaning of the two words themselves is important as they give a clear indication that all members of our extended community, parents, caregivers, students, staff, and old scholars should feel able, encouraged and empowered to make a positive contribution to this great community. Having been encouraged, it is our commitment that the voices will then be listened to. Through this commitment we will ensure that child protection, safeguarding and an excellent education are at the forefront of our work.

In a rapidly changing world, our students need to be able to express their understandings of what is important to them and to also be able to influence all things that have an impact on them. What is crucial for us collectively is to provide the Catholic, Edmund Rice Education values and lens through which the students can come to understand and enact what will make our College and our world a better place for all.

Many different and varied opportunities will be provided for everyone to ensure this theme is being actively lived out.

A Great Start to the Year.

We have begun this year with significant growth again, in both staff and student numbers. Our student population has exceeded one thousand for the first time in the College’s history. With this increase has come the employment of another thirty new members of staff. The quality of staff has again already been evident, and they have all collectively brought great passion, skills and commitment to the vision of the College. We are here to enable every student with the very best opportunities to empower the students to fulfil their unique God-given potential through active participation in the community. This is so clear whenever we meet.

Our beginning of year Mass was nothing short of inspirational. With the COVID world denying us of many opportunity to gather together we were blessed to have all 1200 members of the community gathered in the gymnasium to celebrate the Eucharist together. We were blessed to have Fr Philip Marshall preside and his amazing ability to communicate with the very young, and the not-so-young was inspirational.

In addition to the Opening Mass we have held parent information sessions, a Yr 4 camp to AFL Max and our very beautiful Reception Rite of Passage / Welcome ceremony. This week our co-curricular program kicks off and our School Advisory Council meets to discuss our aims for the year and provide direction and challenge to the Leadership team of the College.

We encourage members of the community to make contact with us should you wish to join a committee such as the School Advisory Committee and Parents and Friends Committee. We are always on the look-out for people with lots of passion and energy!

2023 promises to be a very challenging but exciting and rewarding year for this great College. I encourage everyone to get involved in some way or another.

God bless.

Paul Belton

The conclusion of the 2022 school year comes with great celebration for our Year 12 students. We acknowledge the collective work that has been undertaken by students, families, and our entire staff throughout their academic, spiritual, and personal journey during their time at St Paul’s. It is with great pride that I detail the excellent SACE, ATAR, and apprenticeship achievements of the class of 2022 graduates. For the fourth consecutive year, 100% of eligible students achieved their SACE. Our students have demonstrated the skills and capabilities to flourish and contribute productively to the world beyond school and will continue to hold a special place in our community as Old Scholars of our College.
The Year 12 students of 2022 have performed at an excellent level.

Congratulations to the DUX OF THE COLLEGE for 2022:
Lucas Sacca 96.55 with an A+ Merit in Modern History and 5 A grades

Congratulations to the DUX PROXIME ACCESSIT for 2022:
Austin Lorenz 94.45 with 6 A grades

Many students will be receiving their first university and/or TAFE preference due to a strong level of achievement in the Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) or through other tertiary entry processes. 72% of the 2022 grades were in the A and B bands, with 21 students achieving an ATAR of 80 or higher.
Congratulations to the following students who achieved an ATAR greater than 90:

• Lucas Sacca 96.55
• Austin Lorenz 94.45
• Jaskaran Singh 92.20
• Hussain Riyadh 91.60
• Allan Riley 90.00

Congratulations to the following students who achieved an ATAR greater than 85:

• Justin James 89.35
• Ryzar Gutierrez 89.15
• Jose Tamargo Napolitano 88.95
• Agam Agam 88.55
• Xavier Badayos 88.50
• Alex Aistrope 88.05
• Nicholas Kovios 86.45

MERIT RECIPIENTS
Merit Certificates will be presented to the following students at Government House in recognition of their meritorious results in a subject studied. Merit Certificates are only awarded to students that finish in the top 1% or 2% in the State. We congratulate the following 5 students who have received merits:

• Lucas Sacca - Modern History
• Agam Agam - Business and Innovation
• Jaskaran Singh - Business and Innovation
• Harsimrat Singh (Year 11) Accounting
• Shrey Patel (Year 11) Research Project

The following student achieved A grades in all 6 subjects studied:

• Austin Lorenz

The following two students achieved A grades in 5 of the 6 subjects studied:

• Allan Riley
• Lucas Sacca

The following eight students achieved A grades in 4 of the 6 subjects studied:

• Agam Agam
• Xavier Badayos
• Ryzar Gutierrez
• Justin James
• Nicholas Kovios
• Hussain Riyadh
• Jaskaran Singh
• Jose Tamargo Napolitano

The following five students achieved A grades in 3 of the 6 subjects studied:

• Alex Aistrope
• Jacob Bettison
• Kieran Brown
• Aidan Faugno
• Thomas Smith

In addition, we celebrate and congratulate the following 13 students (including 4 Year 11s), who have successfully gained apprenticeships this year:

• Tyson Butcher - Electrical
• Connor Fulton - Electrical
• Ari Grigoriadis - Carpentry
• Jack Raymond - Metal Engineering
• Noah Rupic - Carpentry
• Jack Smith - Electrical
• Calvin Walkley - Automotive
• Zane Williams - Solid Plastering
• Filip Zadrima - Electrical
• Liam Bell (Year 11) - Tiling
• Myles Bylhouwer (Year 11) - Fabrication
• Samuel Grasso (Year 11) - Carpentry
• Jack Hennessey (Year 11) - Plumbing

We acknowledge the collective work that has been undertaken by students, families, and our entire staff throughout their academic, spiritual, and personal journey during their time at St Paul’s. Congratulations to all our students for striving for your personal best and we wish you every success in the future.
Yours sincerely
Paul Belton
Principal

Dear Friends and families of St Paul’s,

What a year we have had together in 2022! It will be long remembered as one of the most, if not the most, significant year in the College’s wonderful history. From December of 2021 until January of 2022 the College grew by over 200 students and 30 staff. We had completed (or almost) $11 million worth of renovations and buildings, continued to deal with the uncertainties of COVID and launched into co-education.

As we finish the year now in December 2022 we can proudly look back and say the year has been an amazing success. While we may have had a few speed humps along the way, some growing pains, and unexpected challenges we have had an awesome year.

This week’s Primary years and Middle years celebrations were wonderful and very much appreciated by our families. Our final day, the big activities day has been very successful and so much fun. 

We bid farewell to several staff and say hello to a significant number more. We offer a huge thanks to all staff who are leaving and wish them well in their new endeavours. Their contributions have helped build our community and we are a better place for having them a part of the College.

Advent and Christmas are such positive and hope-filled times. As a Christian community we celebrate the birth of Christ, the great symbol of HOPE in our lives. For some in our community and around the world, however, this season will bring challenges. We offer all our heart-felt thoughts and prayers for those to whom this applies, especially those closest to us.

Finally, can I offer, on behalf of the staff of St Paul’s, our most gracious thanks to our families and friends for all you have done for us this year to make it so successful. We often speak of the three-way partnership we have between staff, students and families and it is because of the strength of this that we are such a great community.

May you all have a very blessed, happy, holy, and restful Christmas and new year period. We look forward to 2023 even more as we continue to grow in all ways, especially in our community’s values of Faith, Relationships, Excellence and Diversity.

God Bless
Paul Belton 

From January 2023 St Pauls College OSHC provider is changing to EXTEND.

EXTEND is Australia’s largest family owned and operated Outside School Hours Care provider.

The 2023 St Paul’s service will feature before and after school care together with a new vacation care program.

Registration and service information is now available via the Extend website. For further details please visit: https://www.extend.com.au/school/st-pauls-college/

Extend’s customer service team is on hand to help with all enrolment, booking and school holiday program enquiries.
Email: support@extend.com.au or call 1300 366 437.

We look forward to our new OSHC partnership with EXTEND.

Dear Families and Friends of St Paul’s,

While the 2022 school year is rapidly ending there is still a great deal of activity occurring and many more essential tasks to be completed before we sign off for Christmas.

Over the last fortnight we have again been kept busy with the following:

• Year 6 Rites of passage celebration
• Year 10 retreat
• We welcomed all Catholic Education SA Principals, Deputy Principals and senior leaders for meetings and a dinner in our new MacKillop building
• Year 11 Final Year Liturgy, where we farewelled some students who are leaving to joining the workforce and challenged the returning students to step up into the position of college leaders for 2023.
• Transition day for all new students from Reception through to Year 7. This was a student free day for our Year 7 – 11 students, the Year 11’s preparing for their exams.
• Year 11 Exams this week.
• The final parents and friends meeting of the year where we farewelled and thanked two outstanding mothers who have committed many years of service to the college. Mrs Bec Verrall and Mrs Felicity Bylhower. We will thank them more formally at an upcoming school function but from a personal point of view and on behalf of the College I would like to sincerely thank and congratulate both ladies on what has been an outstanding level of commitment to our community. Their servant leadership and desire to see St Paul’s flourish, while supporting all families new and long term, has been nothing short of amazing. Thank you both so much.
• Extra transition visits for students with additional needs.
• Another successful College Tour
• And last but by no means our all-important year 12 Graduation Dinner.

This function is so important in the life of the College and symbolizes yet another Rite of Passage where our students attend their last official school function and well and truly become members of our old scholars fraternity. For many parents it symbolizes the completion of much sacrifice and commitment to both the students, the families, and the College. For some this has spread well over a decade and with a number of children. We thank them all for their contributions to the college and wish them all well in the future. Hopefully, we will catch up with many next year when they have the first of hopefully several reunions.

Staffing appointments

We have continued with our staffing processes for 2023. There is a lengthy list of staff movement and welcomes, given our continued growth and I will announce all of that in the last newsletter of the Term. But a recent appointment I would like to highlight this week is the announcement that our outstanding Head of Wellbeing in the Secondary Years, Mr Nick Callary, has been offered the opportunity to work at St Joseph’s College in Port Lincoln as Acting Deputy Principal for 2023. We congratulate Nick and wish him well for this new experience.

Hence, there is still much to do, still much happening and still very much to celebrate. Enjoy the last few weeks of the term.

Take care and God Bless

Paul Belton
Principal

Photo: Primary Years Precinct ground works have begun

Dear Friends and families of St Pauls,

Is it only two weeks since the last newsletter? What has happened at the College seems it could have filled two months’ worth!

Life in a school, as I’m sure it is for you all nowadays, is extremely busy. Some may think that in term four we are all slowing down. Whether we like it or not nothing could be further from the truth.

Since the last newsletter college events include:

• We held the official opening of our new St Mary of the Cross MacKillop building. This was a momentous occasion for the College, attended by our Archbishop Patrick O’Regan, Acting Executive Director of EREA Ray Paxton, Director of Catholic Education SA and other distinguished guests. It was a wonderful occasion added to by our formidable primary Liturgical Dance Group under the direction of Ms Amy Barone
• Yr. 12’s on their Swot-Vac but coming to school to finish major assignments and being supported by our dedicated staff with their revision.
• Yr. 12 exams have started.
• An amazing Year 7 camp. Thanks Mr. John Grave and all the staff who attended.
• An amazing Year 5 Camp. Thanks Mr Jake Stewart and staff who attended
• Our 2023 Reception students having their first transition visit – such excitement and fun.
• A significant Inclusive Education transition visit for students who may need some extra support in 2023.
• The 2023 Prefects Camp – from Sunday to Tuesday. An excellent group of talented and inspired young men willing to take on the mantle of senior student leadership in the College. Thanks to Messers. Nick Callary, Josh Foulis, Joe Hicks, and Leaders of House. What awesome staff and students we are blessed with.
• A Year 8 Retreat. More awesomeness!! Thanks Ms Maria Girolamo-Corbo and the Catholic Identity Team. These experiences enrich the lives of our students in so many ways.
• Continued work on our 2023 school timetable (thanks Mr Michael White, Mr Matthew Muscat, and Mr Josh Foulis.) An enormous task undertaken with such desire to achieve what is best for the students and families.
• More interviews to employ more great staff for the College.
• A hugely successful Parent Information Evening for new students in 2023 and those progressing to the Middle Years. Thanks to our wonderful Parents and Friends for the BBQ and your amazing and ongoing support of the College, and to Ms Donna Nguyen for her coordination of the evening, together with all the staff who presented and supported the evening – it was a tremendous success.

On Friday, the 11th of the 11th. A wonderful Remembrance Day Ceremony. Thanks Ms Joanna D’Angelo and all for creating such a respectful and unifying learning and spiritual experience.
More learning experiences for the students – isn’t that our normal life?

So, all this is pretty normal for us! Our staff have an amazing desire to provide the absolute best experiences for our students, families, and community. The College is and will continue to do just that – our best – for you all. It is a pleasure and blessing for us to not only work here but to serve this wonderful community. The weeks and activities fly by, staff work so diligently and together we live a life of gratitude for being able to do it all – together.

God Bless
Paul Belton 

Dear Families and Friends of St Paul’s,

Week two in term four of an academic year is always a very special one in the life of the college. It is the last week of formal lessons for our Yr. 12 graduating class and includes several extremely important celebrations. These celebrations, in many ways, help us to put our life in perspective, acknowledge how important the college is in the lives of our students and their families, and allows the younger year levels to see and understand what we are all committed to doing – in partnership together.

A great highlight for us all at the Senior Years Presentation was the “debut” of our giant new screen and audio system in the gymnasium. The work done by the “Big Screen Video” and AJS Lighting, Sound and Events companies has been amazing, and we have finally now got a system that does justice to all the amazing work done collectively by the staff, the students, and the families. Everyone present was delighted with the ceremony and the quality of the presentation. Personally, I am so pleased to be able to now offer the St Paul’s community the very best of what is available in this area and what you all so very much deserve! I know how much our music department appreciates it! We are so grateful to them for their professionalism and support of our dreams.

We again enjoyed this facility at the Year 12 Graduation Mass. It will enable us all to participate more fully in the celebrations, the prayers, the formalities, and our ability to engage and celebrate together.

Great Building News

This week our families would have received a letter from the College outlining the most recent success story regarding our building program. While it now seems to have progressed quicker than first expected, and will bring some disruption to our normal structures, the news is awesome.

We have engaged the services of Sarah Constructions Pty Ltd to build the new Primary Years building and the engagement with the company has been amazing so far. Sarah’s has commenced their establishment arrangements and has actively cooperated with the college to assist us in making our normal operations as smooth as possible. We look forward with great confidence to watching this next stage of our master plan come to fruition. Exciting times!

We do apologise for any disruption this may cause to families, but we are certain we will all reap the benefits of this development in a short space of time.

New Staff

The College continues to grow in all aspects of our life. As we build on the great success of becoming a co-educational school and welcome another 100 new students into our great community for 2023, so too will we welcome a new group of staff.

While we are not able to announce all the appointments, we can assure families that the quality of those people who have applied to work with us has again been outstanding. Our growth has not only allowed us but also driven us to continue to review what structures are needed for us to provide our students and families with the very best structures and human resources we can. In 2023 we will have more emphasis on the pursuit of excellence in our core business of teaching and learning. We have added more senior appointments to positions of Leaders of Learning (i.e. Leaders of Design and Technologies, Health and P.E, and The Arts), and we have added new roles supporting a cross section of services such as the “Head of Learning Diversity” which will oversee Inclusive Education, Gifted and Talented programs and ATSI support amongst other things. We will announce these appointments when we can and with permission of the staff and other schools, from which the staff are coming.

Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop Building - Official Opening

Next week we can finally officially bless and open the new Senor Learning Centre complex which will be known as the Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop Building. While this has taken us much more time than we all would have liked, it will be another great occasion for the College and we will welcome several distinguished guests including Archbishop Patrick O'Regan.

We will provide more news and photos associated with this celebration.

Transition visits

Commencing over the last week or so we have undertaken several transition visits for students who will be new to the College in 2023. This is due to the review of all our programs leading into our first year as a co-educational school this year conducted by our amazing Transition Co-ordinator Ms Donna Nguyen and her desire to make the process even better for the new boys and girls as well as their families. Already they are being very well received.

Term four is the most hectic and we have many more celebrations and opportunities to welcome families and guests into our beautiful community. I hope all families take the opportunity to visit and enjoy these celebrations as you are most welcome and so much a part of the reason, we have them.

Take care

God Bless
Paul Belton

We are delighted to formally introduce our 2023 College Captains and Prefect team. The role of Prefect is one of privilege and responsibility and we congratulate them on their appointment.

Dear Families and Friends of St Paul’s

Another term comes to a rapid close! I am not sure if it just because we all get a bit older, but our school terms just seem to by faster and faster every year. Maybe it is that we are so much busier and cannot fit it all into the ten weeks!

In many ways term 3 is the busiest. In addition to all the normal teaching and learning, co-curricular activities, staff professional development, meetings etc we begin the massive undertaking of preparing for the next year! This seems crazy, but has been bigger and more important than ever over the last couple of years as we have grown. We are currently interviewing numerous candidates for teaching and other ESO positions at the College. It has been a pleasure to read so many great applications and interviewing so many terrific teachers who want to join our community because of who we are and what we hold most dearly, the FRED values and EREA Touchstones.

In addition, to keep us on or toes, we are continuing to push on with planning regarding the new Primary Building that we hope to start before the end of the year. We have been to tender and will progress further over the next couple of weeks. More excitement for St Paul’s.

Over these last couple of weeks, the College has held or participated in:

An amazing College Music Night
Catholic Schools Music Festival
Report writing and Parent/Teacher Learning Conversations
Achilles Cup Athletics Carnival
Another college tour
School Advisory Council meeting
A 2023 girls transition evening
A sensationally successful Primary Market Day
And we finish of the term with our spectacular Colour / Slim Run Day and announcement of the winners of the prestigious Shannahan Cup – the trophy for the most outstanding “House” of the year.

Did we say we were busy having fun! These activities cannot happen without the exceptional commitment of our amazing staff who give so much of themselves, for the students. We are sure the families appreciate these efforts.

As term 3 concludes we again ask all students and families have a good round table conversation about school reports and all the efforts associated with the learning dimension of their lives. Hopefully, this conversation is a congratulatory one whereby recognition of the pursuit of personal excellence is the main topic!

I hope the upcoming break is an enjoyable time for everyone, that the weather improves and that you have some quality time with your loved ones.

My sincere thanks to everyone for what has been another wonderful term in this great community.

Take Care,

God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends of St Paul’s,

We are in week eight of term three already and the year is flying by. As always, the College is full of vitality, energy and experiencing wonderful celebrations. The highlight for us over the last week or so was the Reception Rite of Welcome Celebration that we held this week on Monday afternoon. Over the last few years, St Paul’s has been continuing to develop an overall “Rites of Passage” programme that begins with this Reception Rite of Welcome and ends with our Year 12’s graduation celebrations (which are not far away now.) These celebrations are a significant part of our acknowledgement that students go through several stages in their lives, while here with us, and that we need to celebrate those, acknowledge their importance, and use them to continue both our holistic approach to education as well as strengthening our three-way partnership with students, families and staff.

The Reception Rite of Welcome is both a beautiful liturgy with prayers and readings as well as a symbolic presentation to the students of an incredibly special plant. This year we presented each student and their family representatives with a raspberry plant and hope that they will plant, care for, and nurture this plant throughout their 13-year journey with us, as we will for them. A special thanks must go to Ms Kristynn Ross (Primary Years Religious Identity leader) and our three reception teachers, Ms Victoria Romeo, Ms Amy Barone, and Ms Ashley Bell as well as all Primary staff for their wonderful care of the students.

We will write more of the other Rites of passage as they are celebrated but we have them for our Yr. 3’s, Yr.6’s as they move out of the Primary Years, Yr. 9’s as they move out of the Middle Years and as mentioned in Yr. 12 for Graduation. Each of these has an incredibly significant message for the students, families and of course the staff. It is a blessing to be able to do these from our catholic perspective as well, which highlights the fact that each one of us is made in the image of God, and that is worth celebrating!

2023 – Planning and Preparation

While still in term three of the year we are quite feverishly preparing for 2023. It is the time of the year when we prepare budgets, advertise for staff, and followed all those procedures to make sure we employ the absolute best teachers and support staff we can, to assist us and join us in this amazing vocation we share.

We will share more news about staffing over the coming weeks. It continues to be exciting times at the College

Take care,

God Bless
Paul Belton

Our Parents & Friends group are running a wine fundraiser. There are some premium wines available at discounted prices. It’s a fantastic way to support the P&F, who contribute funds and event support for our college community. Please see the order form below and return it via email to: stpaulsparents1@gmail.com. Orders are required by Monday 12 September. 

Click for order form: https://www.stpauls.sa.edu.au/files/19926/Wine_Fundraiser_Order_Form.pdf

Dear Friends of St Paul’s,

It is Springtime!!

September is the very much anticipated end of the winter season and the beginning of spring!

Hopefully, this brings with it much more sunshine and warmth. Spring is also the season of new birth as we see very evident in the natural world, both plant and animals alike. For us a St Paul’s, as a Catholic School in the Edmund Rice Tradition, it is the season of HOPE! We are always a hope-filled and incredibly positive community, but this is highlighted even more at this time of the year.

Having said that, it is the very busiest time of the year for us too! Our students in Years 9 – 11 are having to consider their subject selection, discuss futures with parents and staff alike and begin serious thinking about future pathways. With this process comes our background work of preparing timetables, subjects, staffing needs and budgets to make sure we are well prepared for 2023. That seems ironic – flat out preparation for 2023 when we are in week 6 of Term 3! We often refer to this period as the “ducks on the pond time.” Everything is going smoothly on the surface, but beneath that, things are going flat-out. But isn’t that life in a school anyway?

Given our continued growth and expansion due to becoming co-ed you will see several extra and replacement staffing positions advertised in this weekend’s press and on various online platforms. To be able now to expand our leadership structures, our new and ongoing education programs and support positions and our teaching and ESO ranks makes us an even better resourced school and one that yet again will improve the quality of what we provide to our students and families.

It is extremely exciting times at St Paul’s.

Year 10 Camp

This week we have our Year 10 camp in the Flinders Ranges. This is the culmination of several years camping experiences for the students, and by far the most challenging. The students always rise to the challenge of this camp, build resilience, develop further their sense of teamwork and camaraderie, while building stronger relationships with staff. These camps and our retreat program are such an important part of the overall holistic education that St Paul’s provides, and we are grateful for the support of families and students alike.

Support Staff Week

This week we have been celebrating, daily, the amazing contribution to the St Paul’s community that all our ESO staff provide. Our ESO staff are all our staff that are not teachers and this covers, administration, finance, grounds and maintenance, ICT, marketing and enrolments, library, and inclusive education. As you can see from that list, we would simply not survive without the enormous amount of dedicated love, support and work done by these staff. We are so grateful for that and hope that all the little treats that have been provided (much thanks to Ms Keera Masters) have helped them understand again how much we love what they do for us all and just how valuable they are to us. God bless them all.

Father's Day

This Sunday I hope all the fathers, grandfathers, male role models and mentors will have the opportunity to enjoy an extra dose of love and gratitude from their families on Father's Day. I am so blessed that not only is my father still alive and going well at 93, but that I am both a father and a grandfather myself. The continued love and inspiration I get from my dad and likewise from my own family remind me constantly that I must not only “say” how grateful I am, but I must “show and do” my gratitude daily. I sincerely hope that all our families have an awesome day, and can celebrate somehow, even though some may be missing.

To all or extended community, this springtime reminds us of the new life, continued hope and the abundant joy we continuously experience, being a part of St Paul’s. We acknowledge that we are only who we are now because of all the great people who have gone before us and laid an amazing foundation upon which we can build.

We are indeed blessed!

Take care

God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends of St Paul’s,

As always, life continues to be extremely busy at St Paul’s – and life in general no doubt! What is one of the ironies of this time of the year is that we are only in week 4 of term 3 and yet we are having to work extremely diligently in all our preparation for 2023! This includes preparing budgets, finalising student numbers and hence advertising for new staff, guiding students and families through the subject counselling processes and at the same time continuing to do our best in our core business – teaching and learning.

College Musical

This week has seen Mr Antenucci and all his resolute staff and student teams undertake the week-long production of “All Shook Up” the musical. Damian has been doing this for over 20 years and this production provides student and staff, from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of skills and talents, to work together in producing a tariff final product. The dedication of the team and the commitment of the College, in providing significant resources, has guaranteed another extraordinarily successful production. We congratulate them all.

EREA Conference

As a part of our commitment to our national EREA family two staff members have attended the EREA National Deputies Conference here in Adelaide. Ms Marianne Loftus (Head of Primary) and Mr Josh Foulis (Deputy Principal) have not only participated but contributed significantly to its success. Throughout the year several of our staff participate in various EREA “Full of Life” programs and inductions spread across all sections of the College. Belonging to a national, and international EREA family brings opportunities and support services, all of which contribute to St Paul’s commitment to provide the best possible Catholic Education in the Edmund Rice Tradition.

Feast of the Assumption

August 15th is one of the most important and significant dates in our Catholic Church’s calendar. It is the feast of the Assumption of Mary, the mother of Jesus. It has always been known as a Holy Day of Obligation in the Church, where traditionally all catholic schools and communities would celebrate a Mass together. With all the COVID restrictions we face this important aspect of College life has been significantly altered. Having said that our Catholic Identity team, led admirably by Mr Joe Hicks our APRIM, produced a beautiful online liturgy that the whole community had the opportunity to participate in.

This feast is not only the opportunity to remember Mary as the mother of Jesus and all the wonderful character strengths (courage, compassion, love, selflessness, sacrifice etc) she demonstrated in her live, but also a time when and where we can celebrate and give thanks to all of the beautiful women in our lives from our mums to relative, to friends, to teachers. At St Paul’s we a re a beautifully diverse community and this had been strengthened by the inclusion of girls in our Reception to year 8 classes. Some our girls participated in the liturgy and shared aspect of their journey of welcome to St Paul’s. It was a lovely liturgy, and we thank our Catholic Identity Team (Mr Hicks, Ms Girolamo-Corbo and Ms Ross) for all their work in the soul and spirituality dimension of our College life.

Winter Cocurricular, Girls Soccer, Under 12 State Soccer team

Our winter sports season is ending, and I would like to thank every staff member, student and family that has supported this important part of College life. Mr Nick Gillard does an amazing job in coordinating all of this and we can celebrate many, many wonderful achievements across different sports.

One amazing achievement is that our very first ever girls’ soccer team with this weekend paly in a Grand Final against St Domic's College at Cabra on Saturday morning. Under the guidance of Ms Sarah Fedele, the girls have been impressive and to achieve this in their first year is terrific. We wish them well.

Another exceptional performance that needs to be publicly recognised is that St Paul’s will be represented by three young boys in the State Under 12 Soccer team to play in a national carnival in Perth soon. To have three boys from the same school in the one state team is exceptional and a rarity.

We offer our most sincere congratulations to Liam Oliviero, Ziad DiBlasio and Marcel El Hamra and wish them every success. All budding Socceroos no doubt!!

Take care

God Bless

Paul Belton

Dear Friends of St Paul’s,

As Term 2 draws to a close we have so much to be grateful for at the College and so much to look forward to in the coming terms. It has been a particularly busy term and that means it has been a particularly tiring one for all of us. While it was exciting to have all our traditional activities back in motion post COVID, the number and complexity of them meant even more work for our committed and diligent staff. It is enormously pleasing to say that each one of these activities was extremely successful. To name a few:

NAIDOC Week

Week 10 has been the national celebration of NAIDOC week. This is of enormous significance not only at St Paul’s but within the whole Australian society. We acknowledge that there has been significant wrongdoing in the lives of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait brothers and sisters. For any pain, that in any way could be attributed to us we apologise profusely.

Our week here at St Paul’s has had a number of different events, liturgies, reflections, and lessons.

We sincerely thank the staff for their preparatory work and the students for warmly embracing every aspect. All events and conversations have been in recognition of the great contribution made by past and current Aboriginal people and of the excellent value they add to who we all are as a school and a nation. We thank all our Aboriginal students and families for trusting us with their education and promise to build on our strong partnership.

Primary Music Afternoon

Another great celebration was the Primary Music performance. We offer our heartfelt congratulations to Ms Sarah Crisp (Primary Music teacher) in particular, but also to Ms Libby Verrall, Mr Matthew Bailey, Mr Victor Oria and all the primary teachers for all their work in preparing the students and for other staff in helping with the set-up etc. It was enormously successful, and the faces of students and families clearly told the story. Well done.

Middle Years Learning Expo

Last Thursday we held our best yet Middle Years Learning Expo. To be able to wander around alongside staff, students and families to see and witness the great depth of learning that has happened with the integrated STEM and LEAF classes are wonderful. The crowd was bigger than we have experienced before, and the quality of the presentations are outstanding. We often speak of “Student Voice” as being an important and essential part of the learning cycle for students and this expo massively demonstrated just that. Our thanks and congratulations go to all the Middle Years teachers but especially to our two Middle Years Leaders of Learning Ms Sue O’Malley (STEM) and Ms Joanna D’Angelo (LEAF) who were outstanding in their assiduous preparation for this event.

First Communion

On the very same evening as the Learning Expo, some of us were blessed to be at St Pius X church for the celebration of the sacrament of First Communion for several of our students. This rounds out the sacramental preparation done so very well for and with our students by Ms Kristynn Ross, Ms Maria Girolamo-Corbo and Mr Joe Hicks (our catholic Identity Team). These special occasions are the very heartbeat of our Catholic community and are so beautiful to be a part of. We wish these wonderful young students all the absolute best as they further develop their love of God and journey with Jesus throughout their lives.

Mr Jim Holmes

As we communicated during the last week, Mr Jim Holmes, who has worked in the St Paul’s community for 27.5 years has decided to bring this chapter of his life to a close. Jim has been a very valued member of our college and is enormously enthusiastic about the students and providing opportunities for everyone to succeed, regardless of academic ability or background. Jim has always been great to have a conversation and a laugh with and we are certain he will be dearly missed across the extended current and past families of the College. We wish him and his family all the absolute best for the future and thank them all sincerely.

2023 Planning

While it is only the concluding week of term two the College Executive and Leadership Teams have been busy beginning our planning for 2023 and beyond. With the ongoing success and growth of the college since the introduction of coeducation we have been and need to be thorough in our understanding and execution of strategic decisions that will continue to allow us to live out our great passion for providing a very excellent and affordable education for families in the inner north-east area of Adelaide. We will review all things curricula, co-curricular, human, and physical resources as well as the culture we are continuing to build as a growing coeducational College.

We hope you all have a great break and come back renewed and revitalised for another great term at St Paul’s.

Take care and God Bless.

Paul Belton

Dear Families and Friends of St Paul’s,

As you would all be aware this week, we begin a new semester in our academic year. It is an unusual time for this to happen given it is not the start of a new term, but the reality of our work is that there are not four even terms that we can split in half for two equal semesters!

With a change of semester comes a change of timetable and with that several subject, staff, and lesson swaps. This year, more than ever before, considering COVID implications and staff taking leave, we have been stretched in more ways than one to sort through all of this. There has been a huge amount of work done behind the scenes by Mr Michael White our Timetable Coordinator, Mr Matthew Muscat our Senior Years Head of Teaching and Learning and our Deputy Principal Mr Josh Foulis. It has been enormously time consuming and stressful for many but as always at St Paul’s we are so grateful for the patience and resilience offered us by the staff and the students. As always, we continue to hold the students at the centre of all our planning and we look forward to another successful semester.

Year 12 Formal

Last Friday we had the absolute pleasure of sharing the evening with our Year 12 cohort and partners at our Year 12 Formal. It was a tremendous evening; they were extremely well behaved – even extremely well mannered and respectful in front of their guests – but we would have expected that from this group of fine young men! We are grateful for all the work our College Organiser, Ms Bonnie Phillips, Mr Callary, Head of Student Wellbeing (Year 7-12) and all the Leaders of House, who worked together to ensure the success of this important function.

Year 9 Camp

While the current weather is not fantastic, the Year 9 students under the guidance of Mr Chris Martin and his team of staff, have set off for chilly Kuipto Forrest. While this may be challenging it is an experience that the College believes are a particularly important part of what we call a holistic education. I’m sure they will remember the experience!

Staff Professional Development

On Friday of week 6 the whole staff finally had the opportunity to meet for some professional development. In 2015 when we all gathered there approximately 50 of us. Given our growth of over 200 this year we now have approximately 120 staff! To be able to gather in the new senior Learning Centre and be able to physically introduce the 30+ new staff to the community was a significantly special occasion.

College Tours

Over the last couple of years being able to show prospective families around St Paul’s has been difficult. With the COVID restrictions being eased we are now able to conduct these tours with greater freedom. Two Saturday’s ago, we had approximately 160 visitors to the College.  Following the presentation in the new building and after a complete “lap” of the school, families couldn't wait to submit enrolment forms. For your interest since July, 2020, when we announced we were becoming co-ed until now we have had between 2,500 and 3,000 enrolment enquiries. That is quite phenomenal and sadly we will not be able to enrol them all. Hence, if you know families or in fact have siblings who you want to attend St Paul’s we require enrolment forms at least two years out from any anticipated starting date.

It is a great news story for St Paul’s, and we are sure that Blessed Edmund Rice and Br Dally (our first principal) would be very proud of how the College has progressed.

God Bless
Paul Belton 

Dear Families and Friends of St Paul’s,

Last week I had the absolute pleasure of attending our Year 11  Retreat at Victor Harbor.  It was an experience that all the staff that attend and all our students thoroughly enjoy.  As a Catholic College in the Edmund Rice Tradition, it is imperative that we continually help students discover their true spiritual selves.  We are a very multicultural and very multi-faith community but we all share the common need for a spiritual life!

When we all think about it, our spirit is what drives us to become the best version of ourselves that we can be.  It is like team spirit in a sporting or community sense.  The spirit we believe so deeply in, is the Holy Spirit, the influence in our lives that connects us to God and gives us the real purpose of living.  This purpose is to live, in love, with each other and with our God.  We sincerely hope that our students do experience this sense of spirit and this sense of purpose. We thank our APRIM, Mr Joe Hicks and all the staff that made this experience so special.

Staff Potential Development

Our ongoing commitment to being the best we can be as a Catholic College, requires us to provide opportunities for our staff to gather together to undertake activities aimed at helping us provide the best environment for our students.  On Friday of this week we had the focus, in the Middle and Senior Years, a Student Wellbeing and in the Primary Years on all things Literacy.  We appreciate the support of our families in allowing these activities to take place.

Building Developments

You would all be aware of the recent developments happening at the College in terms of the main courtyard as well as the Senior Learning Centre building.  Whilst these are not completely finalised we are continuing to plan for the next major project which will be a new Primary Years Precinct.

A letter outlining these intentions will be forwarded to families.  In becoming a co-educational school we have been inundated with interest and enrolment enquiries.  The number now exceeds 2,500 since the original amount.

These exciting times mean that we will be able to further develop the College’s facilities, including an infrastructure that enables the delivery of a wide-ranging curriculum offering.

It is really very exciting times for St Paul’s and as our 2002 theme suggests 'Together We Grow'.

God Bless,

Mr Paul Belton
Principal

Dear Families and Friends of St Paul’s

We are delighted to share the latest details in relation to the next step in our building program. We have been working with a team of consultants to progress designs for a new Primary Years Precinct on the primary oval near the Trade Training Centre.  This is an exciting time for our community with growth in students numbers enabling us to continue with Phase Two of our College Master Plan development projects.  These plans have now been submitted for planning approval and following this will undergo a tender process.  All going smoothly we intend to commence this project as soon as possible.

Click to view the current plans here: Primary Years Precinct

The future looks extremely bright for St Paul's.

Thank you for all your ongoing support. 

Dear Friends of St Paul’s,

Welcome back to term two!

We hope that everyone has had an impressive easter and a restful break at the end of term one. (Given it is week two that seems a long time ago now!!) Term two brings a great deal of excitement at the College as, finally, we hope the COVID restrictions start to lift, and we can again celebrate all the wonderful things that happen at St Paul’s in a more formal and more relaxed way.

Parents and family members are allowed back on-site and while we will continue to maintain safety precautions such as masks and spreading people out, we hope to be able to share with the community on a much more personal level.

As a staff, we have not met all together in the one-room all year. This has been frustrating given we had over 25 new members of staff join us this year and to also not have a whole school assembly means we have not been able to all be together to formally welcome the additional 200+ students who joined our community in 2022.

Having said that the celebration of the Stations of the Cross that Mr Joe Hicks our new APRIM and the Catholic Identity team led on the last day of last term, in the courtyard was amazing and a tremendously inclusive celebration of the most significant event in our Catholic, Christian calendar – the death and resurrection of Jesus. The whole community was there in the open and everyone enjoyed and appreciated the power, solemnity, and celebration of the liturgy.

One example of just how important returning to more face-to-face is to our community occurred this week when, as a staff, we were able to go into the Chapel together for staff prayer. In speaking to a staff member who started at St Paul’s at the beginning of 2021, this was the first time he had experienced the beautiful staff prayer we share together every Friday morning, collectively in the chapel. It is so much better than the online versions!

Parent / student / teacher conversations’

By now most families would have engaged in our mid-semester learning conversations. Again, while these could not be held face-to-face the staff have reported back on how well they all went and how valuable they are in assisting the students in their learning, and in fact helping them reach their full potential. We often speak of the three-way partnership that exists at St Paul’s between parents, students, and staff. When this partnership is strong, and we are all “on the same page” there is no limit to the achievements that can be reached. The most important message to come out of these meetings is that we are all working and will continue to work, together, for the students in our care.

New Building

Another wonderful occasion occurred this Monday when we were finally able to start the usage of the new senior learning centre. While things are not fully completed, we are so delighted, and so are the senior students, to be able to use what is a quite remarkable facility. The college will have a formal opening later in the term or year and we look forward to sharing this beautiful environment with as many of you as we can, through parent meetings etc. It fills us with such an enthusiastic sense of pride to be able to have a state-of-the-art learning facility that is as good as what would be provided in any school. And, as a bonus, the view across the ovals to the Adelaide hills is as good a view as you could get in any school! St Paul’s gets to have and share such a facility because of the enormous amount of work that has been done by so many community members, over a long time. It is indeed a just reward for that diligence and great belief in the College.

God Bless, take care

Paul Belton

Dear Friends of St Paul’s

What a term!

Over the last two years we have all had to live with the challenges of our new COVID world. Term 1 2022 has been by far the most challenging of these. Our community, like many schools has been hit extremely hard with the sheer numbers of staff and students who have either contracted the illness or have been deemed close contacts and forced into isolation. Every level of our staff from senior leadership to all sections of our ESO staff have been impacted. This has caused many significant challenges and our staff lead so admirably by our Deputy Principal, Josh Foulis and our amazing College Organiser Ms Bonnie Phillips have navigated our way through a myriad of relief lessons and juggling of staff to ensure a sense of continuity in learning and commitment to the student has been maintained. While we should mention more than just a few, Mr Foulis and Ms Phillips have worked tirelessly and been of huge support to the staff, all of whom, in turn, have been formidable.

At the beginning of the year, we welcomed over twenty-five fresh staff and their introduction to the College could not have come at a more challenging time. Each of them has made a significant contribution to the College and we thank them sincerely. Ms Marianne Loftus as Head of the Primary, Ms Nadia Morris as Head of Teaching and Learning in the Primary, Mr Joe Hicks as APRIM and Mr Matthew Muscat as Head of Teaching and Learning in the Middle and Senior Years have excelled in their senior leadership roles and laid the foundation for continued growth and development across the College.

Co-education success

The 2022 year also signalled the beginning of a new era for the College as we welcomed young girls in all year levels from Reception to Year 8. This has been an outstanding success, due to the diligent work by many staff, through eleven different working parties, which explored and researched all structures, procedures and programs that would make this stage in our proud history, successful. We should congratulate Ms Donna Nguyen in her role as Transition Coordinator and Mr Nick Callary as Head Student Development whose preparation and ongoing work with and support of the girls has been outstanding

Building challenges and progress

Another of our challenges this term was the delay in the finishing of both our main courtyard and the sports and learning centre. This delay caused staff, students, and classes to be relocated to different and some unusual spots. The great news is that we have received our Certificate of Occupancy to the new building, and we have started moving in and classes will begin in there by week two of next term.

We also hope to be announcing some more exciting news in terms of building development early next term. Our continued growth and development have resulted in unprecedented demand on enrolments and this in turn has provided us with the opportunity to provide even better resources for our families and broader community.

Thank you

On behalf of the senior leadership team of the College I would really like to thank all our staff, students and families for their ongoing support and commitment to making St Paul’s such a wonderful community. Despite the challenges of the term, it continues to be an amazingly positive and welcoming family environment. Have an incredibly happy and very Holy Easter season and relaxing holiday period. May the joys of the risen Christ bring much happiness to you all.

God Bless

Paul Belton

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

At St Paul’s we truly value the students in our care and recognise the importance of faith, dialogue and effective, respectful partnerships between home, school and parish.  It is through showing care and concern, we educate the whole person, strive to have students be the best they can be and help create those positive memories they carry with them.

We want what you want, the best possible education for your child and we will continue to work together in our community to build capacity in all our students to know that they are special and unique.  We walk together with you on this journey, providing the children in our care with opportunities to achieve their full potential in everything they do.

To allow children to reach for the stars I know you want to be engaged in their learning and SEQTA Engage is one way to do this.  As parents and caregivers, you are able to access the daily plan of learning and any associated resources.  If you have forgotten your Username or password, or simply need questions answered about how to best access SEQTA, please contact Kristynn Ross kross@stpauls.sa.edu.au and she will gladly get you on the road to connection.

This coming Wednesday we will be celebrating Ash Wednesday which marks the official beginning of the season of Lent.  The whole school community will receive ashes as a  reminder to follow Jesus and turn our hearts to God.

Lent is a time for giving thanks to and strengthening our relationship with God. Ideally, the commitments that we make in honour of Lent are made with self-improvement in mind, as we look within ourselves and discover what we may do to better our lives and ourselves as a whole. Instead of giving up behaviours or habits that you are trying to kick anyway, why not focus on doing something positive for yourself, or perhaps more importantly, for others? Call that friend who has been on your mind. Reach out to someone in need. Donate your time to something you feel passionate about. Engage in a random act of kindness. Spend the day with your children or a loved one. Allow yourself some much-needed quiet-time. Just simply do something that is good. Now, more than ever, we need to mindful of our connectedness.  Let’s take the time to add something positive into our lives and the lives of others.  It might just be the difference in making someone’s day brighter than it may otherwise have been.

I thank each of you for the gift of your child, and for allowing us to share and be a part of their memories as we walk together.

Take care and have a great fortnight.

Marianne Loftus
Head of Primary Years

Dear Friends of St Paul’s,

Our start to the 2022 school year continues to be extremely positive, despite all the world problems that surround us! Like all society we have been impacted by the COVID scenario but nowhere near as bad as other schools or communities, and our processes are well and truly established and working well. As always, we ask that if any family has any concerns, please contact us and we will assist you in any way we can. Our community relationships have always been built around trust and our commitment to our three-way partnership (student/ family/ college) remains as strong as ever.

Communication is always the key, and we will continue to be proactive in this space and ask that you feel free to contact us whenever you need.

Lent

As a Catholic College in the Edmund Rice tradition, we are very aware of our mission and obligations in remaining authentically Catholic while being extremely inclusive and welcoming families from all different faith backgrounds. Next Tuesday and Wednesday, we enter the most significant period in our church’s calendar – LENT. Lent is a season of preparation and perspective! We celebrate on “Shrove” or “Pancake” Tuesday and move into the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday. On both Tuesday and Wednesday, we will share with our staff and students a clear explanation of the significance of these days and this season.

The preparation we refer to in preparing for Lent is that which explains the build-up to the greatest feast in our calendar – EASTER. The death and resurrection of Jesus is an event that not only changed the world at the time but is one that is even more than ever, relevant to all of us. We must help all our students understand that the world they are growing up into often teaches a set of false values, beliefs that are so very different, in essence totally opposite to what St Paul’s College and all great religions and faith traditions teach. All great religions have the same set of core beliefs like treating every person equally, having a sense of gratitude for what we do have, growing with a sense of humility, acknowledging that the world is not all about the “me”, growing in hope and even more importantly empathy for those who struggle far more than us. Lent is such a great time to practice these virtues and make a positive difference in the lives of others. It is in doing this that we help ourselves and live a far more fulfilled and happy life.

Building program

The world around us is constantly challenging us and throwing the odd “curveball” to make our lives interesting- to say the least! Stage one of our redevelopment program that the College has undertaken for the last 18 months is nearing completion. The main courtyard looks terrific and is now all open for use (but has several issues to be rectified) and the new Senior Centre and amenities block is getting closer to the finish line – hopefully before the end of the term.

We are so very grateful for the way the entire community has accepted and acted so positively during this difficult period of transition. The promise of what is to come is very exciting and will be a just reward for everyone for their patience and understanding. Thank you all.

Take Care.

God Bless

Paul Belton
Principal

Our College’s only carpark continues to be a matter requiring improvement to address access for cars at the two key times of each day (morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up). This is intensified as our College welcomes more families to our community in 2022.

As previously communicated to families, this matter is so significant that St Paul’s College remains in meaningful communication with local Council, and we are working towards a long-term solution within the next 18 months.

One short-term solution to ease traffic in our carpark has been staff parking on the College sports fields; this decision has reduced cars in the carpark to manage increased drop-off/pick-up that occurs at the start of the school year.

While we are grateful to staff for making this sacrifice, of course this is not a sustainable solution because it impedes on play spaces, damages playing fields and simply cannot occur as the weather changes (soft grounds after rain).

Prompted by these reasons, and knowing that the resurfacing of our Tennis-Courts will soon remove a crucial Primary Years play space until the end of Term 1, our staff will return to parking in the College carpark from Monday 28 February. This will significantly minimise the available carparking for families before and after school, and it will also challenge the function of the carpark as a ‘kiss and drop’ (drop-off and pick-up), for which it was never intended.

The following are the expectations of families/cars during the busiest morning and afternoon periods (drop-off and pick-up) periods:

• Use surrounding streets and areas to drop-off and pick-up, to avoid carpark (where possible/age-appropriate/safe).
• Avoid crossing Grand Junction Road to enter Blacks Road – use Sudholz Road to manage this.
• Enter carpark from Blacks Road, via Grand Junction Road (avoid crossing Blacks Road to enter carpark) – use Dally Road onto Lurline Road onto Grand Junction Road to manage this.
• Only stop to pick-up your child(ren) in the carpark when reaching the Callan Hall entrance – students will only be permitted to wait outside the Callan Hall entrance. No pick-up will occur at any other part of the carpark.
• Do not overtake in the carpark, not for any reason – it is one lane. Overtaking is a most significant risk for child safety.
• Giveaway to cars exiting a carpark (allow room for that car to reverse).

Our College has allocated a staff member to the carpark each afternoon (busiest period) to assist in managing these expectations; however, we know that calm, rational and understanding adults are the best way to fast-track everybody’s experience and above all, keep our young people safe.

The College carpark situation is imperfect and is being addressed, albeit not as quickly as the College would hope and despite best efforts. Our combined understanding and patience will assist most positive experiences for families at pick-up and drop-off times.

With any suggestions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact me: jfoulis@stpauls.sa.edu.au or by phone at the College

Josh Foulis
Deputy Principal

Dear Friends of St Paul’s,

Welcome Back to the 2022 academic year! As we have mentioned many times over the last 18 months 2022 marks the beginning of a new era for St Paul’s in us becoming a co-educational College in the Edmund Rice tradition. We begin this new era with a greats sense of appreciation and gratitude for all those who have gone before us, staff, students, and families. We well and truly stand on the shoulders of you all. It is also because of our great tradition that we approach this era with great confidence and excitement.

Many people have contributed to the extensive and thorough preparation for this year, and I would like to sincerely thank them all, EREA, CESA, our own staff and community as well as the present student population who have all worked with us – in difficult situations too with the school being a building site. It is so wonderful to be able to welcome students (albeit not all) back into the school for 2022. The COVID scenario, while not being great for the students doing on-line learning, has made the first few days for all the new students in Reception, 1 and 2 as well as the year 7’s and 8 somewhat easier. It has also given us increased opportunity to engage with students and help them settle in.

Day 1

To welcome our students back on day one of any year is always a wonderful experience. Whether it is all the little Reception students to the new year 7s and 8s the excitement on the faces of the students (and parents!) is always particularly special. This year however, with many of these being young girls, it was even more significant and emotional. By the end of the day, we were all delighted with just how wonderful it had been, and for all the staff, the culmination of 18 months of diligent planning and extremely hard work. It will go down in our history as one of the most significant and certainly one of the most emotional!

New Facilities

Another great part of the welcome back to the new year has been the opportunity for the students to enjoy the new courtyard, the renovated Wilson Building (housing Inclusive Ed., Library, ICT), and the new primary bathrooms (for the girls in 7/8 also). The new sports and senior centre have suffered delays, like most building projects, due to COVID caused labor and material supplies. We are expecting to have it completed in time for us to move in prior to the end of the term. It is going to be a sensational addition to the college resources, and we look forward to showing these off to our extended St Paul’s community.

New Staff

With the significant increase in student number, we have also employed and welcomed a significant number of new staff. Each one has settled in well and brought into the St Paul’s family an extraordinary amount of talent and genuine character. Our normal extensive welcoming procedures and activities have taken a hit with the COVID scenario, but each have felt the positivity and enjoyment that comes with working in this beautiful community. On behalf of our community, we welcome.

New staff starting:

Marisa Liddle – Finance Manager – Monday 10 Jan

Beata Kucaba – Assistant Business Manager – Thursday 13 Jan

Tim Martin – Business Manager – Monday 17 Jan

New Teaching staff:

Matthew Bailey, Rachel Delaney, Amber Dias, Sarah Fedele

Emily Halls, Joseph Hicks, David Knight, Marianne Loftus

Keera Masters, Nadia Morris, Emily Norris, Jessica Stace

Stephanie Vidoni, Chad Wood, Kevin Wang, Mark Damm

New ESO staff:

Inclusive Ed, Drew Akin, Ivana Cikos, Amelia Marcuccio, Joanne Palakat

Inclusive Ed, Owen Selby, Bianca Sheehan, Abby Violi, Kayla Willacy

Alice Ward – Student Counsellor, Lucy May – Student Counsellor

We welcome all these staff, all our new students and families. We are sure it is going to be a wonderful year for St. Paul’s College.

God Bless

Paul Belton
Principal

In a historical year for St Paul’s College, with co-education beginning and so many new families joining our community, I excitedly add my welcome to the 2022 school year: Together We grow.

Staff Preparations for 2022

The contributions of so many new staff across various roles have been an absolute joy to witness in the opening weeks of the year as staff readied the College to welcome students. Rivalling this highlight has been the welcoming, selfless, and caring way that continuing staff have embraced new colleagues to ensure they are most comfortable and prepared for students.

As families of St Paul’s, you will have already witnessed the year’s theme in motion as staff model their growth together, into the new era of St Paul’s College.

Family Engagement 

Amidst the obvious challenges of managing face-to-face learning for some year levels and online learning for others, it was so pleasing that all families across the College have had a conversation with their child’s Home Group Teacher to inform the year ahead. Goal setting, hopes and aspirations, any natural nerves about starting in a new school, clarifying expectations, and establishing important lines of communication between student and family and teacher, were hugely beneficial conversations that have allowed each student to feel confident for 2022.

Thanks must go to our families for engaging so eagerly with the school year, as well as staff commitment that is essential for student wellbeing and successful learning.

New Counselling Team - Welcome Alice and Lucy!

Counselling services at St Paul’s College has been an enormous point of growth in readiness for 2022, building on the great work of Gill Smith over many years.

We welcome Alice Ward and Lucy May as our permanent, full-time counsellors operating from reception to Year 12. With great experiences within and beyond education, Lucy and Alice grace our community with a variety of perspectives, skill sets and practices that will provide greater choice and accessibility for our students.

Lucy and Alice have already been working hard with our key wellbeing leaders throughout Reception to Year 12 and look forward to meeting more students and families as the term progresses and all students return onsite.

I wish all students and families every success for 2022, as we again work together with young people at the centre of everything that we do.

Josh Foulis
Deputy Principal

Excitingly, our College will experience a significant increase in students for 2022. Within this growth, student wellbeing, safety and learning must remain central to the liberating education that we offer as a College in the Edmund Rice tradition. In 2022, St Paul’s College will welcome the addition of a fifth house: Nagle House. This is named after Nano Nagle, founder of the Presentation Sisters and a crucial influence on Blessed Edmund Rice, founder of St Paul’s College, the Presentation Brothers, and the Christian Brothers. Nagle is an important person in the life of our charism and therefore, our College.

This exciting development will occur from Reception to Year 12 to begin 2022 and some students will move from their current House to Nagle House (not between other Houses), while new students will be divided across our five Houses. As always, family allegiances and history will be factored into House allocation. The advent of Nagle House will ensure that the number of students in each House and Home Group is appropriate, particularly in Middle Years 7-9 and Senior Years 10-12, where our pastoral care relies on the strength of our House system. Each of the five Houses will have four Middle Years Home Groups and three Senior Years Home Groups in 2022, testament to our growth in Middle Years 7-9.

Please refer to the correspondence (below) sent home to families for further details.

Professor Jenny Mortimer, a plant scientist from the Waite Institute, Nicola Sasanelli, CEO of Andy Thomas Space Foundation, and Imogen, our Challenge Liaison, visited the Year 7 classes Wednesday morning. 

Kovid, James, Liam and Kavisha had this to report about the visit:

"It was amazing and I learned so much. She provided her email address so we can ask questions about our project and find out more about plants and space. Professor Jenny became a botanist because of a TV show she watched and liked to look at the weird plants like the Welwitschia mirablis, the bristlecone pine which can grow for 2,000 years, Wolffia arrhiza, duckweed and the very smelly Corpse Plant, which has a giant flower that smells like rotting meat because it is fertilised by blow flies.

She showed us a photo of Zinnias in space taken by Commander Scott Kelly.  He took lots of photos in space and they looked really cool and liked growing plants in space which is a very challenging thing to do.

It is a challenge to grow plants in space, the plants will need light and there is no sunlight in space, so they use a mixture of LED lights, the main colours they use is blue and red, different colours of the light make the plants grow in different ways.

Another challenge is deciding what plants to grow in space.  We could grow many different plants in space but they need to be hardy and small.  So far the best plant to grow is The Red Robin tomato because it is healthy, short, fast growing and low waste.  Mrs O’Malley explained we will soon be joining the ‘Grow Beyond Earth’ program and we will be working with students around the world to help NASA chose which plants will be the best to grow in space.  We will grow plants in a ‘Veggie Unit’ like they use on the International Space Station and our data will go to NASA.

Professor Jenny is experimenting with duck weed in her lab and we were surprised that it could be used as a food.  It could be a good crop for space because you can eat the whole plant and it will double every 48hours.  One of her friends in another university is experimenting with growing duckweed in flavoured water and has created bacon flavoured duckweed!

Andy Thomas is the only person from Adelaide that has been to space. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Adelaide, then went on to complete his PhD at the University of SA. Then he went to the USA to study and he became an Astronaut.

Sending someone to space requires a lot of background work and a team of thousands of people. There are many professions involved and it requires a team effort. Imogen, from the Andy Thomas Foundation showed us a list of jobs that are involved in the Space Industry and it included engineering, medical personnel, transport, marketing and scientists, as well as many more.

Our goal is to research space technology and use it to solve daily problems on Earth, and also look at plants and experiments in space. We are going to look at the '17 Sustainability Goals' by the UN and use our research to help improve life on Earth. For this project we will be working with a school in Mangaran, a remote island in Northern Sulawesi.  We are going to help them by developing a Hydroponic system made from recycled materials that they can use to grow crops in a small area, create a product to sell and lead to a better life.

As we are learning about how to grow plants in space and Mangaran, we learnt about how different light can affect different types of plants and that there should be no waste because 1kg to take up to space costs $25,000. A good plant would be duck weed because you can eat the whole thing and will double in 48 hours."

Sue O'Malley
Leader of Learning – Middle Years STEM

The Paladins were proud to be a part of the FTC Scrimmage held at the Adelaide Showgrounds and generously run by the RoboRoos (Student Robotics Club of South Australia).

As our first in-person FTC event, every member of the team felt the true energy and excitement of FIRST all the way from the start!

With not a lot of work having been done on our robot Joyeuse over the last few months due to COVID, there were many late nights over the past week, working hard to get everything together. We were faced with many challenges, from autonomous not quite working, to CAD software malfunctions, however, were happy to show up with a decent robot - our aim was not to win - but to be part of the event, meet other teams, and have fun.

Progressing through the qualifiers on the day was quite the experience. Challenging would be the perfect word to describe it! When autonomous would not quite work how we wanted, we’d have to very quickly identify and fix the issue(s) in the code. Our pit team worked together so well and was very efficient at this! While one person would be at a laptop working on code, another would be plugging the robot in to load the latest software, and yet another person would be squaring the robot up along the start line, ready to go - it felt like we were a Formula 1 pit crew!

Many goals (and flat batteries…) later, and it came time for the final rounds. In third place, at the time, we were chosen, alongside the team from Gleeson College, to be alliance partners with one of the RoboRoos teams. After a couple of good matches with our red alliance partners, it came down to the final round, which we played with the Gleeson team. Rather unsure of how we would go since we had made some very last minute changes to our code (autonomous and shooter control), our alliance managed to score a whopping 101 points, securing us as champions of the scrimmage!

We would like to thank every team in attendance, as well as all the volunteers for their hard work and for letting us experience a fantastic day of robots, fun and gracious professionalism WOO! A special mention must also go to our coach, Mrs O’Malley for welcoming us into the world of FIRST and always guiding us with her vast experience to do our best, and to our fantastic mentor Shaun, who has been with us since day one, and is always there when things get tough.

We can’t wait to be part of future FIRST events and are particularly excited for the First Tech Challenge Kick-Off, which we will be holding on Sunday, 19th September - see you there!

By Caleb, Team Captain

We are excited to share the new uniform designs for our girls commencing in 2022! Since the 2020 announcement of our co-educational journey, the St Paul’s uniform working party has undertaken extensive community consultation and research. The design and consultation process has taken almost 12 months and has seen us working in partnership with our new uniform supplier, Midford. 

Midford were appointed late last year and have been supporting the working party with their designers to determine the style, fabric and make up of our uniforms. Whilst this process is now finalised, much work had been placed into the sampling of new garments suitable for our Reception to Year 12 students. This is an exciting time and we look forward to seeing our students in the designs. The range for female students includes choice of skort, shorts, pants or skirt with detachable bib or summer dress. The current senior tie will become the new tie for all students from R-11 and a new style will be developed for our Year 12 students.

St Paul’s College regards the uniform as an important aspect of the school image, general philosophy and condition of enrolment. The College recognises that the school uniform assists in promoting respect for oneself and others, builds school community spirit and contributes to the setting of high standards amongst the student body. Furthermore, a school uniform eliminates competition in what students wear and removes class distinction within a community, thus promoting an inclusive culture.

Further details of all new items in the range will be made available online and an updated uniform policy will be circulated, once finalised. Additionally, Midford have invested significant money to refit the uniform shop so that customers can enjoy a better retail experience and to display stock more effectively. We are aiming to have this new uniform ready for sale in Term 4, 2021.

The Uniform Shop will continue to operate on site from its current location with expanded hours as follows:

Tuesday 8.00am – 4.00pm
Wednesday 1.00pm – 5.00pm
Thursday 1.00pm – 5.00pm

Families will also be able to purchase uniforms via the Midford online shop. Further instructions are available on our College website. We are excited to launch our new uniform and look forward to seeing the students wearing it for the first time later this year.

Jake Stewart
Uniform Committee

Summer Dress - charcoal with gold and white stripe (note this can appear green on screen)

Wishing all members of our Community the very best among obvious challenges associated with South Australia’s lock-down and associated school closures, our College has prepared staff and students for remote learning. Please see the following information about remote learning at St Paul’s College during this lock-down.

https://www.stpauls.sa.edu.au/files/16131/COVID-19_Update_Closure_20.7.21.pdf

St Paul’s College is one of three metropolitan schools to be awarded a $5,000 grant in the Andy Thomas Foundation Challenge.

The Challenge encourages Middle Years students in SA to create a project highlighting the importance and potential use of space technology in addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Schools are encouraged to identify a challenge or real-world problem and to propose a solution that would be useful in addressing or solving it.

St Paul's was awarded $5,000 to implement their proposed idea of exploring how space technology of vertical farming could help the people of Mangaran, a remote Indonesian village.

The village is connected by motorboat and then ferry (12-hour trip) to the city of Manado. Food, except for fish and coconut, is imported to the island, including the dietary staple rice. The village exports some dried coconut, nutmeg and cloves, but apart from services and fishing, there are few opportunities for paid employment and many of the younger generation are intent on leaving the village. Worse still, their island is a native forest that is being cut down for a palm oil production. 

Students wish to develop a viable, scalable vertical garden made of readily obtainable, recyclable materials that can produce commercial quantities of rice and vegetables to reduce the village’s dependency on imported food, potentially develop an export industry and remove the need for deforestation to plant palm groves.

The local teacher in Mangaran will work with St Paul's, through a former villager now living in Adelaide, to parallel their experiments and develop the technology in-situ.

Our students will research, design and construct bamboo frame vertical gardens using recycled PET bottles for planting.  They will be controlled using the Space Technologies of Variable Rate Technology and Precision agriculture.  Our students will develop an Arduino or micro: bit controlled system, powered by solar panels, to ensure optimum growth and repeatability, before creating training packages and electronic kits for the Mangaran schools.  As our climates are different, we will use our "Asian Seeds in Space"  Bok Choy seeds for our experiments and research the best dwarf rice and chili varieties for Mangaran.

Ryan Austin, Thomas Jordan and Sue O’Malley will take the classes on a tour of the Australian Space Discovery Centre and have the support of a mentor for the project.

"We are all so excited to have the opportunity to work with students in Mangaran and learn more about the space program in South Australia,” said Sue O’Malley, Leader of Learning – Middle Years STEM at St Paul’s College.

"The students have already started researching the island, climate and culture. They were happy to use their holidays to get a head start!"

Adj. Professor Nicola Sasanelli AM, Founder and CEO of The Andy Thomas Space Foundation said the Selection Committee was most impressed with the effort involved, the standard of applications from schools and the originality of the projects.

“We are delighted with the level of interest and obvious enthusiasm of all participants, and we look forward with great anticipation to seeing the project results,” said Nicola.

St Paul's, one of just three metropolitan schools to reach the finals of the inaugural Challenge, will now give a final presentation of their project along with the eight other prize winning schools at an event in Adelaide on Friday 10 September. 

St Paul’s College recognises the importance of leadership opportunities in the development of all students. The Girls' Leadership Academy is an opportunity for all Year 8 girls in 2022 to develop effective leadership qualities through ongoing and targeted leadership development opportunities throughout their five years at St Paul’s College.

The program will be delivered in an inclusive, friendly, and nurturing environment which promotes mindfulness, fostering a positive mindset and understanding one’s self-identity. Coaching and positive education will inform the academy, which will develop throughout the girls’ five years as the ultimate female leaders in our community.

As the trailblazers of our transition to co-education, the 2022 Year 8 girls will be presented with a number of responsibilities and opportunities to develop skills, and actively represent our school. The Girls' Leadership Academy will equip students with transferable leadership skills, including:

• excellent problem-solving
• confident and effective communicators
• resilient critical thinkers
• active citizens who have a strong conviction for social justice

Throughout their five years in the academy, students will participate in workshops and activities including:

• Public speaking and effective communication
• Volunteering and contributing to the St Paul’s Community
• Participating in Passion Projects and event planning
• Social Justice and Advocacy (being an active citizen)
• Charities and fundraising
• Developing self-identity and expression
• Positive Education
• Developing positive relationships with others 
• Mentoring younger students
• Feedback to College, College Board and Edmund Rice Education with practical review processes around co-education
• Gender in education

In addition, inspirational guest speakers and mentors will be invited to work with our Girls' Leadership Academy students.

We are highly excited about the opportunities which will be available to our Year 8 girls for 2022. Updates about the academy will be provided throughout this year.

Stage 1 of the Master Plan includes construction of a $6.7m double-storey building on the site of the existing changeroom facilities, to be completed for the commencement of co-education. 

Upstairs will include modern and flexible learning spaces for our senior years students. Room arrangements will be conducive to large open areas or smaller learning rooms. The space will include a kitchen area for Senior students and a large outside decking area providing access to the Trembath building and views of the school ovals and the Adelaide Hills.

Downstairs will be new toilets and change facilities and a modern entrance foyer, which opens to a new STEM lab (former learning enrichment space). The decking above will create large under-croft outdoor areas. The positioning of the building will create an open line of sight from the courtyard through to the school ovals.

The College is pleased to announce that we have been successful in obtaining a grant for $390K from the Department of Recreation, Sport and Racing to assist in the construction of unisex change rooms including amenities, storage, umpire’s and first aid room. The guidelines require the College to contribute an equal amount towards this project.

These facilities form part of the new and exciting $6.7m Sports and Learning Centre that will commence very shortly.

The College grounds and change rooms are used by a number of community sporting organisations including St Paul’s Old Scholars Football Club, St Paul’s Old Scholars Soccer Club and Hope Valley Cricket Club. It is through the use of our facilities by these community groups that the State Government is wanting to increase the participation in sport and recreation. In particular, the fact that we are moving to co-education in 2022 and the importance of catering for more females in sport no doubt had a positive impact on the merits of our application.

We acknowledge the State Government for their continued support of grassroots sport and thank them sincerely for this grant.

To read more about the building project HERE

Congratulations to our Year 8 students who won the Salisbury Council Watershed Creative Arts Prize, Emerging Technologies category on Friday night, for their Dry Creek Augmented Reality Experiences.  These experiences were created for the CESA XR Challenge in 2020.

Students explored the theme of sustainability and how they could reduce the human impact and increase the use of Dry Creek. Working with Lumination, students engaged in virtual and augmented reality (AR) experiences to fully immerse in their learning.

Through the XR Challenge students enjoyed learning how to create and code virtual environments. At the same time, adopting a section of the Dry Creek Trail and studying water quality, pollution, man-made objects, plants and animals. Each group created an AR experience for their section of the creek. Working with Salisbury Council and The Friends of Dry Creek Trail, the AR worlds are linked to a QR code that can be accessed by the public as they walk the trail!

The Creative Arts Prize finalists are currently on display in the John Harvey Community Hall. The exhibition will run for 6 weeks from 10 May to 16 June 2021.

The competition included entries depicting the theme of sustainability, with works from traditional art and written mediums, as well as emerging technologies.

Below is a message of thanks to the St Paul's Community from Steve Rocha at PRATYeK.
It's humbling to see that our efforts from Eddie Rice Day are directly impacting those suffering in India. Our community raised over $3,000.

Sunday marked the end of a virtual robotics programming competition that spanned five months. The global Student Robotics competition headquartered in London, saw teams from around the world compete in a virtual league, with four matches of increasing complexity, building up to the knockout rounds and grand final that was held last night. The Paladins of St Paul’s were extremely proud to represent Australia, while competing alongside teams from the UK, France, Germany, Malaysia and Indonesia. The competition sees us given a (virtual) robot to compete in the 2021 game, Radars of the Lost Ark, where teams have to claim (and steal!) towers from each other, all by writing and submitting code - which will then be simulated against other team’s robot code, along with exciting commentary from the brilliant team at Student Robotics!

The Paladins made it all the way to the knockouts, where we proceeded to win every match that we were put in, securing us a place in the grand final where we were put up against the brilliant team HRS3 from Hills Road Sixth Form College in London. However, it was our precise robot control and bold strategy that saw us win 36-8, earning us the title of world champions!

Recognition must be given to everyone on the team who contributed to the project, to our fantastic coach, Mrs O’Malley, and to the volunteers at Student Robotics, who made the competition fun - and were always online to help with any questions (and deal with our “fun-posting” shenanigans)! A special mention, however, must be given to our incredible mentor Shaun, who put so much in and always inspired us with his brilliant ideas

You can watch the battle unfold here:
https://youtu.be/Jwk2kUp02lk

Caleb Rodgers, Year 12

The St Paul's College Master Plan is a long-term conceptual planning document outlining future development building works. Some key concepts include: 'opening up' the College to allow for better movement, lines of sight and easy access. We will create a long and central 'spine' through a beautiful new entrance on Blacks Road through to a new enclosed entrance to the gymnasium. This entrance will have an exciting glass frontage into our creative STEM space and a wall of memorabilia to display the proud history and traditions of the College. Another spine will run along between the science labs and current Callan Hall through to the Trade Training Centre and Lurline Avenue.

Another key concept is to develop a much more exciting Grand Junction Road frontage. We will have a broader entrance and line of sight through there, improved traffic facilities and flow as well as the vision of the development of buildings associated with our three sub-schools - Primary, Middle and Senior Years. Following that comes the development of whole school and community facilities such as a Performing Arts Precinct.

We are excited to announce that Ms Donna Nguyen has been appointed to the newly created position of Transition Coordinator at St Paul’s.

Donna will be involved in our working parties and provide leadership in vision, mission and strategic priorities with a focus on our transition to co-education, reporting to Senior Leadership. She will have a particular responsibility for the preparation, transition and well-being of the girls joining us in 2022.

Donna’s meticulous planning and preparation, commitment to hard work, combined with her personable and friendly nature, will ensure a successful transition to co-education at St Paul’s.
Congratulations Donna!

Dear Friends of St Paul’s

Building Community

Over the first three weeks of the College Year, we have held several significant events all of which continue to strengthen our communications with and support for our families. This is, of course, withing the limits of the COVID restrictions.

Our Year 7, Year 8 and Year 12 Parent Information evenings were extremely well attended and provided the College with the opportunity to outline our Middle Years philosophy and programs (to the 7 and 8 families) while the Yr 12 families were offered support with a presentation from Ms Kirrilie Smout from Developing Minds, a company that will work with us and the Year 12 cohort throughout the year.

Perhaps the highlight of the week (for me anyway!!) was the Welcome to St Paul’s / Rite of Passage Ceremony, for our Reception students and their families. This is a very beautiful and special ceremony that has been developed over the last few years to signify the beginning of a 13-year journey and partnership between the boys, the families, and the school. As with all ceremonies and liturgies it was filled with symbolism and our presentation to the boys of a blueberry plant represents the nurturing and growth that we will all experience together.

It was lovely to speak to some families who have an older boy who experienced this ceremony two years ago and to hear that their lemon tree is flourishing – just like the boys!! Our thanks must go to Ms Angela Collins (our APRIM) and Mrs Emily Sayer (Head of Primary) for the preparation and conducting of this inspirational event. We are grateful that Fr Matthew could also attend and offer a very special blessing to the boys and families.

LENT

This week we begin the very significant Christian season of Lent. Lent is a time of both repentance and humility. It is a time when we acknowledge that we are very much human, prone to making mistakes and we must accept the responsibility for this and be determined to atone for any wrong doings of the past. We can do this in two ways. Firstly, by the traditional “giving-up” of something we like or just as powerful by “taking-up” new positive, live-giving habits that will benefit other people. This Lenten season also prepares us for Easter and the most powerful event in the history of the Christian world where Christ gave his life for us and then proved everything we do in this life, has a purpose, by rising from the dead.

Lent began for us here at St Paul’s by the celebration of our Opening School Mass and Ash Wednesday Liturgy which we combined. Again, Fr Matthew presided and the liturgy, prepared by Ms Collins, was again very moving and powerful. I would particularly like to sincerely thank the students whose reverence, behaviour and participation was nothing short of sensational. Wednesday was a very hot day, the distribution of the ashes had to change in format due to COVID restrictions, which proved challenging, but the students were awesome in their commitment to maintaining an atmosphere of complete respect for the occasion.

College Tours / St Paul’s Girls Introductory Night

On Wednesday 10 February we held our first College Tour for the year, and as with the remaining three we are to hold (dates on the website) it was booked out, with over 160 people in attendance. The response to our move to becoming a co-ed school next year continues to grow and put pressure on for places.

Tonight (Thursday) we will hold an exciting and first-time event, where we welcome all enrolled and prospective girls and their families. We will be providing feedback on uniform, building developments, and answering any questions and enquiries that families may have as we transition into this exciting new era for the College. Again, this has been booked out to capacity and signifies the start of a year-long program of communication and events for these and all incoming families to St Paul’s in 2022 and beyond.

God Bless

Paul Belton
Principal

St Paul’s College is doing it’s part to advance South Australia as a leader in space technologies. Our Year 7 classes were thrilled that their video entry won them a place in the Seeds in Space program.  Our wattle seeds are currently orbiting the earth on the International Space Station and we can’t wait for them to return to Earth in May.

We also were successful in winning a grant to compete in the Space STEM Challenge.  We will work with former astronauts and the Houston Space Centre to complete weekly STEM challenges and compete against students from around the world!

The Paladins of St Paul’s have been busy in the holidays!  We competed in the Australian Tech Challenge on December 12th.  With Covid -19 restrictions, we had to complete our judging interviews via Zoom.  It was wonderful to reflect on all the outreach we completed in 2020 and the judges were extremely impressed with the progress made by a rookie team.

Our robot, Joyeuse performed brilliantly, gaining maximum points in autonomous and shooting rings accurately into the middle goal. 

At the end of December, the team were hosts for a segment of the 24Hours of STEM, an international collaborative with guest speakers presenting continuously across 4 live streams. You can watch the sessions at https://www.24hoursofstem.org/.  Our sessions included presentations from Christina Rohlf, from UC Davis discussing Musculokeletal Biomechanics, Garry Law with Designing FLL Challenges with FUN in mind! and a though provoking exploration of innovating Waste Solutions in Uganda with engineering student, Paige Balcom from Takataka Plastics. 

January saw the team competing again, this time internationally in the International Student Robotics Challenge, based in London.  Our team, led by Captain Caleb Rodgers, met at school to program a virtual robot to complete a series of challenges.  Our code was uploaded and used in a virtual arena in a race against our opponent to claim a series of towers by sending a signal when in close proximity. 

The Paladins had a 4 – 2 win loss record and finished in 12th place.  We are currently gearing up for Round 2 as we strive to reach the finals in May.

St Paul’s College has been selected as one of 150 schools nationwide to plant Wattle seeds, which are currently travelling in space!

One Giant Leap Australia Foundation sent native golden wattle seeds to the International Space Station in early December, 2020.

In collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) the seeds will live in space for six months, returning to Australia in time for Science Week 2021.

A community panel judged the applications that included 200 words and a short video, explaining what the schools would do with the wattle once it had grown. 

St Paul's College is delighted to have been selected as a winning school. 

One of the panel members said, “We have spent 5 days watching videos. Entries from all over Australia. From a single teacher in a face mask in a school in Victoria to a small school in remote Northern Territory. It has been an amazing opportunity to laugh and cry our way through them.”

St Paul's will receive wattle seeds that have flown to space, plus seeds that have not. The seeds are from the same seed lot. Students are asked to germinate and grow their seeds, recording data about the germination and seed growth. Data will be uploaded to the ‘What’ll happen to the wattle??!’ app.

Throughout the programme, One Giant Leap Australia Foundation will run teleconferences and provide educational support to participating groups.

The 12-month to 2 year project will result in the creation of a nationwide map identifying the location of Australia‘s 'space wattle’ trees.

The project is an historic opportunity for Australian schools and students. Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) media announcement:

 https://iss.jaxa.jp/en/kuoa/news/200901.html

Dear Friends of St Paul’s

Week one has come and gone already, and it was a wonderful start to the year for St Paul’s College. Over the past two years we have put much time and effort into re-designing and improving the beginning of year structures and activities to make the transition for all our new students a smooth one. Week one is known as our “Wellbeing Week” and the students of different year levels start the year at differing intervals to give the youngest and the newest time and space to get to know all the environment and all the school routines before the whole population returns.

This Wellbeing Week also has, as its priority, the establishing and building of positive relationships across all levels within the school. These relationships are so crucial to any individual’s success and are THE most important aspect to our lives with a family-oriented community. Our Pastoral Care structures and activities permeate throughout this week (and throughout the year) and by the looks on the faces of the boys leaving at the end of week one, everyone enjoyed themselves.

Special thanks must go to Mr Nicolas Callary (Head of Student Development) and his Wellbeing Council Team together with our APRIM, Ms Angela Collins for their preparation of the myriad of activities and liturgies held throughout the week.

Opening Assembly

On Thursday we held our opening assembly, and this has a dual focus. Firstly, we welcome all the new students, through a guard of honour created by our Yr 12 cohort and then introduce our Yr 12 students, presenting them with their special leadership tie, acknowledging their seniority and importance within the school. Secondly, we have an academic focus where we congratulated the high performers in the Class of 2020 and the Term 4 2020 Honours students across Yrs 5 - 11. It is extremely pleasing to witness the growing number of students across the College who are being presented with these awards and our thanks must go to all our staff for their diligent efforts in supporting the students and the families with their academic pursuits.

The Dux of 2020 Caleb Lotstra addressed the school and was inspirational in his encouragement of all the students to work hard in class but also to continually challenge themselves to be the very best person they can be and that they would hope to be.

Community Involvement            

As we often refer to, St Paul’s is more than a community, it is very much one big family. In all families, individuals are different in all aspects of their lives, from gender to abilities, interests etc. In other words, very diverse in themselves as a group. This is obviously more magnified in a family of 800!! Having said that, there are a few very easy ingredients to a successful journey within this family. One, very simply, is to be involved. This involvement is not only a sign of commitment to the College and its values, but a willingness to be an active part of our three-way partnership - students / families / staff, which provides the very best opportunity for success.

We encourage all members of the family to be committed to this involvement. Students in their academic, social and co-curricula pursuits and family – especially parents and caregivers, by attending information evenings, teacher interviews or offering your services to any of the activities that interest you or you have strengths in. Like all our staff, families too, must model to each other the behaviours, character strengths and values we undoubtedly know will contribute to their success and the success of St Paul’s as a whole.

God Bless

Paul Belton

We are delighted to share the SACE results for the class of 2020. We are so proud of all their achievements and their results are testament to their ‘Strength. Resilience. Growth.’ displayed during a challenging year. Congratulations to all students on their effort and outstanding achievement.

With 100% SACE completion once again, St Paul’s congratulates College Dux Caleb Lotstra with an ATAR of 97.2, as well as the many Stage 2 students who contributed to an astounding 51 grades in the ‘A’ Band across 17 different subjects.

We also acknowledge and thank families and staff who have supported and guided these young people over the years, as we wish the Class of 2020 every success in the future. May they continue to ‘Fight the Good Fight’!
 

It is with enormous excitement and pride that St Paul's College announces a transition to co-education from 2022.

Following our announcement that St Paul's would become a co-educational College from January 2022, the response has been absolutely amazing. We have received a large number of enrolment applications for 2022 and beyond.

We are currently processing all enrolment applications for 2022 and undertaking enrolment interviews. We will carefully monitor the numbers and composition of the Year 7 2022 cohort to allow for a balance of female and male students. As these numbers are limited, we encourage families to submit a completed application form ASAP. It is envisaged that we will reach capacity by the end of year. 

If you would like to discuss enrolment of your son or daughter please contact us on phone 8334 8300 or EMAIL

If you would like the opportunity to visit St Paul's we invite you to join one of our upcoming College Tours. Please complete our online form to register.