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High Notes, Vol 23 No 17, June 10 2022

From the Principal

High Talent

As a result of their performance in the NSW Schools Championships our Senior Sailing team have qualified to compete at the National Schools Championships. Well done to Sam Ezra (12E), Daniel Low (12T), Nathan Cox (12R), Zhitian Mai (11F), Liem Tran (11F), Jacob Jin (11T) and Saxon Dean (11M). At the Senior A.J. Rae School Team Championships last Saturday our Senior Epee A Team (Nicholas Chen (12M), Jarrod Su (11R), Jack Wang (11M) and Brendan Alcorn (12M)) won the gold and the Epee B Team (Jack Huang (11T), Zhitian Mai (11F), Tian Yang (10E) and Daniel Nguyen (10M)) the bronze. The High Senior Sabre A Team (Yu Ming Lee (12T), Oscar Shi (10S) and Samuel Hui (10T)) won the gold in their competition. Congratulations, lads!

Student Leadership Assembly 2022

At our recent Student Leadership Assembly, seven student leaders spoke about the leadership groups that they represented. Our School Prefects received their badges and signed the Prefects Book. My speech to the assembly is reprinted below:

"Staff, students, parents and Prefects of Sydney Boys High welcome to our official recognition of student leadership efforts in our school and our investiture assembly for our 2022 School Prefects. I acknowledge this morning the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the custodians of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to any Aboriginal people here today.

"James Comey, the FBI Director who was sacked by Donald Trump because he refused to be manipulated into influencing an investigation into Trump’s pre-election behaviour, later wrote a book entitled ‘A Higher Loyalty’.  It chronicled his career in public service and the Department of Justice and outlined his work with three Presidents of America. He described how he came to value the search for truth and integrity in leadership as driving values during his outstanding career. He was a very effective and popular leader who was called upon to display moral leadership on several occasions in his job. He was sacked in the fourth year of his ten-year term as FBI Director. He refused to provide unconditional loyalty to a President. He believed he had a higher loyalty to the values that made his character rather than loyalty to a President who he believed was telling lies and acting inappropriately in office. Leadership can be shown by not doing, as well as doing.

"As student leaders, you will develop a set of moral guidelines or values that suits you as your preferred method of leading. We expect you to understand your duties clearly and to carry them out ethically and faithfully.  You are in a learning phase about leadership. Schools can be good places to train and build up your knowledge about what works and doesn’t work. Nearly always, leadership involves compromise. Learn how to compromise within a framework of action governed by a pursuit of truth and personal integrity. If you ask yourself whether a course of action is the right thing to do, your honest answer will be the best next step to take.

"Thank you to all the students who have served our school in various teams this year. SRC, Community Service, Peer Support, Equality, PAWS, Environment, Media – not matter where you served, you exhibited leadership. We really appreciate that it takes courage to put your name forward for a role and even more courage to carry it out well. Congratulations to you all.

"The quality of our Prefect body is a reflection of the quality of our school life. We want our most engaged and committed students to be nominated as candidates for this important school role. If every eligible voter participates responsibly, we will get the best and most diverse team of Prefects possible. Our Prefect traditions are our anchors but can also inspire this cohort to emulate or build on activities and priorities that will become a new legacy. There have been so many great Prefects at this school that the current group must try to follow in some aspects of their role. The honour of such a long-established and prestigious position exhorts our new cohort of leaders to emulate their predecessors’ deeds.

"The Senior Prefect leadership team for 2022 - Captain Joshua Suto, as Vice-Captain Rahul Pant and as the Senior Prefect, Ming Lee, have carried out their roles admirably. The long and professional stewardship of Ms Rigby as Prefect MIC must be acknowledged and thanked. She has set high standards and always held our boys to meet them. At the same time, she is unfailingly supportive of the students she mentors in these important tasks. I want to thank her for her dedication to the role and for her effectiveness in it.

"To move from internship to the point of getting their perpetual School Prefect badges today, Prefects had to prove that they could meet the requirements for the role. These requirements were demanding. Prefect interns had to continue to meet a predetermined academic standard.  They had to maintain their participation in school life, play two GPS sports and earn a Student Awards Scheme Award in their final year.  They had to have exemplary standards in behaviour, school dress and punctuality.  COVID has interfered with our process to a large degree for two years, but we remain committed to our qualifying framework.

"The Internship of our Prefects lasts for a full year. From this annual investiture assembly onwards, a new cohort of candidates will have to meet the requirements to be placed on the ballot. They will have to pass the test of democratic election by a constituency of students in Years 10 and 11, teachers and outgoing Prefects. Once elected they will have to perform well until their induction assembly as Prefect Interns and then for the next three school terms until they reach this culminating ceremony of signing the Prefects’ Book and receiving their perpetual School Prefects badges.

"Sydney Boys High Prefects are particularly self-disciplined people – they have proven themselves worthy of the honour shown to them. They have earned their recognition and acknowledgement. I congratulate all the students who are to receive their badges and sign themselves into history today in the Prefects Register, a ritual since 1952, and thank them for their service."

Interpreting Year 7 Reports – Semester One 

Year 7 boys received their reports this week. Parents need to know that with scores for grades – HD (6), D (5), Credit (3) PM (2) P (1) or U (0) – boys are expected to score thirty points or 10 credits equivalent, in order to reach the school standard. Proficiency levels for future-oriented earning skills, such as problem solving and evaluating, critical thinking, working with others, communicating your ideas and being creative, are also reported. Parents will be able to trace the growth of their son in the five reported skills as he progresses through the Junior School. These skills are reported in their own textbox and are distributed among the Faculties. For more information on PEWCC skills reporting, go to sydneyhigh.school/curriculum/pewcc-reporting and click on Information About School Reports to peruse the skills continuum for each subject. In addition, multiple learning behaviours are reported on a rubric from ‘rarely’ to ‘sometimes’ to ‘usually’ to ‘consistently’. These behaviours are controllable by students and attention to them can improve outcomes over time.

We understand that boys transitioning into Year 7 face many adjustment challenges. Positions in the grade will not be disclosed to Year 7 students for their first two reports. The top group of boys are acknowledged on the Academic Achievement List. Unless special circumstances preclude it, letters are sent to the parents of the boys in the Academic Support Group (those boys with scores of 27 or less). Boys scoring 27 points or less may be offered a special workshop presented by an outside provider; they may join ‘Diary Club’ to learn how to organise themselves better to complete tasks and submit work punctually; they may just receive an encouraging chat from their Year Adviser; they may be referred to the Counsellor; or they may be referred to an outside agency with their parents on very rare occasions. Some or none of these interventions might be judged appropriate in your son’s case. It is our obligation to let you know of our interventions on behalf of students so that you may accept or decline our help. Unless you contact us, we will assume you are OK with us using our professional judgement on actions to assist your son. We want to help our underachievers using the most effective means possible. Parents are requested to talk over their son’s report with him ahead of booking Parent-Teacher interview time slots. Your son’s Year Adviser can be contacted about options to improve future outcomes.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal