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High Notes, Vol 26 No 3, February 21 2025

From the Principal

High Talent

Daniel Iliffe (12R) is representing Australia this month at the Asian Junior (U20) and Cadet (U17) Fencing Championships. Good luck, Daniel! A team of students mentored by volunteer Dawud Rahmati competed in the FIRST Tech Challenge robotics competition last year. In the National Championships, the team (Milan Babin, Oliver Boije, Joshua Campbell, Leon Lu, Ricky Luo, Tuyvan Mai, Hayden Nguyen, Sharvil Pande, Jett Soo-Leui'I, and Andrew Wu) was awarded 2nd place in the Think Award. They also achieved 2nd place in the Inspire Award at the Sydney qualifier. Oliver Boije was selected as a 2024-2025 Dean’s list finalist at the Houston Championship event in April. Congratulations to all involved!

Presentation Night

MP Allegra Spender spoke about the nonlinear progression of her career, with changes of direction, jobs and success. She urged the audience to always forgive themselves for their mistakes and to move forward positively. She recounted her trepidation about switching a good job and stable family life for the whirlwind of politics. She urged graduates to approach employment with a ‘heart and mind’ philosophy. Ultimately, most employment satisfaction is derived from working at what you are passionate about, not just what you are good at.

My speech on Presentation Night is reprinted below:

"Special guest, Ms Allegra Spender MP, Ms Angela Lyris OAM, Director of Educational Leadership, Department of Education, Ms Rachel Powell, Principal SGHS, Mr Christopher Brown (OAM) Chairman of ̽»¨ÊÓƵ Foundation Ltd, Professor Ron Trent (President SBHS School Council), Ms Jocelyn Yem (Vice-President SBHS P & C), Mr Jacob Ezrakhovich (OBU President), Life Governors -- Mr Geoff Andrews, Mr Dennis Briggs and Mr Phil Lambert, Mr Paul Almond (past President SHSOBU), Mr Max Kletski (OBU Treasurer and School Council member), Ms Mattise Stringer, OC Sydney High Cadet Unit, Ms Virginia Flint, CEO Sir Roden & Lady Cutler Foundation, guest presenters  Mr Nathan McDonnell and Richard Halliday, guests’ partners and relatives, Old Boys, staff, parents and prize winners – thank you all for joining us for this evening of celebration of student achievement.

"For much of 2024, DP Jamie Kay led our initiative to revert to a two-week timetable commencing this year. The decision allowed us to think outside the box in relation to maximisation of teaching time in stage 6. Free time has been carved out for assemblies when Years 11 and 12 are not timetabled on classes and another bookable period set aside for multiple class activities or cohort lectures. Our most significant achievement in technology last year was to begin our three-year teacher laptop replacement program for 75 staff. Teachers now take their Windows 11 laptops to their classes for lesson delivery using Vivi, allowing us to phase out support for the existing desktops in classrooms. John Prorellis, David Isaacs and James Rudd are managing this major roll out. Our thanks to the High P & C for funding c$240,000 for this 3-year project. My thanks go to John Prorellis, Jim Crampton and Daniel Xu for the great planning and execution of an imposing array of major works around the school in 2024. The Junior Library was airconditioned thanks to funding from the SHSFBF and the P & C. Block B had its roof replaced and external guttering installed, thanks to DOE. A Tennis Clubroom was designed by Year 10 students in 2023 and built and furnished from the proceeds of a bequest in 2024. The COLA nets were replaced, extra lighting added, and the roof extended 3.5 metres. The Cleveland St car park had asphalt laid, bollards as protection for the digital sign and electricity sub-station, and cables laid to Gate 2 as a future proofing exercise. Power and water were run down Cutler Drive, its water mains repaired, and a new data distribution switch and cabinet installed. The SHSFBF paid $500k in March last year to DOE to establish a Table Tennis Centre next to the COLA. In 2024 the work of AMU was frozen for most of the year and our project has only recently been re-activated. We hope to see the project well under way this year. The Cooler Classrooms Project was restarted at High late last year and we have had more progress in the last three months than we have seen for the last three years. Our second year of focusing on sentence conscious pedagogy, highlighting paragraphs, was another big investment in literacy workshops, pull-out programs and remedial software such as ATOMI. We again expended significant resources aiming to improve literacy outcomes. Teachers use more common words, such as thinking routines, learning intentions, success criteria, differentiation of units by content, process or product, appositives, kernel sentences and subordinate conjunctions. As a result, our learning discourse is more attuned to literacy improvement and reinforced across faculties to a greater extent than previously. We have developed materials and have strategies in place to complete program modifications for all Years 7-10 by the end of 2025. We are delivering literacy workshops to identify and address the learning needs of students in Years 7 and 9 who require more intensive literacy development assistance. We have subject selection interviews with Year 10 students to improve stage 6 course selection. We re-purposed ATOMI availability for senior PDHPE classes.

"Our overall HSC results for 2024 were the best since 2015 – a tribute to the improvement in literacy overall and in English pedagogy, led by new HT Kyle Caputo, with pleasing upticks in Mathematics, History and Science as well. High was ranked 9th in the League Tables. High boys earned 610 band 6/E4s which was our highest number since 2019. The ATAR average for 2024 was 93.73 calculated for 206 candidates with a standard deviation of 6.85. This year was our highest average ATAR and smallest tail since 2015. The 162 students who enrolled in 2019 earned a mean ATAR of 93.77. The 44 later-enrolling students had an ATAR mean of 93.55. [The 19- year numbers are 3231 @ 93.40 and 698 @ 90.21]. 42 students scored 99 or higher; 75 earned ATARs between 95 and 98.95; 80.2% (166) scored 90 or above – our best result since 2017. In terms of Band 5 & 6 percentages per course, 17 courses were at 100%, 2 at 95 to 99%, 4 at 90 to 94% and 7 below 90%. Our 2024 course means compared to 2023 – 23 increased and 9 decreased. When comparing High with a Statistically Similar School Group of selective schools, 21 courses were above the SSSG mean and 7 below. Our average school course mean was 88.7, compared to the SSSG 86.77 and 78.1 for the state. One sentence version. Year 12 2024 performed very well.

"Individual HSC results in the top 10 in a course – Engineering Studies (Zihin Zhang -2), Mathematics Extension 1 (Brian Nguyen-3, Oscar Lam -7), Geography (Shafayat Hossain – 7) and Chemistry (Leon Shen – 10). Harrison Guo, Alex Huang and Harry Xin had their HSC Design and Technology Projects set aside for possible inclusion in SHAPE. Musical performances nominated for possible selection in ENCORE: Jerry Chen, Andy Huang, Ethan Hybler, Ryan Kirkland, Oscar Kuo and Christopher Lau (Performance), Advaith Ilavajhala (Musicology).

"Our boys won GPS Premierships in First Grade Football (first since 1995) and a Co-premiership in First Grade Volleyball. Since 2003, High first grade Volleyball teams have been GPS premiers or co-premiers each year except in 2017. Second Grade Volleyball were Premiers. Since 2006, High has missed out only twice on securing the GPS second grade premiership – an imposing record for the sport managed by Michael Kay.

"Three students represented at international level. Five individuals and three teams competed successfully at national schools’ level. A selection of significant individual and team achievements for 2024 are outlined for you to peruse at the end of your program. State and national level achievements: fencing, table, tennis, volleyball, chess, rowing, athletics, academic competitions and competitions in programming and coding. Our co-curricular program is thriving.

"In conclusion, I want to indulge in some over-the-horizon musing about artificial intelligence and technology in the workplace in 2030. By the time the Class of 2024 graduates from university, many areas of work will be impacted by agentic AI.  It is an artificial intelligence that can make autonomous decisions without human intervention, solving problems both independently and proactively.  This paradigm shift in AI is a product of technological breakthroughs in contextual understanding, memory and multi-tasking capability. Agentic AI has the potential to underpin the DIFM (do it for me) economy.  Users will have their own bots, which are software applications programmed to do certain tasks on the internet automatically.  Customised bots, or AI agents, will help users of financial services to choose products and execute transactions.

"There is great potential for tasks outsourced today to contractors or third parties, to be carried out in-house, using bespoke agentic AI. Start-ups will supply the bots. Last year, a third of all venture capital funding in the USA was granted to AI startups.  Telecom, media and financial services, outside of the technology sector itself, are the largest spenders on Gen AI or AI that creates new content, such as text or images, based on patterns in data.  Large Language Models are powerful forms of this AI. Economic activity and employment opportunities will open up for agentic AI in financial services, in areas such as – compliance, fraud prevention, personnel onboarding and credit workflows.  Welcome to the brave new bot world.  It could be where you land your first job. Good luck and stay connected. It was my great pleasure and enduring privilege to serve as your principal."

The ̽»¨ÊÓƵ Building Fund

The ̽»¨ÊÓƵ Advancement Fund is a capital fund managed in by the ̽»¨ÊÓƵ Foundation Ltd on behalf of the school. The object of the Fund is to provide facilities and resources for the use of students at High. Some of these assets are located off-site. The Foundation owns, maintains and operates the Outterside Centre and manages the Fairland Pavilion. It also negotiates and manages Deeds of Licence with third parties for medium and long-term legal arrangements for the High Store, COLA and the Tennis Courts which the Principal cannot do. It delivered finance for one half of the c $14,750,000 major project the Governors Centre, a joint endeavour with SGHS completed in 2021 after 10 years of effort.

Contributions by parents for 2024 were $684,290. Monthly Giving added another $33,745. Our strong culture of intergenerational generosity is the principal reason why High has acquired the assets it enjoys over 141 years and the access it has to facilities at Moore Park, Abbotsford, Malabar, Sydney International Shooting Centre, Rose Bay and Centennial Park. The Foundation funded half of the installation of our new demountable science lab, c $475,000 in 2022, $500k for the Table Tennis Centre and a bequest built a meeting/lunch/physio room for the tennis courts c $235,000. Our current projects are to build an international standard Table Tennis Centre c $600k; air condition the classrooms not covered by Cooler Classrooms $60k; and build a retaining wall, pathway and entrance way at the Outterside Centre c $300k. Please help us to achieve these important goals in 2025 by making your annual contributions to the ̽»¨ÊÓƵ Advancement Fund as so many of our existing and previous parents have done over many years.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal